Thursday, April 4, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
The Interfaith Hospitality Network of Las Vegas admittedly will be a small player in the local homeless advocacy picture -- but hopefully an effective one.
The organization is part of the New Jersey-based nationwide Interfaith Hospitality Network, which consists of 70 loosely affiliated programs. In the last 10 years, it got a reported 30,000 people off the streets -- a few at a time.
"We are set up to help 14 homeless people at a time," said Ruth Bruland, a drug and alcohol counselor and ex-Lutheran minister from Tucson, Ariz., who has lived in Las Vegas about a year. "The program also provides an opportunity for the (religious) faiths to blend in their support."
On Monday, at an organizational meeting at Christ the King Catholic Church, Bruland was officially named director of the local organization. Also at that time, an estimated 60 volunteers took part in the IHNLV's first volunteer training program.
The program is based on various churches in a community providing volunteers to assist a social worker -- in this case, Bruland -- in helping homeless clients through 30- to 60-day programs that will put them into permanent housing.
Nationwide, IHN, which operates on referrals only, purportedly has a 70 percent success rate.
"One of the reasons for the success rate is our small scale," said Corey Brost, a member of the IHNLV board of directors and the co-campus minister at Bishop Gorman High School. "We will work with MASH, St. Vincent's and other groups to assist homeless families.
"In Las Vegas, we have a huge problem with families moving here after hearing reports of great job opportunities and winding up homeless when their money runs out before they can find work."
The organization, supported by the Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Lutheran and First Christian Church faiths, will concentrate mostly on families on the verge of homelessness, not the chronically homeless.
The organization also is not set up to deal with the mentally ill homeless, or those with current alcohol or drug problems.
Karen Olson, a marketing executive from Summit, N.J., who founded the program in 1986, said, "Many of the people we help do not even consider themselves homeless."
She noted that some clients recently moved into shelters, sleep in cars, stay with friends, etc. -- anything but live on the streets. Sixty percent of the organization's homeless clients have jobs, Olson said.
Clients first are interviewed by Bruland, who sets objectives for them to find housing and steers them toward job training and programs that teach life skills such as proper budgeting of household funds.
The 11 congregations from the five participating religious groups then donate classrooms, meeting rooms and other spaces to temporarily house the homeless families. They take turns providing overnight shelter for one-week periods every two to three months.
"This is a real education for people in our church on the reality of homelessness and poverty," Brost said.
In the mid-1980s, Olson learned that lesson when, en route to a meeting, she stopped and bought a sandwich for a homeless woman, then listened to how the woman had lost her husband, fell into a state of depression and wound up on the streets.
Olson then introduced her program in Summit, a bedroom community 30 miles west of New York City, and has taken it to church congregations across the country.
Olson said marketing remains her No. 1 job in the program -- she has no formal social worker training. "I consider myself sort of a frustrated social worker," she said.
The Interfaith Hospitality Network of Las Vegas can be reached through P.O. Box 4718, Las Vegas, NV 89127. Faxes may be sent to 631-5538. Messages can be left at 638-8806.
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