Frazzled and emotionally drained, families and disabled tenants forced from a low-rent Ventura motel hunted Wednesday for cheap lodgings and temporary shelter as inspectors combed through rooms infested with bedbugs and electrical hazards.

Some families said they probably would sleep huddled in their cars to save money.

Meanwhile, the owner of the Travelers Beach Inn at 929 E. Thompson Boulevard, who lives out of town, spent the day scrambling to get a pest control company and electrical contractor to agree to remedy the hazards and unsanitary conditions that threaten to keep the motel closed through Christmas and possibly days after.

"This is really heartbreaking for the tenants," said Brad Clark, a code enforcement officer for the Ventura City Fire Department. "But this is a life-safety issue. We had no choice."

Motel to be sprayed

Tenants at the 37-room motel were evacuated beginning about 4 p.m. Tuesday after inspectors from the county's Building and Safety and Health divisions found bedbug infestations and electrical hazards inside a handful of rooms.

Ben Shante, the motel's owner, offered tenants prorated refunds and handed out cash so families and individuals could afford to stay in nearby hotels.

"We're going to get this fixed," Shante said Wednesday.

The entire motel will be sprayed and treated, he said, even though pest control inspectors found some rooms free of bugs. A complete review of the electrical system and repairs will come after spraying is completed sometime next week, said Andrew Stuffler, Ventura's chief building official.

"We don't know where we're going. We might even be camping," Franchine Ivans said Wednesday as she and her boyfriend, Steve Jordan, returned to fetch some belongings. The couple have four children. "We are on the streets now."

Motel plagued by problems

The motel has a long history of unsanitary conditions, said Sue Taylor, a Ventura code enforcement supervisor.

The motel was cited for unsanitary conditions in 1989, 1992, 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2005, Taylor said. In those cases, inspectors found problems including unsanitary mattresses, cockroaches and dirty carpets. They also noted missing smoke detectors.

Police officers say they have worn a path to the motel responding to emergency calls and neighborhood complaints of noise, drug deals and prostitution.

But like other tenants interviewed, Ivans and Jordan said they relied on the Travelers Inn because the $275 weekly rent was in their price range. They don't like the illegal activity they see in the parking lot, but the motel is near their children's schools and Shante has cut them some slack when they couldn't pay the rent on time.

She's a cashier for a nearby motel. He is a gas station attendant.

"We don't have $3,000 to cover first- and last-month's rent to get into an apartment," Jordan said. "We're a paycheck away from being back on the street, as is. And now look at us. It's frustrating. It's stressful. Everything was going great."

Living on the edge

It's not uncommon for tenants to stay for weeks and even months, many said. No customer is allowed to stay for more than three weeks under management rules. But people maneuver the policy by moving out for 24 hours or simply checking out and checking back in under a different person's name, tenants said.

"This is the most affordable place for those living at the margins," said Michael Edwards, 44, a drifter who ended up in Ventura after his vehicle was burglarized and he had his wallet and identification stolen. He gets by washing dishes part time for minimum wage. Shante also pays him $10 for sweeping the parking lot.

"There's no shelter in this town," he said, adding he would prefer to sleep in his car than pay for gas to go to a temporary winter shelter in Oxnard that requires a tuberculosis test. "There are no other affordable options. This motel isn't perfect, but it's what we've got."

Motel resident Richard Neal, 29, said his room was free of bugs and it was stressful to have to relocate his fiancée and her mom, who has late-stage lung cancer. "This is awful," he said. "We shouldn't have to move."

Inspectors visited the motel in response to complaints from an angry resident who showed up at City Hall with a bedbug in a plastic bag, city inspector Clark said. When they arrived and found problems, they had little choice but to act.

"We could not in good faith let people stay there another night knowing that something could happen, without an electrical inspection," Taylor said. "It's not something that the city enjoys doing, but we have an obligation to the community and to the people that live there."

According to motel Manager Brandie Lindsey, the woman who reported the bedbugs to the city was part of the problem. The woman was initially allowed to move into a new room when she complained to management that her son had small bites on his body. Management hired a pest control firm to treat the infested room. The woman was later asked to leave the motel because she transferred the bugs to her second room, Lindsey said. Lindsey said the motel gave the woman a full refund, but she said the woman got angry because she didn't have a place to go and threatened to sue the motel.

"We treated her room. We tried to take care of it immediately," Lindsey said.

Last resort for some

Many of the tenants pay $1,200 a month for a single room with no kitchen, often more than what it costs to rent a small apartment only blocks away. But social service providers say securing an apartment can be a nearly impossible task for people with bad credit, no savings or references, and criminal records.

"We can try to help to get these people first- and last-month's rent, but I don't know how successful we can be," said Peter Brown, Ventura's community services manager.

Debora Schreiber is a member of a coalition of people who live and work in the area and have been working with the owner and police for months on improving the motel and reducing police calls.

"People live there," she said. "We want it to be as safe and nice as possible."

With everyone out of the motel, she believes the owner has a golden opportunity to fix the place up and make good on his pledges for change. "The reality is that we need more low-income housing in Ventura," she said.

The wait to get into subsidized housing in Ventura can take three years, and waiting lists number in the hundreds, officials said.

Michael Perry, regional director of Catholic Charities, said with so few alternatives, motels like the Travelers Inn have come to play an important community role, giving people with few means a place to live. Keeping up with city codes is an essential but hard task, Perry said.

"I think the owners were keeping up as best they can and the city was being as tolerant as they could," he said. "There had to be a point where the city says enough is enough and it just happened to be a week before Christmas."