Homeless advocates decry loss of project for the mentally ill

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Thursday, May 16, 2002 | 8:50 a.m.

A $500,000 pilot program to help the mentally ill homeless in Southern Nevada was derailed Tuesday to help balance the state budget, to the dismay of advocates and local officials dealing with homelessness.

"I'm very upset by this, since this program was trying to address a lot of the problems and issues involving the homeless that the city of Las Vegas has been dealing with in recent months," said Shawna Parker, management analyst for the Clark County Community Resources Management Division.

Parker is a member of the committee that was to evaluate proposals for the state grant in the coming months.

The pilot program was approved by the 2001 Legislature and would have raised the number of mental health workers on Clark County streets from one to as many as 10 starting in August, when it was due to begin.

Brandenburg decided to recommend pulling the plug Monday after the state Budget Division announced shortfalls of $40 million for the current fiscal year. State division heads had been asked where cuts could be made. Gov. Kenny Guinn must make the final decisions in the next six weeks.

It is estimated that as many as one-third of the region's 8,000 to 10,000 homeless men and women are mentally ill, and many of them need the outreach services the program was to provide, said Carlos Brandenburg, administrator for the Nevada Division of Mental Health and Developmental Services, the agency slated to oversee the project.

"This program would have provided services to a lot of people who normally don't get them and given us more data and information to work with the homeless in the future," Brandenburg said.

The information has been missing in recent debates over the homeless, after sweeps of three downtown camps in the past three months raised the issue of whether many of the homeless in the camps were mentally capable of seeking services -- including shelter.

"With this part of the homeless population, you need to go out on the streets and under the bridges, gain rapport and trust and deal with them on a long-term basis, not just ask them if they need a bed in a 10-minute interview," Brandenburg said.

It was a tough, but necessary decision, Brandenburg said.

"I was caught between a rock and a hard place, since it was either cut existing or new programs, and I decided it was better not to reduce existing services," he said.

But the project to help the mentally ill homeless population will be sorely missed, experts said.

"Programs to help the homeless often get cut when budgets are tight because working with the homeless is not something that gets political support," said Anne Cory, president of United Way for Northern Nevada and co-chairwoman of a state policy group on homelessness.

"But it's also an economic development issue for the entire community, since reducing the homeless in the streets raises the quality of life for everyone."