Ready or Not: Ojai Settles on a Housing Site for the Homeless

Some residents of Ojai's Tent Town may move to a state-funded permanent supportive housing project in the City's public works yard.

Greetings Readers! I have an important update to share: Ojai’s $12.7 million state-funded housing project for chronically homeless community members finally has a location.

The new site — the City’s public works storage yard — is just down the road from Ojai City Hall. Remember: City Hall (specifically Kent Hall) plays host to Ojai Tent Town (OTT), a camp inhabited by 36¹ chronically homeless community members. Many of these campers will eventually take up residence at the public works yard location, once developed.

In one neighbor’s view, “This site would be merely moving the existing set of land use conflicts a couple blocks down the road… [the City] would be changing nothing more than the names and addresses of the citizen complaints.”

The public works yard — currently an active work site — is a little over an acre in size, according to Ojai City Manager Ben Harvey. Harvey described the site, which sits between South Ventura Street and South Montgomery Street as “a graveyard of broken …