Activist Honored at Housing Dedication

One man and one cause drew 100 residents out in Thursday’s chilly sprinkles: community activist Otto G. Stoll and his devotion to affordable housing for everyone in Thousand Oaks.

The occasion was the dedication of the low-cost housing group Many Mansions’ most recently completed project, an affordable apartment complex where women on the verge of homelessness can get their lives back together.

In honor of the public-relations executive who has labored for years on the boards of Many Mansions and the Area Housing Authority, the new $1.8-million project is called Stoll Community House.

After touring the bright Los Robles Road facility Thursday, dignitaries and residents praised the 51-year-old Stoll, who is awaiting his fourth heart transplant.

“Otto, as you know, has heart problems,” said County Supervisor Frank Schillo, who helped found Many Mansions in 1979. “The way I see it, Otto has given his heart to this community.”

The Stoll facility is an 11-unit complex occupied by mothers with children, single women and a married couple.

They are people who--through divorce, health problems or family deaths--have lost their grip on a comfortable lifestyle.

The Community House, Stoll said, is “a refuge, a breather where single people and women with families who are battered by homelessness can find their new lives.”