Ben Ciccati

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After reading the Angry Poodle Barbecue regarding bunk beds in Lompoc [Poodle, Dec. 6, 2007], I am compelled to share Transition House’s positive experiences working with Lompoc Housing & Community Development Corporation’s (LHCDC) programs and staff, as well as comment on the county’s oversight process of nonprofit organizations that receive county funding.

Transition House has worked with LHCDC since 1995, collaborating on client cases, sharing ideas on best service practices, and referring families to each other’s shelters if one of us has empty beds when another is full. Throughout the years, we have always found LHCDC staff and board to be deeply devoted to serving Lompoc’s homeless and low-income residents. In addition to providing 56 beds for homeless men, women, and children at the Bridgehouse Shelter, they also operate 19 beds at a transitional housing facility called Mark’s House. They have served the City of Lompoc by developing more than 200 units of affordable housing for their clients and the community. They are a vital component of Lompoc’s social services network and they have helped hundreds of men, women, and children escape homelessness.

Transition House, like Bridgehouse and other area shelters, is also a recipient of county funding. We are required to submit quarterly reports to the county including statistics on our operations, and our shelters are visited each year by county staff and members of the county’s Human Services Commission, a group of 15 citizens appointed by the Board of Supervisors. The commission’s purpose is to advise the board regarding the establishment, funding, and maintenance of an efficient and effective human services delivery system by nonprofit agencies in the county. They recommend to the board the agencies that should or should not be funded, and provide input to us on issues they might have with the way we run our programs. Other sources of public funding come from federal and local agencies, along with many private foundations in the area, which provide similar oversight of our programs as well.

While it is regrettable that LHCDC was not able to pass on the bunk beds to another group who could use them and decided to dispose of them instead, it is also regrettable that Liann Noble — who organized the donation — did not contact LHCDC in advance to make a donation of the type of beds that would fit in its shelter space. It would have been nice if Noble had tried to take the beds to another shelter when Bridgehouse staff told her they couldn’t accept them.

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