It’s back to streets for many homeless

Jace Radke

Tuesday, March 16, 1999 | 10:40 a.m.

Don Cipolla, 63, is back on the street today after MASH Village closed the doors on its temporary cold weather shelter this morning.

The shelter gave up to 250 men a night a warm place to sleep during the winter months, but now Cipolla and others are uncertain where to go next.

During the cold months, the shelter was full, sometimes to overflowing, Connie Reeves, communication specialist for MASH Village, said. In the past week, as the shelter's close drew near, residents started drifting away and the shelter averaged 212 people a night.

"I don't know where I'll go next," Cipolla said. "I'll be hanging out here and there, I guess."

Cipolla, a former counselor at California State University, Northridge, said he's been looking for work while staying in the large tent behind MASH Village's main building but has not found anything.

"I look around here and I see people that want to work and will if they are given the opportunity, but it's hard to get people to give you a chance," Cipolla said.

Other guests at the winter shelter have had better luck and have found work after using the shelter as a home base.

"This place has been great because it's given people a chance to get their lives together and get out and look for work," said Mark Guyot, who will soon be attending trucking school. "It allowed people to have a bed that they could bank on being there at night, so they could look for work during the day."

The winter shelter was funded by the combined efforts of the United Way, the city of Las Vegas, Clark County and the Southern Nevada Homeless Coalition.

When the shelter opened in December, only about three of the men staying there had jobs, but now about 50 men are leaving the shelter with jobs, MASH worker Don Knoll said.

"It gave people some stability and a place to leave their things, while they looked for work," he said. "The sad part is that it has to close because now a lot of people will have to go back to square one."

Knoll, who was hired to help take care of those in the temporary shelter, now finds himself without a job, but he says he'll try to find work through the Laborers Union.

The mild spring weather has reduced the pressure -- and cut the funding -- to provide emergency shelter for the homeless. But the Rev. Joe Carroll, the MASH Village president, said he hopes money to bring the temporary shelter back during the summer months will materialize.

To operate the shelter 24 hours a day in the summer would cost an estimated $500,000, Carroll said.

Many of the shelter's residents are hoping that the reputation that the temporary shelter built will help to bring donations in.

"When this was first suggested I was Dr. Doom, foreseeing problems," MASH security supervisor Jerry Zundell said. "But there have been no problems to speak of, and the residents have really adopted and taken care of the tent.

"The sad part is that as we've gotten closer to closing it, you start to see some forlorn looks and people wondering where they are going to go now. It just breaks my heart."

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