Board Will Vote on Plan to Bolster RAIN Shelter

Ventura County Supervisor Kathy Long is set to ask her colleagues today to support a plan to transform the county’s only transitional shelter for homeless families into a permanent facility.

Supervisors are scheduled to decide whether to allocate $296,000 to keep a Camarillo shelter operated by River-dwellers Aid Intercity Network, or RAIN, open until June.

Long wants the county to approve the allocation and commit to moving the shelter, now at the Camarillo Airport, to a nearby center formerly housing the Assn. for Retarded Citizens at 1732 S. Lewis Road.

The shelter has received county funding on a year-to-year basis since it opened in 1997 in anticipation of El Nino floods along the Ventura River where several homeless camps exist.

Long said it was time that local authorities acknowledge homelessness as a regional crisis, although county administrators this year are grappling with reimbursing $15.3 million in Medicare payments and have recommended that no funds be spent on the project.

“While we have chosen to fund this program on a temporary basis, this is not a temporary problem,” Long wrote to her colleagues in a recent memo. “We must now take decisive action to make this permanent.”

Long took the lead on the shelter issue after a dispute erupted last winter between county and Ventura city officials over which agency should shoulder the responsibility of caring for the county’s homeless.

The controversy exploded after the Ventura City Council decided against providing funding to local nonprofit organizations for a temporary cold-weather shelter in the city.

Ventura officials, angered that too many homeless facilities already existed in the city, had argued that the county was the legal safety net for indigent residents.

Long became co-chair of a then-new countywide homeless task force, which has since tackled the issue as a regional problem. Cities have also committed to addressing the problem. Oxnard contributed $250,000, and Camarillo kicked in $5,000 toward the RAIN shelter this year.

“This sends a real strong message to the board that a partnership has been formed in dealing with homelessness,” Long said Monday. “Churches and nonprofit groups have also made a commitment. I know there are at least eight cities that have a standing commitment.”

But persuading her colleagues to agree may not prove easy. Four of the five supervisors must agree before any funds can be allocated during today’s final budget hearings.

Renovation of the old ARC facility would cost an estimated $770,000. Long suggests the county use Community Development Block Grant funding, Housing and Urban Development funds and tobacco settlement money to cover the cost.

The county’s administrative office, however, has advised that the county use the $3 million it received in tobacco settlement this year to help toward its payment of $15.3 million in penalties from the county’s Medicare fraud case.

This would be the county’s first of five annual reimbursement payments to the federal government. The county is being forced to repay the money after a federal audit discovered years of faulty billing practices.

“The tobacco money, I’m sure, will be part of the discussion,” Long added.

Meanwhile, Kathy Jenks, a county employee who oversees the shelter, is hoping to receive $296,000 to keep the doors open until June. Otherwise, she said, 61 people--including 33 children--will be out on the streets.

Each year, the RAIN shelter faces possible closure. But this year, with the county tackling such a large federal reimbursement, Jenks is especially worried that the homeless may be left out in the cold.

“If they weren’t facing this [fiscal] crisis I wouldn’t be as concerned,” Jenks said. “The money is very tight. This is the first year I’ve had to increase my blood pressure medicine.”