Winter Homeless Shelter Faces Closure as Funds Dwindle

West Ventura County’s only winter homeless shelter will be forced to close its doors early this year unless $55,000 can be raised in a month, officials said Thursday.

Officials at the 135-bed shelter at the National Guard Armory in Oxnard have known about the funding shortage since October but only recently kicked off a fundraising campaign, said Tom McLaughlin, the shelter’s director.

“The general consensus was that the holidays in November and December were not the best times to ask for money,” McLaughlin said Thursday. “The general will to do it [fundraising] came about now.”

The shelter, funded by the cities of Ventura and Oxnard and run by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, offers beds and meals to men, women and children between Dec. 1 and April 1.

Operating the facility costs about $2,600 a day, or $320,000 each season, and if the needed money isn’t raised the shelter could close as early as March 9, officials said.

The funding shortage, McLaughlin said, occurred because the city of Ventura did not receive annual federal grant money that it uses to make its donation.

Ventura did not receive the money, in part, because the shelter is located in Oxnard, officials said. The two cities rotate playing host to the winter shelter every year.

Without the federal grant, Ventura contributed about $60,000 less than it usually does toward the armory facility, officials said.

As part of the funding drive, McLaughlin planned to meet with Oxnard housing officials Thursday night to discuss a list of several dozen potential donors, including major private employers in both cities.

He also planned to ask the Oxnard and Ventura city councils and the county Board of Supervisors for suggestions to solve the funding shortfall.

On Thursday, about 90 people were staying at the shelter, including about a dozen children, some of whom were infants.

McLaughlin can be reached at 341-3846, and donations can be mailed to Project Warm Shelter Night, P.O. Box 5122, Ventura, CA 93005-0122.