MASH Village site faces uncertain future

By Timothy Pratt

Thursday, Sept. 19, 2002 | 9:27 a.m.

The Las Vegas Valley will remain without a homeless shelter for intact families for the near future, according to a plan announced Wednesday by city officials at the Las Vegas City Council meeting.

MASH Village, site of the only such facility, is losing its administrator of seven years, the San Diego-based Father Joe's Villages, on Oct. 1.

Attempts by the city of Las Vegas to continue helping the homeless on-site at both the shelter and a one-stop social services center were unsuccessful with the shelter, but got results with the center.

Officials also laid out other possible uses for the 10 acres on which MASH Village sits, which the city owns. The council directed city staff to study the entire plan for six weeks and report back.

Reactions to the plan by those who work with the homeless were mixed, the consensus being that something salvaged at MASH Village is better than nothing.

"It's better news than I expected, since I thought that nothing at all would be left there come October," said Gus Ramos, chairman for the Southern Nevada Homeless Coalition, an umbrella group of more than 80 public and private agencies.

But Linda Lera Randle-El, director of Straight from the Streets, a nonprofit outreach group, said the plan was taking one step forward and another back.

"Basically, this is what we've been doing for years -- buying time to study future possibilities, while services are being lost," she said.

The plan for the social services center is to hand it over to Catholic Charities, mainly with the support of a federal grant for $159,676 that runs out on Feb. 1, as well as money from the city, Clark County and United Way. It is unclear how the center would run afterward.

The shelter, however, will remain vacant, as it has been since Aug. 14, when the city closed it down to study a long list of problems with the building's foundation, mold and electrical and plumbing systems. The repairs needed to solve these problems would cost from $1.2 to $1.4 million, said Sharon Segerblom, director for the Neighborhood Services Department.

The plan calls for having the city look at fixing the building with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the federal agency that paid $2.5 million for it in 1996 to house families at MASH Village.

"We will be asking -- is it fixable, is the value equal to the cost and who would fund it?" Segerblom said.

The shelter was originally intended to house 300 people, but was serving about a third of that number in recent years.

Other uses for the land on which MASH sits will also be explored, Segerblom said -- including building a mental health drop-in center and expanding the parking area for the Shade Tree, the neighboring shelter for women and children.

"I'm sorry we're not going to have help for families in the immediate future, but I'm pleased that we're looking at long-term solutions for other problems like mental illness," Ramos said.

At one point in Wednesday's meeting, the decline of the building that housed families led to finger-pointing between Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and former MASH Village Executive Director Ruth Bruland.

Goodman blamed MASH for not providing maintenance to the building, as its contract with the city required, calling the situation "shameful."

"They've been very critical of us and it's our turn to do the same," he said.

But Bruland said after the meeting that at least part of the blame lies with the city.

'You have to ask, how did the building get approved in the first place? It had a number of problems from the beginning, including not having insulation. But we accepted it and worked with it, and it's not fair to blame Father Joe this way," Bruland said.