Squatters Return to the River : Ventura: Fewer than 10 former residents begin search for their possessions during two-day opening.

Police on Wednesday for the first time allowed former residents of the washed-out Ventura River bottom back into the muddy stream bed to search for remnants of their makeshift homes.

But if the flood victims try it after 4 p.m. today, they will be arrested for trespassing, officials warned.

Under Ventura’s new zero-tolerance policy against camping near the Ventura River, people caught sleeping in the area will be taken to jail and brought before a judge.

“We’re not trying to be the bad guys,” Ventura Police Officer Ralph Martinez said Wednesday. “It probably will be tough, but they shouldn’t be there to begin with.”

Meanwhile, federal officials Wednesday pledged housing vouchers for the 200 or so displaced Ventura River bottom dwellers.

At a meeting in Los Angeles, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros told local leaders he would supply at least 200 vouchers within days, but details have yet to be worked out, Ventura Councilwoman Rosa Lee Measures said.

“Patience is prudence at this point,” said Measures, who attended the meeting. “And we must be patient.”

Word that the river had been opened to former residents Wednesday was slow in leaking out. Only a handful of those camped near the river before last week’s flood took advantage of the city’s offer.

It will be opened again between noon and 4 p.m. today.

Half a dozen Ventura police officers patrolled the river’s edge and a closed-off Main Street Bridge on Wednesday, while fewer than 10 homeless men and women rummaged through what was left of their campsites and shanties.

What they found was barely usable.

Bamboo huts had been buried in mud, thrift store furniture lay overturned and soiled and whole shanties were washed hundreds of yards downstream. A handmade Christmas wreath still hung from a limp branch outside one camp north of the Main Street Bridge.

Ted Edwards hiked down to his camp of four years on Wednesday and found that someone had stolen his radio, his daughter’s toys and most of his tools.

Edwards, 48, said he and his family are staying in a local motel for the time being, but he has no idea where he will go next.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he said, sifting through the mud-crusted remains inside his bookshelf-lined shanty. “But I know for sure I’m going to work on it.”

Others complained that the city failed to alert them that they would be allowed to return to the river bottom Wednesday or today.

“We are human beings and we need to have some sort of information given to us,” said Jeffrey Sanderson, a 39-year-old flood victim staying at a Ventura Avenue shelter.

But Ventura city official Carol Green said the decision was not made until late Tuesday.

“Trying to get messages out to citizens who don’t read the paper and don’t watch TV, it’s tough,” said Green, who said she asked area shelters to post notices about the two-day opening.

Police have been taking photographs of those who are trying to salvage their belongings.

“A lot of these people give us different names, so this way we can keep track of them,” said Jon Castellanos of the Ventura Police Department’s special enforcement team.

“It’s pretty much for our own defense, so if they do get arrested they can’t go to court and say they were never warned,” he said.

McDonald is a Times correspondent and Sommer is a Times staff writer.