Home for Oxnard Recovery Center

Oxnard city officials have struck a deal to relocate a drug and alcohol recovery center, potentially ending months of arguments over the future of the home for addicted women.

Council members voted this week to spend $1.1 million on a house on Wooley Road that the city would lease to the Rainbow Recovery Center.

“This actually worked out better than we’d all expected,” said Councilman Dean Maulhardt, who missed Tuesday’s meeting but said he supported the council’s action.

For months, the city has been under pressure to find a new home for the recovery center, which must move because of the city’s $20-million renovation of College Park.

Center officials and graduates, in impassioned pleas to city leaders, touted Rainbow’s successful 18-year history in the community. But city leaders decided the center was not appropriate in the midst of a 75-acre development featuring baseball and soccer fields, two dog parks, a lighted basketball area, a fenced skate park and a 26,000-square-foot community center and gymnasium.

Instead, the two houses now used by Rainbow will become a farm heritage museum. The city pledged to help the Rainbow Ladies, as they are called in town, and promised that they would not be evicted until other arrangements had been made. Rainbow can house up to 22 women, who stay for 30 days to six months.

“We did not have a legal or financial obligation to them,” Maulhardt said. “I think we had a moral responsibility to help.”

The two-acre property at 1810 E. Wooley Road includes a ranch-style house with five bedrooms and an office and another building with two rooms, according to city officials. Rainbow officials have been concerned the house might not be large enough for their needs, but the city has committed to making renovations and additions to the home.

“I’m very happy about this,” said Nancy Williams, a Rainbow administrator. “I just hope everything we’ve created here we’ll be able to create” at the Wooley address.

Maulhardt said there is no deadline, but city officials hope all modifications at the Wooley Road property will be ready by early next year. The city would finance the cost mostly through state and federal grants, Maulhardt said. In April, city officials applied for a $500,000 grant from the state’s Emergency Housing Assistance Program.