CITY TASK FORCE ON HOMELESSNESS NEAR ACTIVATION; AREA'S CHURCH-RUN SHELTERS CLOSING SOON.

Byline: Sylvia L. Oliande Daily News Staff Writer

After talking about it for several months, the City Council is expected to form its Task Force on Homelessness to study ways to help homeless people get off the streets.

But some who work with the homeless living in Simi Valley said the city let the opportunity to work on the problem slip by during the winter months, while the homeless were being sheltered at night by churches. When that program, the Public Action to Deliver Shelter, closes later this month, homeless people will have no overnight shelter in Simi Valley, a city that bans overnight camping on most public and private properties.

``The whole atmosphere here has changed recently,'' said Janet Gageby, director of the Samaritan Center, a daytime drop-in shelter, about the mood among her clients. ``They all seem real nervous. Everyone has been louder and more emotional. A lot of them are worried about what's going to happen when P.A.D.S. closes.''

But city officials said that efforts to put the task force together, to determine how it was going to be formed and to recruit members, took much of the winter.

``It takes time to lay the groundwork to put it all into place,'' said Councilman Glen Bacerra, a co-chairman of the task force. ``The goal is to bring out the right product and come up with the best solutions.''

The City Council is expected to appoint 17 people to the panel, chosen from a pool of applications submitted over the last two months. The panel is to be made up of four community members, as well as representatives from local charity and social groups, churches and county agencies.

The group's first meeting is scheduled for March 31, the last day the P.A.D.S. program will be open. The committee, which also is chaired by Councilwoman Barbra Williamson, will work to find solutions by Nov. 1, when the winter P.A.D.S. program will reopen.

Gageby said that those who work with the homeless are concerned that although at least two homeless people applied to be on the task force, none are on the proposed final list.

``You can't solve a problem if you don't have someone who's been there and done that and who knows what it's like,'' Gageby said. ``We can all imagine what it's like, but if you haven't been there you just don't know.''

But city officials said that one of the community members, Micki Terrusa, had once been homeless and suffered from alcohol and drug problems.

Terrusa, who owns a pet-sitting business, said in her application that she has been sober for 25 years. She also has worked with the homeless for the past four years.

``In my assessment, she was the type of person we were looking for,'' Bacerra said. ``Someone who has been in that situation, received assistance, got back on her feet and is now a productive person. It's challenging when you're looking to build a team to address the problem, because in the homeless population there are several degrees of individuals who need to be addressed. Who among them do you chose?''

The task force meetings, which are expected to be held once a month, will be open to the public.

The homeless issue in Simi Valley came to a head in the fall, when the city implemented an ordinance banning camping in public and private places. Now some worry that as the P.A.D.S. program closes, the homeless will have nowhere to turn to sleep at night.

Bacerra said that while the city will be enforcing the new law if people complain of homeless people sleeping on their property, officials ``will not be barbaric in the way that it is enforced.''

``We're not out there to compound the problem by rousing people and throwing them further out into the streets,'' he said.