To Animal Officer, Homeless Shelter Is Pet Cause

Ventura County’s transitional shelter for homeless families is very likely the only one in the state, if not the nation, run by an animal control official.

Animal regulation director Kathy Jenks has overseen the shelter since its creation in 1997, when she was drafted to design a program to help push the homeless toward self-sufficiency.

It is by all accounts an odd marriage, a match made at a time when officials were scrambling to remove squatters from the Ventura River bottom and many refused to go unless their pets could come along.

The relationship is so unorthodox that it has prompted state and national advocates for the homeless to question the county’s commitment to propping up the down-and-out.

But county leaders and local homeless advocates say the shelter has flourished under Jenks’ care.

She has been able to run the program on minimal funding, they say. And, they add, she has done more than anyone to establish the facility as the cornerstone of a reinvigorated countywide program to lift people out of homelessness.

“I know that somebody looking at it from the outside would say this is really bizarre,” said Rick Pearson, executive director of the Ventura-based homeless assistance agency Project Understanding.

“But I think Kathy has done a tremendous job,” he said. “She has taken a program that was intended to be a short-term program to fill a short-term need and established it as a program with a future.”

Homeless advocates outside the county don’t doubt that is true.

Still, they fear county leaders are sending the wrong message on their resolve to help the homeless by keeping the shelter under the auspices of animal control. Particularly, considering that advocates believe the budgets for animal shelters are typically larger than those for homeless shelters.

Considering all that, it’s unsettling, they say, to see money for both kinds of shelters in Ventura County essentially being funneled through the same agency.

“I think it’s absolutely something Ventura County should look at as a reflection of whether they are serious enough and attentive enough to the needs of the homeless,” said Mary Ann Gleason, executive director for the Washington-based National Coalition for the Homeless.

“We would love to see cities and counties take on homelessness as a serious problem they need to address,” she said, “not just something that happens to fall into somebody’s lap.”

To be fair, animal regulation may have authority over the transitional shelter, known as the River-dwellers Aid Intercity Network, or RAIN, but has little to do with the day-to-day operation.

The two programs have separate budgets. And Jenks and her bookkeeper are the only two who work with both agencies.

Still, it seemed a logical fit to put Jenks in charge when the shelter was created three years ago to provide temporary assistance to people living in the shantytowns that dotted the Ventura and Santa Clara rivers.

At that time, so many of the river bottom homeless owned dogs and refused to relocate unless their animals were also given care.

Jenks stepped up to take the lead, having already been on a first-name basis with many of the river bottom dwellers over the years through free clinics she offered for their pets.

There were other factors as well.

No one besides Jenks had experience running an operation open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And she was nearby. Stationed at the county animal shelter in Camarillo, she was only a few minutes from the RAIN project’s initial home, an unused wing of Camarillo State Hospital, now a Cal State University satellite campus.

She is even closer now. As it expanded from a short-term shelter program to a long-term transitional center, the RAIN shelter moved in 1998 to an old county Fire Department building near Camarillo Airport, within walking distance of animal control headquarters.

Moreover, Jenks said it was easy for her department to take over managing the shelter’s money. Animal regulation consisted of a single budget unit so it was easy to add a second unit for the shelter.

Jenks said it also helped that she had a reputation as a scrounger, someone who could work the system to find extra resources for her programs.

But perhaps the driving force behind the decision to put Jenks in charge was the fact no one else readily stepped up to seize the reins of the fledgling shelter.

“By doing it this way, we didn’t have to go out and hire any more support staff,” said Jenks, who joined the animal regulation department in 1973 and became its director five years later.

“Where anybody else would have created another bureaucracy, we were able to keep it clean and simple and as cheap as possible,” she added. “Anybody who knows me knows I’m not looking to build a dynasty. I’m just trying to keep it going.”

Jenks said she has heard little grumbling on the link between animal control and the homeless shelter. Aside from an occasional joke about the relationship, or an astonished look when outsiders first learn of the pairing, she said few people seem to give it much thought.

She said the odd arrangement may even work in the shelter’s favor.

“It gets us remembered,” she said. “When we talked to the feds about all these grants we apply for they’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the homeless program run by the dog catcher.’ ”

Indeed, it hasn’t hurt funding. The homeless shelter earlier this month was awarded a $643,000 grant by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, part of a $2.1-million allocation to local agencies to provide long-term housing and resources for homeless people countywide.

And that bottom-line reality is the only thing that matters to those who have long called for a more comprehensive campaign to battle homelessness in Ventura County.

“It’s an oddity, but I think Kathy has been able to make it work,” said Clyde Reynolds, executive director of the Turning Point Foundation, which provides services to the homeless mentally ill.

Added Karol Schulkin, head of the county’s homeless services program: “I always say if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. This program is working and she’s a big part of what has made it work.”

The link between animal shelters and the homeless is not new.

Two years ago the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals came under fire for a proposal to house homeless people with dogs at the agency’s pet adoption center. The $7-million facility, outfitted with posh kennels complete with television sets and living room furniture, is designed to show homeless animals in their best light to spur adoptions.

In response to criticism that the creation of such lavish doggy digs was a slap in the face to the homeless, the agency decided to allow street people to keep the pets company.

That drew even more criticism.

Paul Boden, director of the Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco, said there is a long history of people showing more compassion for homeless animals than homeless people.

That is why he finds the situation in Ventura County particularly troubling.

“To be honest, an animal shelter is probably a lot more humane in its treatment of animals than a homeless shelter is in its treatment of people,” he said. “But I think you’re jeopardizing the long-term stability and certainly the long-term planning of homeless programs by having them under the care of animal control.”

With Ventura County leaders setting out this month to restore health to their beleaguered billion-dollar budget, no one is inclined at this time to tamper with the arrangement, no matter how odd it might seem.

But somewhere down the road, county leaders say it will need to change.

Supervisor Kathy Long, who recently launched a renewed effort to develop a regional strategy on homelessness, said the most pressing need at the moment is to move the program to a permanent site. The most likely site is a nearby facility formerly housing the Assn. for Retarded Citizens.

But Long said as that process moves forward, it will be important to find a way to spin off the shelter to a private, nonprofit agency.

“It’s really not our role to operate these programs, but it is our role to keep them up and running,” Long said. “But I don’t want to let it go until I’m sure it has a permanent home.”

Until that happens, Jenks said she will be around pushing the issue and making sure the shelter gets the attention it deserves.

“I honestly believe in what I’m doing and the program is doing,” Jenks said. “But I don’t care who runs it as long it is allowed to continue and to grow.”