Editorial: Homeless plan needs deadline

Tuesday, March 12, 2002 | 8:51 a.m.

For more than a year a regional homeless task force has listened to experts, has debated solutions to the homeless situation and has even proposed a five-step plan. Created and chaired by Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, the task force is charged with finding a regional approach to providing services for people without homes. A plan involving municipalities throughout the Las Vegas Valley is the long-term solution, Goodman argued as he railed about so much of the responsibility falling upon his city. Although regional plans have rarely succeeded anywhere else in the country, Goodman and other leaders are determined that one will succeed here. The task force will present specific proposals when it next meets on March 21. While the long-term, regional plan is all very well, we would like to see the city and county develop a workable plan for what is going on n ow.

While the nonprofit MASH Village in downtown Las Vegas and a smattering of other efforts around the valley are commendable, the need for homeless services far outstrips the existing programs. Last week, after receiving complaints from nearby residents, police ordered about 30 homeless people living near the Las Vegas Wash east of Boulder Highway and Russell Road to move on. One was a former carpenter who had spent five years building a makeshift home out of scavenged materials. A few days earlier a homeless encampment on Owens Avenue and A Street was dismantled on orders of the city. While the task force has been meeting, countless homeless people have been ordered to move on. And they do -- from one place to another in a cycle that imposes hardship on the people and perpetuates all the problems associated with homelessness.

We'd like to see a long-term homeless plan that emphasizes more low-cost housing and health care and includes treatment programs for addicts, assistance in getting jobs, and help for the mentally ill -- in other words, pretty much what the task force has already proposed. Clark County Commissioner Erin Kenny's idea of a "master-planned community" for the homeless offering a full range of services has merit, too. The problem is that task forces can take years to propose sensible solutions that may never even come to pass.

Two things we would like to see: a deadline for finalizing a long-term plan and an interim plan. The city and county can continue to force homeless people to move on -- creating public health issues in the next block. But this continual shunting of forlorn people from one miserable lot to another solves nothing and only serves to make a bad situation even worse.