River Bottom Dwellers Move Into Dorms

The damp morning dew still clung to the tent as Kelly Iozia readied herself for the big move.

With hers and her boyfriend’s possessions all packed onto a little, red wagon, Iozia made one last check of the Santa Clara River bottom encampment the couple have made their home for the last seven months.

She was ready to live in a place with clean sheets and a warm bed.

“They’ll have laundry facilities, a full kitchen, a place for families to stay,” said Iozia, who is three months pregnant. “It’ll be really, really nice.”

Iozia and her boyfriend, James Pettit, were among about 50 people who moved Thursday from their makeshift homes in the Santa Clara and Ventura riverbeds to a dormitory at the now-vacant Camarillo State Hospital.

“You’ll be the first to enroll at the new college,” said Karol Schulkin, coordinator of the county’s homeless services program, as she joked with a group of people getting on a bus for the new shelter. The hospital is the site of the proposed California State University Channel Islands.

Schulkin’s agency is one of about a dozen that make up the River-Dweller’s Aid Intercity Network--or RAIN.

The group had spent several weeks coordinating the move, interviewing river-bottom residents and setting up the new facility. The interagency coalition is modeled on a successful homeless-assistance program launched after devastating floods ripped through camps along the Ventura River in 1995.

One man was killed during that flooding, and 12 others who had encampments in the river bottom had to be plucked by rescuers from the rising waters.

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Officials decided this year that they would force the homeless out of the river bottoms before winter rains flooded them out, and allocated $225,000 for the effort.

Not all those who have made the river bottoms their home will be moved to the new shelter--those who can afford to live elsewhere are not eligible, for example. But everyone living in the river will have to move, officials said.

County crews are scheduled to go through the river bottoms today, clearing out the makeshift structures, officials said.

I.M. Hope, a homeless woman with health problems, said she was not accepted in the relocation program, apparently because she has enough money to rent a room.

“I really wanted to go with everybody,” Hope said Thursday. “I thought I’d finally be spending Christmas and Thanksgiving with friends, but they wouldn’t let me.”

The shelter will be open until March, and officials said they want those living in the dorms to use the time to find permanent living arrangements.

Eddie Bean, who has lived in the Santa Clara River bottom for a decade, said he hopes to use the time in the dorms to get a steady job.

“I think it’s going to change my life,” said Bean, 44.

With her dogs 8-Ball and Precious in tow, Claudia Martinez said she was ready for the change.

“I’m so excited,” said Martinez, 40. “It looks like a college . . . not an old nuthouse.”

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The shelter is equipped with dorms for single men, single women, couples and families and kennels for the river residents’ pets.

Despite the amenities that will be provided for them, most of those moving out of the river bottom said they will miss their makeshift homes and the community that had evolved over time.

And for Dennis Cathran, who has visited the river bottom on Sundays for the last year to preach to the residents, the move is bittersweet.

“This is what we’ve been hoping for,” Cathran said. “But I feel like that’s my church, you know, and I’m their pastor down there.”

Cathran, who is studying to become an ordained minister, said he started taking food and clothing to the river bottom and preaching after learning that a high school friend was living there.

“I felt God was calling me to go there,” he said.

Cathran said it took a lot of work from many volunteers to get the relocation program off the ground. And some of the hardest work was convincing those that made the river their home to leave, he said.

“I was surprised we got them all to move,” Cathran said. “Even ‘The Snake’ is going.”

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Jeff “The Snake” Greene said he was finally persuaded to leave his makeshift home, complete with kitchen and front porch, by the prospect of regular medication.

“I get these seizures,” the 43-year-old Greene said. “I’ll be able to get my medicine every day, and that helps control it.”

The night before the move, Greene was so anxious that “I had trouble sleeping. . . . I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

By late Thursday morning, Greene was at Camarillo State with the first group to move into the dorms. As he put clean, white sheets on his new bed, someone informed him that there would be a barbecue for dinner.

“This ain’t bad,” Greene said in a raspy voice. “It ain’t bad at all.”