Off the streets: New shelter, services serve valley’s homeless teens, children

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Friday, Dec. 19, 2003 | 11:09 a.m.

Christina Buchanan moved from her house to a park bench at age 15.

She couldn't "handle family life."

Five years later she's off the streets, with her own growing family -- a 1-year-old son and a daughter on the way.

But there are dozens, maybe hundreds more like her, say those who work with runaway and homeless teens, and Las Vegas Valley's first shelter and addiction treatment centers for girls under 18 opened Thursday at WestCare, a Las Vegas nonprofit organization, to help them.

The services will take their place in a small but growing list of options that didn't exist for boys and girls on their own when Buchanan first hit the streets of the Las Vegas Valley.

The reason, experts said, is the "right to shelter" law passed in the 2001 Legislature, which makes it possible for teens to seek help without parental consent.

Before the law, parents or guardians had to give permission for minors to seek anything from a bowl of soup to a bed for the night, said Karen Marconi, executive director of the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth, an umbrella group that pushed for the bill to become law. This posed a problem for children and teens who ran away from home.

Now agencies have what the law calls "a reasonable amount of time" to notify an adult -- which is crucial to gaining the trust of homeless or runaway teens with problems ranging from drugs to depression, Darlene Terrill, program coordinator at WestCare, said.

"A couple of days' rest means the world to these kids," Terrill said.

Since the law took effect in October 2001 four programs geared to homeless children and teens have started in the valley.

There's also the Center for Independent Living, a Las Vegas program for troubled children and teens, which is due to expand services to homeless and runaway minors when it finishes renovating in February, Executive Director Frederick Gillis said.

Gillis said the 2-year-old law has not only made things easier for minors who need help, but also for agencies who want to help them. The agencies don't have to worry about the liability involved in offering a hand to minors who don't have an adult's consent.

"What's happened is agencies or potential providers of services are less paranoid of helping minors," Gillis said.

Buchanan, whose odyssey through her mid- to late teens included begging for spare change, sleeping in apartment clubhouses and what she called "the worst part ... being sick and lonely," said the growth of services is a good thing.

"If there had been (programs such as WestCare's), it might have gotten me off the streets quicker," she said.

Candy Kidd, who will direct WestCare's new programs, said those services come as her own center has seen the number of minors needing help grow from 200 to 300 a month in the last three years, up to 20 percent of whom might be homeless.

The estimated number of homeless minors in the valley on any given day ranges from 500 to several thousand, Kidd said.

A 20-year-old woman who only gave her name as Pandora at Street Teens Wednesday said more shelter for those minors is key to solving the problem of homeless children and teens.

Pandora left home at 14, kicked speed when she was pregnant at 17 and now cares for her 2-year-old daughter with the help of friends.

Help with nuts-and-bolts-type obstacles such as finding work, housing and identification is also needed for children and teens who are on their own, she said.

Buchanan, who is now renting an apartment with her fiance and wants to study to become a pediatrician, said many more of those minors will get more help than when she was younger.

"The law makes it easier for people to help us ... (because) as many teens as there are in the streets, they won't seek help if it means calling their parents," she said.