Religious network helping families in darkest hour

Friday, Oct. 18, 2002 | 11:03 a.m.

Piedad Summers, a single mother of four, decided it was time to leave Long Beach, Calif., when her landlord sold the house where she lived and the new owner raised the rent from $550 to $850 a month.

She thought she'd start over in Las Vegas, where she heard the rents were cheaper and there was less gang violence -- a constant worry for her, given that she has a 14-year-old son, Eduardo.

After a week here she was still trying to transfer her food stamps, welfare and the Social Security checks for her 8-year-old son Gustavo, who has Down syndrome. She had seen several apartments, but said none was affordable or safe enough.

In this state of uncertainty, the Summers family was thankful for a place to stay and some mashed potatoes and chicken one night last week at the Unitarian Universalist Church in North Las Vegas. They were accompanied by two other families nearing the end of their first week in a six- to eight-week program where different houses of worship open their doors to the homeless.

Called the Interfaith Hospitality Network, the program's 16 churches and one synagogue are the only hope left for homeless families in the region to stay together, after MASH Village closed down its shelter for families when it pulled out of the Las Vegas Valley.

The Shade Tree, a downtown shelter next to where MASH Village was, offers help to women and children, but not men.

The combination of the MASH Village's closing and recent economic conditions have overburdened the network more than any period during its six-year history, Julia Occhiogrosso, one of two directors, said.

"We're definitely getting more calls than we can handle," she said -- an average of three families a day.

The program is able to help up to four families, or 14 people, at a time.

The three that began last week total 13 people, nine of whom are children. The families spend their nights a week at a time in a different church and work on getting back on their feet during the days at a center the network runs out of a house in West Las Vegas.

Though it uses houses of worship, the program doesn't proselytize, Occhiogrosso said. "We feel it's fine to invite people to services, but we don't require it. They're emotionally very vulnerable, and this isn't appropriate."

Unique in helping families, the network is also unusual in its organization: A part-time staff of six is paid by donations and federal grants, and the rest is done by volunteer congregation members -- about 2,500 people a year.

Staff and volunteers -- including social workers -- set goals with the families to get jobs and housing and enroll their children in school, as well as providing help with transportation.

Founded in 1996 as part of a national series of similar networks, the program has helped about 300 families so far -- nearly two-thirds of whom have been able to keep a roof over their heads, Occhiogrosso said.

Laura Rowe, with her two children, Krystl, 5, and William, 10, was relieved to be able to bed down as a family again last week. After leaving a job at a call center last year to take care of her sick father, she wound up losing her apartment and stayed in a shelter for a month. There the girl and boy had to sleep in different areas.

"I would wait by one bed for my son to fall asleep and then go and put the little girl to sleep," she said. "Now at least we can sleep in the same room."

She went to MASH on Sept. 15 only to find that the shelter was closing.

"There's definitely not a lot resources for families out there," she said.

Kristin Chandler-Sharrer, the program's staff family counselor, said that a lot of the families calling for help are at the end of their ropes.

"People are desperate," she said. "A lot of them, if they don't get in the program, they just leave in a week or so and go to another city."