Safety net: Group helps homeless people who slip through the cracks

By Timothy Pratt

Monday, Nov. 26, 2001 | 9:35 a.m.

Don Kirk spent two nights at MASH Village's tent for homeless men after it opened 10 days ago. On the third night the 45-year-old was back on the sidewalk after he showed up 15 minutes after curfew.

"I arrived at 8:15, and they told me, 'Rules are rules.' They took away my spot. I didn't think they would cut it that close," Kirk said on a recent morning across the street from the shelter.

He is one of about 40 homeless men and women who were sleeping across Main Street from the tent last week.

Kirk is also one of dozens of men who either run afoul of the rules set up at the tent and other shelters -- or who just don't want to follow them.

Breaking the rules is only one way that homeless people fall through holes in the safety net meant to catch them. People like Kirk -- whether they chafe at shelter rules, suffer from untreated mental illnesses or have other problems that keep them from services -- are sought by a little-known group called Straight from the Streets.

Director Linda Lera-Randle El heads out to Las Vegas' streets nearly every day looking for those who often don't receive help from traditional shelters.

"The rules at the shelters are a big thing for many of the homeless," Lera-Randle El said. "For many of them, it's easier to sleep on the sidewalk than having to follow rules."

Lera-Randle El made her third visit in as many weeks to Main Street and Foremaster Lane Tuesday, trying to see who slips through the cracks of the homeless shelter system and why so many are on the streets.

Dozens crowded around her in the early chill as she handed out cigarettes to those who filled out surveys she spread out on the hood of her car. Nurse Barbara Boyd-Kaminski and social worker Ina Dorman helped with the surveys.

The informal survey is used to allow the group to target its efforts to help the homeless.

Straight from the Streets saw 60 people that day, 51 of whom completed the survey. Of those completing the information, 16 were women, or about 30 percent.

The tent at MASH Village is for single men only, and women on the streets of Las Vegas have few options when it comes to shelter.

The Shade Tree Shelter is one of them, with 164 short-term beds: 80 for single women and 84 for women with children. Another 124 beds are available for up to six months for those who find work and seem likely to find permanent housing: 40 for single women and 84 for women with children.

Linda Decker came to Foremaster Lane from nearby railroad tracks. The 50-year-old became homeless after her husband was killed in a car accident in Arizona two years ago. She said she tried Shade Tree and had problems with the shelter's rules.

"I had to do a chore at a certain hour, take a shower at a certain hour. How could I get out and look for work?" said Decker, drawing on a free cup of coffee she got from nearby Catholic Charities.

Shade Tree's executive director, Brenda Dizon, said that working within a structure is the biggest barrier faced by many of the women on the streets.

"But any community has to have rules, and the structure is important for them to learn how to plan and to learn the difference between what they might want at a given moment and what they really need," she said. The shelter's rules are flexible, Dizon added, and the women can set up plans to get around schedules in order to seek work or housing.

Nieisha Weaver, 22, saw nurse Boyd-Kaminski on Tuesday morning for advice on her pregnancy. She is in her third month and spent the night before on Main Street with her fiancee, Eddie Rodriguez, who is 24.

Rodriguez spent two nights last week at the MASH tent, but he didn't want to be separated from Weaver. Homeless families have even fewer options than women because of a shortage of rooms. MASH provides about two dozen short-term rooms and fewer than a dozen long-term rooms. Inner Faith shelter has 14 emergency beds for families.

The couple said they both suffer from clinically diagnosed depression.

In the surveys handed out by Straight from the Streets, about 15 percent of the people said they suffered from some sort of mental illness.

"But many of the homeless don't admit they have this sort of problem, or other problems like drugs, alcohol or gambling," Lera-Randle El said.

Boyd-Kaminski said that mental health could be the biggest issue in helping the homeless.

Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services sends out a psychological social worker to visit the homeless in the street one day a week, she said. Otherwise, the homeless are often faced with waiting periods of a month or more between appointments at any of the four clinics that the service operates.

Lera-Randle El said the mentally ill homeless need more outreach workers. She sees their treatment as an example of what has gone wrong with addressing the problem of homelessness. There are too many centralized, overburdened services of one sort or another and too little individualized attention out in the streets.

"There ought to be more psychiatrists on the streets helping to stabilize some of these people so they can even have a shot at getting off the street," she said.

"We waste too much time trying to fit a square peg into a round hole with the homeless."

"The fact is, some people actually prefer to remain invisible on the streets, some do not realize they are invisible and still others are striving to be seen and heard. The trick is to get out there and find out who is who."