Area Facility for Mentally Ill to Reopen

A psychiatric hospital shuttered in 1996 after several patients escaped will reopen as a county board-and-care home for the mentally ill under a $1.2-million conversion plan approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors.

The new facility, which will have 34 beds, will combine with a 24-unit complex to open in the fall. The two facilities will give Ventura County 252 beds for the mentally ill.

Supervisors decided to spend more than $711,000 in federal housing money to renovate the Hillmont Avenue site, assign 13 county employees to the facility and direct staff members to develop a five-year housing plan for the mentally ill.

The federal money is an annual grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. A $400,000 county bond will also fund the project, and county officials await word on a separate federal grant to pay the remaining $100,000 needed.

Until its closing in 1996, the facility was the psychiatric inpatient unit of the county hospital.

But several severely mentally ill patients escaped, including Kevin Kolodziej, who after his escape stabbed to death a 90-year-old woman who lived on nearby Agnus Drive.

Given that history, Agnus Drive residents had mixed reactions Tuesday to the planned reopening of the clinic. Hillmont Avenue already houses a center for juvenile offenders and the new inpatient psychiatric unit for the severely mentally ill.

“We seem to have everything right here,” said Heather Christie, a 32-year-old mother of three. “It’s a family area, and considering the past history of the place, it worries me.”

Bill Laubacher, 36, said he thought about the 1992 killing before he and his family moved in two years ago. But he decided the county had taken enough precautions by building a more secure site next door.

“I would prefer it not be in my neighborhood,” he said. “But if it’s a well-controlled environment and they’re medicated and supervised to the point that they’re not a threat to the neighborhood, I wouldn’t be concerned.”

Patricia Kosich, acting director of housing for the Behavioral Health Department, said residents of the renovated facility will be “fully stabilized” and not dangerous to themselves or others.

The building will not have enhanced security, but patients will need less supervision and care than previous residents, Kosich said.

While some advocates for the mentally ill hope the vote shows a renewed commitment to the mentally ill, others aren’t so sure.

Ventura County needs 550 more beds for the mentally ill, a recent Behavioral Health Department study said. The county now has 194 beds, county records show.

“It’s not going to solve the problem,” deputy administrative officer Terry Dryer said. “But it’s a big step forward.”

The money for the Hillmont Avenue site “is dwarfed” by the $3.6 million in proposed cuts to the Health Care Agency, longtime advocate Lou Matthews told the board Tuesday.

Renovations on the property, which include a large community room and seven dorms adjacent to the Ventura County Medical Center, are scheduled to begin within a month and a grand opening within a year, Dryer said.

Opening the Hillmont Avenue site means 10 Ventura County patients forced to leave the county for care can now return, Kosich said.

The new facility will house patients who “come directly off the streets,” are discharged from the county’s inpatient acute care hospital next door or discharged from hospitals outside the county, Kosich said.

Many are medicated so that they can maintain a relatively stable lifestyle, Kosich said.

“The beauty of the new facility is that we can circumvent patients going into a hospital environment before they start to deteriorate.”