Friday, July 20, 2001 | 4:38 a.m.
Enough sob stories.
These men don't want to be sitting in this homeless refuge playing host to a parade of reporters; telling and retelling the events that led them here -- the lost jobs, the bad accidents, the recurring illnesses, the tear-jerking tales that will lay, in newsprint, on a comfortable sofa in some suburban living room, someplace where the day's agenda includes a fat Sunday meal and hours with the remote control, or maybe a ride in a sport-utility vehicle to a multimillion-dollar church to talk about kindness.
These men are agitated from a lack of sleep and not eager to be messed with. They don't want to be the thing that Las Vegas wants to hide, while also being, inevitably, the group that gives politicians public-relations points any time they show up to slop oatmeal onto a tray.
These men, who have just finished a chicken lunch at the Poverello House -- a Catholic-funded facility where 20 men a day can eat, do laundry and nap in a cool place -- have had it with bureaucracies.
They're at a place in their lives where being asked to produce proper identification or fill out lengthy paperwork seems absurd to the point of comical, a place where they are consumed with two kinds of questions -- the small and emergent -- Where can I use the bathroom? and the large and now more pertinent than ever: Where is God?
Sometimes they linger on that last one. Where are the churches in this homeless crisis?
Earlier this summer, when Catholic Charities shut down a shelter for construction and the city lost more than 150 beds, and a few weeks later the homeless were shooed from their tent city, Las Vegans had their attention turned to the homeless population.
But the issue involves more than mats to sleep on. It involves dignity; it involves an examination of the basic ethical beliefs that inform a community, a role that most assign to churches.
On this day, these 20 homeless men are talking about the religious community in Las Vegas, posing an age-old question asked from altars time and time again: How do we treat the least among us?
"We have got churches that have got thousands of people in the congregations and what are they doing for the homeless? Zero or very little," Ron Sauer, 59, says. He's wearing a black hat and a deep tan, looking up from a copy of the World Book he found in a dumpster.
Today he's getting a reprieve from the sun in the Poverello House; tonight, he has no idea where he will sleep.
"I know a lot of preachers on the west side, and they've got small churches, and I can understand that they can't always help. But the large churches should set aside a fund for the homeless situation," Sauer says.
It's not about giving someone a handout, Sauer says; it's not about judging someone else to be lazy. "It's about living in a city where some people don't have a place to use the bathroom, let alone sleep."
To be sure, some religious groups are rising to the occasion this summer, picking up where the largest faith-based, homeless programs -- MASH Village, Catholic Charities, the Salvation Army and Las Vegas Rescue Mission -- leave off.
More than a dozen local churches routinely feed and clothe homeless people, and a few advocate for the funding of new shelters or house or employ homeless people on their own church properties.
For example, Christ Church Episcopal operates a pantry, St. James the Apostle Catholic Church provides hot meals.
And several homeless advocates -- such as Franciscan Brother David Buer -- advocate relentlessly on behalf of the homeless population.
But there are more than 700 houses of worship in Southern Nevada, in control of hundreds of millions of dollars. There are about 9,000 homeless people in the region.
"If there are three dozen religious homeless programs, I'd be surprised," says David Johnson, a homeless veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and has been in Las Vegas about five months.
He came here to get work as a shoe shiner, and did -- but found that the money didn't cover the amount charged to rent the work space in the hotel. Raised a Christian, Johnson is disappointed with the religious community in Las Vegas.
"A lot of churches here are too busy trying to see how much money they can get for their own salaries -- or planning what kind of car they're going to get next year -- to help us," Johnson said.
"A lot of them come out here on a Saturday night and tell you Jesus loves you, and you get a doughnut if you're lucky," Johnson said.
"I'm a tired man. What they're giving may be their idea of religion, but it's not my idea of Christianity. I tell them, 'My God would never say no to someone in need. I need a place to sleep, and I need medicine for my condition.' "
"There are enough churches that they could get together and buy a piece of land, and put a building up to shelter the homeless. "But what are these churches here doing? I'll tell you: Not much," Johnson said. "Jesus was able to feed 10,000 at a time."
Respect
Christlike expectations notwithstanding, Buer points out that the Christian faith is based on the life story of a man who spent his time among the "lepers" of his society.
Moved by his own experiences on the street, Buer decided 20 years ago to devote his life to the Franciscan religious order -- a group of Catholics who model their lives after St. Francis de Assisi by living with and serving the poor.
The Franciscans opened Poverello House in 1997 a few blocks from the main homeless corridor. An unassuming house with two apartments in the back yard, the house's hosts admit homeless men for one day, between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., serve them home-cooked meals, let them shower and wash their clothes, and "treat them like humans should be treated, with respect," Buer said.
Stephan Makowski, who runs Poverello House, said that a main problem the homeless face is a lack of respect.
"That is the core of of my Catholic upbringing -- dignity," Makowski said. "We want to give them dignity...
"But I don't think any more churches are going to come open their doors. "The reason? They think it's too gross."
Slowly, the suburban churches have gotten more involved in the city's homeless affairs.
On Saturday mornings Gary Lulis leads a team of volunteers from Central Christian Church in handing out sandwiches -- and Bibles -- at the corner of Foremaster Lane and Las Vegas Boulevard. "We like to say we feed the soul in addition to the stomach," he said of his year-old program.
Lulis is the 5,000-member church's chef; the 2-year-old, multimillion-dollar church building has a full-service cafe.
"Our homeless outreach is the biggest community outreach this church has done in 40 years," Lulis said of Central Christian, a megachurch known more for it's Baby Boomer-targeted, contemporary services than for social service.
"It's one thing to to say, 'Here's your lunch, see you next week, hope you live,' " Lulis said. "But we spend time talking. A lot of them (the homeless) have told me that the reason they come back isn't for the sandwich, but because we care about them."
Ironically, Las Vegas' main interfaith homeless housing program is temporarily not operating during this summer's homeless crisis.
The Interfaith Hospitality Network was formed in Las Vegas in 1996. Fourteen houses of worship -- from Congregation Ner Tamid to Christ the King Catholic Church, agreed to host homeless families for one week, and then rotate the "guests" to the next church or synagogue.
The network is a branch of a national organization that was founded in New Jersey in 1986, and focuses on families that are not chronically homeless but "on the verge."
"It's a grass-roots response to homelessness," said Julia Occhiogrosso, an Interfaith Hospitality Network board member who serves the homeless with the Catholic Worker.
But the Las Vegas Interfaith Hospitality Network is temporarily defunct because it's in the process of reorganizing. It is expected to resume services in September.
"We've had some ups and downs and changes. We have to recruit -- and some churches have a lot going on, and we don't have the staff to go sit with the congregations and promote it," Occhiogrosso said.
"It takes more than you might think to get this kind of program running," said the Rev. Charlie Bowker of Reformation Lutheran Church, a host church.
"The prep work is the most difficult. Getting people to understand that they can do something and then getting them to commit to do something and come make a meal or sit with the (homeless) kids...
"Someone has to come to the church and do pre-training with members, then there is explaining the theological undergirding with the ministry leadership at the church. Then the congregation has to agree -- at our church we voted on it, and then we elected a coordinator. That took months to do.
"And a lot of churches become ingrown, and their first priority is to membership," Bowker said.
"Although it is a wonderful program, the number of guests we house is just a drop in the bucket when you consider the situation we have in this city right now anyway," Bowker says.
Plans
On the side of the street, Jay Carson is waving a Bible.
He doesn't have a home, nor a bathroom, nor any reliable relief from Las Vegas' heat, but he's got a paperback King James, given to him by a church more than six months ago.
"No, I don't read it anymore," Carson, 57, says, and laughs, and takes a draw on a cigarette butt that he picked up from the curbside where a passing motorist ditched it.
"But a Bible is not the kind of thing you want to throw out, you know. Bad luck. You want it?"
Carson is from Oklahoma City and has been homeless in Las Vegas for "many weeks."
"I was raised in church. Hell yeah. We went every damn Sunday. We were supposed to help the poor and inherit the Earth."
"It ain't that people don't help us out here -- there are a lot of people who help. Lots of the religious (people). But here I am. I am still out here, making everybody look bad."
Metro Officer Kendall Wiley, homeless outreach specialist spends her days checking the city's vacant lots and alleys where homeless people have fled since being run off from the main corridor.
"It would help if churches could just open up their doors. It would help to at least get them out of the heat somewhere," Wiley said.
"But instead the homeless people are spreading throughout the downtown area, and we're getting calls from residents in neighborhoods who have someone sleeping in their back alley."
In Tampa, Fla., a coalition of religious groups called Metropolitan Ministries tried to resolve its homeless issue with a "sleeping park."
It was open at night to provide a safe sleeping environment, monitored and cleaned every morning.
The project failed because the park was too small, demand was too high and conflicts between those who got in and those who didn't arose.
"But at least they got something going and gave it try," says Carson. "At least they cared enough to do that."
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