WANTS TO BE LEFT ALONE—Jeff Apperson pets his dog Six as he sits with homeless friends around the fire in their encampment near the Arroyo Simi. The Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District has given the group 30 days to vacate the property. IRIS SMOOT/Acorn Newspapers For Jeff Apperson, Wardee Anderson and Bobby Greene, “home sweet home” is a patch of dirt flanked by the arroyo on the western edge of town.

It’s not much, but for these three and others, the campsite in the canyons is all they have— and according to them, the only place they can go.

But now, the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District is attempting to kick the homeless off the district’s land, an act that does not sit well with the squatters who just want to be left alone.

In the last two weeks, the people living in the area have been given 30-day notices to vacate the property.

“Their complaint is that people are walking through and seeing our camp, but nobody comes by us,” Apperson said. “People cannot get to where we are at unless they cross a bridge that we built. . . . You wouldn’t see our camp unless you were right on top of it.”

Starting near the intersection of Madera Road and Easy Street, one has to walk a good distance down the side of the Arroyo Simi before reaching the encampment. The site is in the hills, past where the concretebanked river waterfalls into its natural creek form.

There are a handful of minisettlements scattered on the hillsides and in the canyons, most remaining out of view and “low key” since they are close to businesses, Apperson said.

Apperson’s camp is the largest with seven tents. The modest yet well-established site is littered with coolers, storage containers and chairs, and there’s even a makeshift fence made out of arundo plant.

Several dogs, both big and small, also make their home in the camp.

Apperson has been homeless on and off since 1991. While the 60-year-old Simi native did work for the city’s Water Quality Control Plant at one time, he is currently unemployed. He has been living in the canyon since 2004, though he says he doesn’t “choose” the lifestyle.

Park rangers have not yet given him a notice to leave. But Anderson and Greene got theirs.

Anderson, 60, lives in the camp with her 40-year-old daughter, Amber. A former hairdresser, Anderson retired to watch her grandkids. But when her motor home was impounded she couldn’t afford to retrieve it, and she became homeless.

Anderson is frustrated by the park district’s efforts to kick them out during the holiday season and feels the agency should just let them be.

“We’re not hurting anybody. We’re not bothering anybody,” said Anderson, who has been camping in the hills for more than three years. “It’s a wash. This is God’s country.”

Greene has also lived on the outskirts of Simi for three years. While the 50-year-old admitted to having a drinking problem— for which he recently spent a month in rehab—he said he is not lazy and does not prefer living they way he does. Though he is working, he said he doesn’t make enough to rent an apartment.

“I’d love to live in a house. Turn on a light switch, turn a doorknob sometime again,” he said, adding that returning to rehab is an appealing thought since it would give him a warm place to stay.

Park District General Manager Larry Peterson said he is not unsympathetic to the plight of the city’s homeless but he has to enforce the rules. He said the decision to hand out notices was not driven by a specific complaint and not linked to the holiday season or the start up of the winter shelter program, Public Action to Deliver Shelter, or PADS.

“This is just part of my process. When people are illegally camping on open space, I try to stop that. I think that’s in the public’s best interest,” he said.

The fight over the vacant land isn’t new. Three years ago, the park district distributed similar notices, and after months of warnings, maintenance crews eventually went down with bulldozers and cleaned up the place.

“There are people down there with criminal records. There are people down there that are drug and alcohol addicts. There are fights, thefts in the nearby businesses . . . and if there is a campfire there is a risk of a fire,” Peterson said. “And there’s no toilets; you get rats in the garbage. . . . It’s unhealthy.”

Apperson, who was cited in 2007 for refusing to leave, argued that those who are homeless should be able to stay since it’s public land and the district is just the caretaker.

Peterson disagrees.

“Even though they feel they have found their little niche . . . the property belongs to the public as a whole,” he said. “Can you imagine how it would be if everyone could declare a home on public open space?”

Betty Eskey, executive director of the Samaritan Center, said nearly all of the homeless people sleeping in the hills wouldn’t live there if they had another option.

The homeless say they don’t want to go to PADS because they can’t bring their dogs and they don’t like the cramped quarters.

“We don’t have a lot of options to offer them other than getting out of homelessness and that takes time and finances and a community coming together to help the clients,” Eskey said. “If they could do it on their own they wouldn’t be homeless.”

She acknowledged that some like living on the fringes of society, where they have more independence and fewer rules.

Mayor Pro Tem Barbra Williamson, co-chair of the city’s Task Force on Homelessness, said that while she feels badly for the homeless she also understands the park district wanting them to move along.

“I do believe the park district has a right to tell them they can’t camp on their property, and there is an ordinance in town that they can’t camp,” she said.

Even if the homeless move, they will likely come back, but Peterson believes the park district has not been futile in its efforts; rather, he said the agency has played a facilitative role in getting the homeless assistance.

Apperson doesn’t quite see it that way and wants Peterson to answer one question: Where are they supposed to go?

“The police don’t want us sleeping in the city, behind businesses, behind dumpsters,” he said. “All I’m asking is let us stay where we are.”