Carroll vows to keep MASH shelter open

Rebecca Malone

Monday, June 11, 2001 | 10:12 a.m.

The many people who depend on MASH Village as a place to live and get a new start will no longer have to worry about it closing the doors on them.

MASH Village will stay open, the Rev. Joe Carroll, who runs the homeless shelter, said Friday.

Carroll made the announcement as he accepted a $50,000 check from Station Casinos representative Leslie Pittman. The pair then made a plea to other Las Vegas corporations to dig into their pockets and donate what they can.

Carroll said MASH Village's new board of directors plans to raise $1 million by the end of this year and $5 million in the next five years. Part of that money will be used to expand the complex, such as adding a proposed MASH Residential Center, and to gain ownership of the land, he said.

For now the shelter will cut back on services, Carroll said, but the doors will stay open. The Family Living Center will lose 20 beds, and the Crisis Intervention Center will house 26 agencies instead of 33. The medical clinic will have the same capacity but will no longer offer free medicines. Whether the nonprofit group opens its annual cold weather shelter this winter will depend on how much funding it is able to raise, he said.

However, MASH will reopen the Women's Living Center, which was closed in January, for 20 single homeless women who are 50 years old or older.

Even though some services will be cut back, Carroll said, he was glad someone stepped forward help replace city funding. After contentious negotiations, the shelter lost funding of $500,000 a year it received from Las Vegas under a five-year contract that expired last December.

Under the contract, the shelter was suppose to make $5 million in capital improvements, then the city would sell it the land. The group was able to make only $2.5 million in capital improvements, but demanded the land sale anyway. Last month, when the Las Vegas City Council decided to terminate the agreement with MASH and refused to sell the land, Carroll announced he would close the shelter.

"The city is playing no real role in this right now," Carroll said Friday, describing his current relationship with Mayor Oscar Goodman as tense. He said Councilman Michael Mack, who sits on the shelter's board, "has begun the healing process. He is trying to be the peacemaker, and he is doing a good job."

Over the past few months Carroll and Goodman have had public disagreements over the future of MASH and how it should be funded. Both men have accused each other of going back on their words.

Carroll and Goodman said nothing to each other Friday during the announcement of the new funding.