The Ventura County Military Collaborative, a network of nearly 200 government and nonprofit agencies that work together to help the military and veteran communities, is looking for a new home.<\/p>\n
Since fall 2013, the collaborative has been operating inside a suite at 4001 Mission Oaks Blvd. in Camarillo, a building owned by the Ventura County Community Foundation.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 21, Kim Evans, founder and executive director, received an email stating that as of Oct. 31, the collaborative would no longer be able to rent space in the building.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooks like we are in the market for a new home,\u201d Evans posted on Facebook on Sept. 21.<\/p>\n
The next day, however, the foundation decided to let the collaborative\u00a0extend its\u00a0stay through Jan. 10 \u2014 free of charge starting Oct. 31, said Vanessa Bechtel, president and CEO of the Ventura County Community Foundation.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI was working all night to try to find a solution,\u201d Bechtel said. \u201cI really care about what they\u2019re doing for veterans, so I was racking my brain with whatever solution to come up with to help them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The solution was to have the collaborative share the foundation\u2019s space downstairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe space is part of our space \u2014 I\u2019m just going to have my team move over desks in the back, and we\u2019ll give them the front part,\u201d Bechtel said. \u201cWe\u2019ve invited them to share our space with us for no cost\u00a0so they can have the smoothest transition possible.”<\/p>\n
The reason the collaborative must move \u201cis because we\u2019ve been subsidizing that space more than 50 percent every month,\u201d Bechtel said. \u201cIt came to the point where we needed to rent it out closer to market rate, so a new tenant is going to be taking that space over.\u201d<\/p>\n
She declined to name the new tenant, saying, \u201cWe are in the very final stages of the lease negotiations with several tenants.\u201d<\/p>\n
The collaborative paid $810 a month, Evans said, which was covered\u00a0through donations.<\/p>\n
While the new space is smaller \u2014\u00a0about 200 square feet compared to the 600 in the suite \u2014 Evans said she is grateful to the foundation for the extended stay and generosity of free rent.<\/p>\n
\u201cVanessa and the Ventura County Community Foundation worked very hard to accommodate us,\u201d Evans said. \u201cI\u2019m thrilled with what they\u2019ve offered us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adjustments will be required, especially when it comes time to prepare for Operation Snowflake, scheduled for Dec. 16 this year.\u00a0The annual party draws dozens of military families so\u00a0children of active-duty service members and veterans\u00a0can pick from thousands of toys donated by the community. Toys have traditionally filled the conference rooms at the Ventura County Community Foundation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest impact on Operation Snowflake is our ability to function,\u201d Evans said. \u201cWe\u2019ll have to pack up most of our stuff and operate remotely from the office downstairs. In the beginning, a lot of the stuff was stored in my garage, so we might go back to that for this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The collaborative will also need furniture.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWe have no furniture because everything is tied to the office space,\u201d Evans said. \u201cWe have no desks, no filing cabinets \u2014 literally nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
By Jan. 10, Evans hopes to have found a one-stop shop for the wide range of services offered by the collaborative \u2014 from a free book club to a legal clinic.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a perfect world, what we\u2019d really like is a building for veterans,\u201d she said. \u201cIf someone said, \u2018Here\u2019s a magic wand. What do you want?\u2019 I\u2019d love a space where we could have our programs on site, and host other agencies’\u00a0programs on site, like energy healing for veterans. I envision a space for veterans by veterans, where whatever needs to be done, we have a space for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bechtel said the foundation \u201creally cares about what Kim is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to stretch it out as long as possible because we loved having them,\u201d Bechtel said. \u201cWe\u2019re fully in support of the work they\u2019re doing, and I can\u2019t thank them enough. We believe in Kim, and I\u2019m thrilled that this community has her leadership, and I\u2019m grateful that we were able to help in this transition period.\u201d<\/p>\n
Evans and the Ventura County Military Collaborative can be reached at 218-1930.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1449,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-coverage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}