Security net: Homeless man able to leave the streets when long-lost benefits are restored

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2003 | 11:03 a.m.

Through his beard and drawl, Forrest Williamson called Monroe, La., "a town in the middle of nowhere ... with nobody to talk to."

Sitting outside a room on Fremont Street -- the first home he has called his own in years -- he pointed to something in space and went on about a Western Union office, a lost billfold, a stepmother he doesn't get along with back in Monroe.

Williamson, 47, tried to get his Social Security checks sent to Las Vegas years ago, he doesn't remember when. But he never could. He's not sure why. The years piled up, seven or eight, and the man folded into lots on the edge of town.

Now, after being walked through five months of visits to the Social Security office by a homeless outreach worker, Williamson is getting what observers say may be the fattest check for backlogged Social Security benefits ever paid to a person living on the Las Vegas' streets -- $34,000.

The case is dramatic because of the amount of money involved. It also brings to the forefront the role Social Security benefits play in the lives of the people on the streets of the Las Vegas Valley, an often overlooked piece of the region's homelessness puzzle.

The federal government writes thousands of checks to homeless people without incomes or with mental and physical disabilities every month. Many of these men and women use the checks for everything but getting off the streets. Thousands more are eligible for the benefits and never apply, or stop receiving checks after they become homeless.

"The impact of Social Security on homeless people is enormous," said John Farrell, case manager for a homeless health care project run by Nevada Health Centers, a Las Vegas nonprofit.

"And many remain homeless even with their benefits, due to alcohol, gambling, mental illness, and the fact that rents are often higher than benefits."

Farrell, who has worked in the streets and at shelters for more than a decade, estimated that one of every four homeless people receives or has applied for benefits from the federal agency. Though no census of the homeless exists, those who work in the streets estimate the valley's population at about 10,000.

As director of a nonprofit program called Straight from the Streets, Linda Lera-Randle El tries to help the hardcore in that population, the ones who sleep in the desert and washes and get swept from place to place by one authority or another.

Lera-Randle El found Williamson in a vacant lot about a year and a half ago.

"It took awhile to build up some kind of trust with him," she said. "And then he started talking about the checks his stepmother used to get, and how that had stopped since he came to Vegas."

For Lera-Randle El, the case presented logistical problems, such as making a series of meetings with someone who has no fixed address and getting the man to wait in line in various government offices when paperwork was needed.

For the Social Security Administration, there were challenges such as finding Williamson's stepmother, who was what the agency calls his payee, straightening out what happened when he moved from a home in Louisiana to the streets of Las Vegas and finding someone locally to help manage what turned out to be a lot of money.

Local governments have agencies that fill the role of payee, someone who helps manage benefit checks for those who are physically or mentally unable to do so.

In Clark County, the payee program in the public guardian's office does this job. Of the nearly 300 people under 60 years of age whose government benefits the program is currently managing, 168, or more than half, were homeless when they signed up for the program.

Once it was clear that Williamson was owed years of benefits, Lera-Randle El asked the payee program to work with the Social Security Administration and cut an emergency check in December. The process dragged on through the month's coldest weeks while Williamson got a bad cough and found a "No Trespassing" sign in the lot he had been calling home.

After a week of searching, Lera-Randle El found Williamson on the streets again after the new year, by which time the two agencies had finally passed their paperwork back and forth. By the second week of January, Williamson was homeless no more.

Because of confidentiality rules, officials could not reveal precisely what kind of Social Security disability benefits Williamson is receiving.

Charlene Mason, case manager for the payee program, said that all of the men and women who were on the streets when they asked the county to manage their funds now have a roof over their heads.

"The need for a payee for a lot of these people is obvious, because of mental health and addiction problems," said Farrell, of Nevada Health Centers.

"Having some system in place where you could get more people in the public guardian program would help."

But Kathleen Buchanan, the county's public guardian, said that the program is voluntary, and while a lot of the homeless could benefit from it, many of those same people don't want the government managing their money.

Both Buchanan and Nancy Brown, district manager for the North Las Vegas office that handled Williamson's case, said that having more people working in the streets would help more of the homeless to use government benefits for getting off the streets.

"When I drive through the valley, I get the gut feeling that many of the homeless you see on the streets are eligible for benefits," Brown said.

Williamson was just glad that he was. On a recent Friday afternoon, he lit a cigarette and spoke of plans that would not have been realistic last month. He had just bought some instant coffee at a supermarket and a mug at a thrift store.

"I want to drink a cup of coffee, take a couple of hot baths and watch some TV," he said.

"For now, that's my ambitions."