Record homeless show up for annual Stand Down

Thursday, Nov. 14, 2002 | 11:14 a.m.

Standing down, said Brian Brooks between calls on his two walkie-talkies Wednesday afternoon, is when troops regroup before going back to battle.

Brooks organized the Stand Down for the Homeless at Cashman Center on Wednesday, giving most of the 2,428 homeless people who attended a chance to regroup before going back to the front lines that are the streets.

The annual event, in its 10th year, is put together by more than 300 volunteers and dozens of private and public agencies offering everything from haircuts to winter blankets to the Las Vegas Valley's homeless.

This year's turnout was about 50 percent higher than 2001, when 1,600 came. As in previous events, most of the homeless filled out surveys on their living conditions and needs, a valuable source of data in a population whose transient nature makes them relatively understudied.

But getting to the underlying causes of homelessness remained beyond the reach of the huge event, perhaps most frustratingly underscored for Brooks and others by the poor turnout on the part of companies who said they would come to offer jobs and didn't show.

"The job fair is one of the most important parts of this event ... to bring them out of the homeless condition they're in," said Will Lockheart, an employer consultant for the Department of Employment Training and Rehabilitation and organizer of the job fair at the event.

"I was very disappointed by this," he said. "Not only didn't they show up, they didn't even call."

Only seven of 18 companies that had committed to helping the homeless find jobs came, lower than previous years, Lockheart said. He wouldn't name the companies that were absent.

By day's end, less than two dozen jobs had been found, despite hundreds having waited in line for more than an hour.

"Businesses complain about the homeless, but when it comes to doing something positive, they don't show up," Brooks said. "This is really irritating."

But others did show up, and many were swamped. By 3 p.m., Supercuts had given about 550 free haircuts. Clark County Health District had given up to 800 flu shots and 500 tetanus vaccines.

But the most popular service proved to be that provided by judges from Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Clark County, with lines outnumbering others threefold.

The idea was to remove warrants and hear misdemeanor cases -- "mostly petty things like jaywalking, parking tickets given to those who sleep in their cars and the kinds of things the homeless get arrested for," said David Olshan of Nevada Legal Services and organizer of the courtroom part of the event.

Though the event was scheduled until 4 p.m., the judges cut off the line to see them at 3, having helped about 2,000 people clear their records.

Phillip, who didn't want his last name used, was one of those who made the cutoff to see a judge.

When asked about his situation, he said, "You remember that song, 'Papa was a rolling stone, wherever he laid his hat was his home ...'? Well, that's me since my house burned down and I lost my job about six months ago."

During that time, he had acquired several traffic tickets.

He said his next stop was the job fair, where he hoped to get a leg up on his life.

Michael Stoops, director of community organizing for the National Coalition for the Homeless, a Washington-based organization, had a booth at the event.

After attending other stand downs in Baltimore, West Virginia, Cincinnati and Denver, the 30-year veteran of homeless advocacy said that Wednesday's event was the largest he had seen.

"I was shocked to see how many came to this one," he said.

Gus Ramos, chairman of the Southern Nevada Homeless Coalition, an umbrella organization of more than 80 private and public groups, said that the size of the event underscored the size of the homeless problem.

"It's frustrating," he said. "There are just so many homeless, and there's not enough services to help them. We need for all these people to work together, and we need a long-term plan."

Stoops noted another detail that distinguished the Las Vegas Stand Down for the Homeless from similar events around the nation.

Pointing to a makeshift stage with a microphone and speakers, he said, "This was the first time I've seen karaoke at one of these," he said. "Seeing the homeless singing all day and the audience waving their hands, that was cool -- especially since they can't afford to go to all these bars in Las Vegas."

That, too, helped thousands without four walls and a roof regroup and head back to the streets of the valley Wednesday night.