Families leaving MASH Village face challenges

Wednesday, July 31, 2002 | 9:47 a.m.

The 15 families still living at MASH Village have two goals to achieve by the end of August: a steady paycheck and a roof over their heads.

But a visit to the shelter -- which will be shutting down Oct. 1 due to lack of funds -- showed that for families without housing in Las Vegas, getting on your feet once you're down isn't easy.

Among the difficulties these families encounter is juggling the need for day care with the need to find or keep jobs.

They also face the challenge of trying to stay together while still homeless -- a near impossibility in Las Vegas, given that MASH Village's transitional living center is one of the valley's few shelters that accepts intact families.

The center closed its doors to new clients July 15 in order to give staff enough time to help the 54 people still living there.

As of Tuesday, only one family has moved out of the shelter's transitional living center. Two have plans to leave in the next week, program manager Wanda Bonillas said.

Shari Johnson and her family are among those moving out of the shelter and who hope to be back together under one roof this weekend, after about two years of couch-surfing and shelter-hopping.

Johnson began her downward spiral when her sister was killed in an October 2000 car crash. The loss led her to start taking crystal meth, she said. The addiction resulted in Child Protective Services taking custody of her children. She enrolled in a year-long rehabilitation program while her four children, ranging from 2 to 12 years old, were sent to live with in-laws.

When she completed the program, she was able to regain custody of her children and obtain an apartment through the Las Vegas Housing Authority. Then she got a job, which should have been good news, but she didn't report her change in income to the housing authority in a timely fashion and wound up losing the apartment.

Around the same time, her husband got arrested for unpaid traffic violations while Johnson was staying with a friend who also lived in public housing.

Then Johnson relapsed and tested positive in a drug test at work.

"It was all the stress I was under -- my husband in jail, trying to find a trailer or someplace we could live on the $1,200 a month I was earning. It was all too much," she said.

She was told to go to drug counseling, but said she couldn't make the 6 to 9 p.m. schedule and also find child care. She lost her job 30 days later and wound up, in June, first at the Shade Tree shelter and then at MASH Village.

Now her husband is out of jail and has a new job as an auto mechanic at a garage. Johnson said she's clean again. Through a friend, they've found a house downtown at "about $350 a month," she said. They hope to move in this weekend.

Johnson's story is typical of the thousands of families Gus Ramos, deputy executive director of Clark County Housing Authority, calls "the hidden homeless."

"They're living with friends, in a car, in motels. They're trying to find affordable housing and keep a job and find someone to take care of their children," he said.

Ramos said the county's waiting list for public housing is currently at 8,000 families, with as much as half of that being duplicates, since many people apply for more than one program.

"Still, I believe we're only serving about a quarter of the people who need the housing," he said.

When asked what was hardest about not having housing for the past two years, Johnson didn't miss a beat.

"Not having my kids with me," she said.

"I can't wait to be with my whole family again."