Ojai May Turn to Courts in Battle Over Housing for Senior Citizens

Ojai officials said Monday they may go to court to prevent elderly residents from being bumped lower on a long list of people waiting to get into a public housing project for seniors.

Or the City Council instead may decide at its meeting tonight to withdraw from the Area Housing Authority of Ventura County altogether.

The housing authority--which jointly serves the cities of Ojai, Camarillo, Fillmore, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Moorpark and unincorporated Ventura County--said federal officials no longer will allow Ojai residents to be first in line to move into the city’s senior housing complex.

Ojai council members said they may have no alternative but to fight the decision in court.

“We’ll have to see if we’ve got the funds to do that, and if we have, we should go for it,” Councilwoman Nina Shelley said.

When the 101-unit Whispering Oaks senior housing project was built in the early 1970s, the housing authority promised that Ojai residents would be given first crack at filling vacancies. But about five years ago, federal officials notified the housing authority that such an agreement was invalid.

Last month, after years of trying to reverse that decision, the housing authority announced it had exhausted its effort to exempt Ojai from the federal ruling.

“They broke the agreement we had by signing away our rights to a separate waiting list,” said Councilman James Loebl, a practicing attorney. “I don’t know if we can afford to pursue it, but my feeling is that we should go ahead and sue if we can.”

When federal officials told the housing authority that it no longer could give Ojai residents preference on the waiting list to get into Whispering Oaks, one Ojai senior was dropped from 13th on the list of 2,000 families to 219th.

“They certainly have a legitimate complaint,” Ojai City Atty. Monte L. Widders said of council members and city residents. Widders said he would brief council members on their legal options in closed session tonight.

Local housing officials complained about the federal ruling to the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and at one point hired a lawyer to argue their case before federal officials.

But housing authority officials said last month they had run out of money to continue the legal fight and that federal officials refused to reconsider.

“They’re just not willing to bend on anything,” said Dave Roddick, the housing authority’s director of housing management. “They’ve got the magic wand. Now the individual cities are going to have to decide what kinds of actions they may want to take.”

Ojai City Councilman Robert McKinney said he would prefer that Ojai form its own housing authority, but only if it could take Whispering Oaks with it.

“I’m not real fond of suing the federal government, but if it has to come to that I would support doing it,” he said. “If we couldn’t pull out and keep Whispering Oaks, we would have to consider something else. And we might want that decision made in a court of law.”

Last year, 81-year-old Alfred Poitras was so confident he would be allowed to move into Whispering Oaks that he abandoned his Ojai apartment for a motel.

Four years after applying to the housing authority, Poitras is still waiting. The federal ruling meant he was dropped from 13th on the areawide list to 219th.

Earlier this year, Poitras was offered a public housing unit in Santa Paula. He spent six months there before moving back to Ojai for his health.

“The minute I got there I got sick,” he said. “I couldn’t breathe the air there.”

Poitras, a retired restaurant manager who survives on a monthly Social Security check, said he will not leave the Ojai Valley even if his number comes up when a home is available elsewhere in the county.

“I’ve been here a long time,” Poitras said. “My friends are here, my church is here, my doctor is here. Everything is here for me for the last 20 years.”