City, Merchants Target ‘Hard-Core Vagrants’

More than two years after clearing homeless people encamped in the Ventura River bottom, city officials and merchants are now looking for ways to clear homeless people from downtown city streets.

The move comes just as the city is set to begin a major revitalization downtown with the construction of a multiscreen theater.

City officials said they are not targeting homeless people in general but a group of “hard-core vagrants” they say are panhandling tourists or drinking in public and are uninterested in moving off the streets.

“What we have is a hard-core group of 35 or 45 people that have no desire to work or be productive members of society,” said Ventura Police Sgt. Bob Anderson.

Police, downtown merchants and city officials have begun a series of meetings to find ways of weeding out the vagrants who are continually being cited for pestering residents and tourists for spare change, petty theft and sometimes more violent crimes.

“You know we’d like them to just move along,” said Anderson, who heads the community policing program for the city. “But it’s a much more complex issue than that. And if we move them out of here, they’ll just go someplace else and plague some other city.”

On Wednesday a group of merchants met with police who patrol downtown to discuss the issue.

The effort comes as other cities to the north and south of the county are passing tough anti-panhandling laws.

In Santa Barbara, the City Council recently approved an ordinance that forbids people from sitting on city sidewalks for long periods of time.

And in June the Los Angeles City Council passed one of the strictest panhandling laws in the nation. Those rules ban aggressive begging, including unwanted touching, following, swearing at or threatening of people. The rules also ban begging near banks, on freeway medians or in bus stations.

Local officials say Ventura has to consider new rules to clean up the city before panhandling becomes a bigger problem.

Downtown merchants and city officials said they are joining forces because they want to clean up the downtown, making it safer for tourists and residents.

“I think this is well-timed with the downtown improvements,” said Tim O’Neil, who owns the education consulting firm Shamrocks Unlimited on California Street. “The problem is the area seems to attract more vagrants and panhandlers, and they are hurting businesses.”

O’Neil, president of the downtown merchants association, said he hopes Ventura keeps its reputation for compassion, but some types of behavior should not be tolerated.

“We’re not talking about people that are just down on their luck,” he said. “We’re talking about just a few vagrants and hard-core panhandlers.”

Police report that there has been ever-increasing problems with this group. Many are making encampments back in the Ventura River bottom, at area beaches, in bushes near freeway overpasses and city parks.

Lester Rush, 35, and Mike Flynn, 32, have recently been sleeping on the beach just north of the Ventura River.

Rush, who has been hanging out at Mission Park with his black Labrador-Doberman mix for the last week or so, said he understands the concerns of police and merchants.

“Hey, if people get out of hand, causing trouble or you’re aggressive with people, then they should do something about it,” Rush said between sips from a 32-ounce bottle of beer. “I know I’m not perfect, I’ve been arrested for being drunk here, but if you aren’t bothering anyone, I think you should be left alone.”

Flynn and Rush disagreed on the importance of tourism to the city. Flynn said it sounded like “tourist dollars were more important than human lives.”

Rush said he doesn’t believe that is true.

“No, there are a lot of programs out there for you if you want them. Ventura is a pretty mellow place,” he said.

Some officials worry about that “mellow” attitude attracting homeless people.

“We have people that are actually coming to Ventura because of the services provided here, and that’s not good,” Anderson said.

Ventura City Manager Donna Landeros has had her own run-ins with vagrants. Her experiences convinced her that substance abusers who have no intention of getting off the streets are the source of many of the problems.

While walking from City Hall down California Street to attend a chamber music festival recently, Landeros witnessed two transients in a vicious fight. A Realtor doing business in the city also reported to Landeros that on one occasion, a panhandler beat on her car, demanding money.

“That’s really intolerable behavior for downtown,” said Landeros, who is among the city officials looking into ways to deal with the problem.

Despite years of effort on everything from ridding the Ventura River bottom of squatters to passing ordinances curbing aggressive panhandling and camping on beaches and in parks, Landeros said the downtown area remains a magnet for vagrants.

“We just haven’t seen a lot of improvements,” she said. “So we’re looking at a number of different approaches and hoping that in the next few months we’ll have a package of proposals we can offer to the council.”

Landeros said the city may want to ask downtown service centers to change policies at the halfway houses, feeding centers and residential treatment facilities that many vagrants use to discourage loitering downtown.

“Those would be long-term solutions,” she said.

Homeless advocate Bob Costello, executive director of the Homeless Employment Resource Operation, is on the committee of downtown merchants and residents trying to find a solution.

He expects the group to have a list of ideas to give the city within a month or so.

“We’re brainstorming, trying to come up with a positive way to deal with the problem,” Costello said. “I think there’s a bit of frustration there, but this is a positive approach. If I didn’t think it was going to be productive, I wouldn’t be involved.”