System aims to ensure data about homeless is accurate

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Monday, July 7, 2003 | 9:25 a.m.

Ongoing debates about how many homeless people there are in the Las Vegas Valley, where they sleep and where services for them should be located may soon become a thing of the past, people who work in social services say.

The answers to those questions may come from 19 computers paid for with federal dollars.

The computers and software to process data on the homeless will be distributed to agencies that receive funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Those agencies include the valley's largest shelters and other centers that provide services.

The initial users will be determined by the end of July, said Bridget Claridy, chairwoman of the Southern Nevada Homeless Coalition committee that sought federal funds for the project. The computers will be up and running by July 2004, Claridy said.

Called the Homeless Management Information System, the computers and the information they generate are now required nationwide for the federal government to know better if money spent to help the homeless is delivering results.

But the system will also help shape planning on homelessness locally, according to both federal officials and local advocates.

"This is not just to gather statistics on a shelf, but to determine policy," said Larry Bush, spokesman for HUD's Western regional office, based in San Francisco.

The system has been a long time coming, advocates say.

"This has been discussed for at least 10 years," said Linda Lera-Randle El, an administrator at the now-defunct MASH Village when it opened in 1994 who now runs a nonprofit called Straight From the Streets.

Lera-Randle El said that many discussions about helping the homeless still revolve around numbers generated by a 1999 University of Nevada, Las Vegas study that estimated there were 6,700 homeless in the valley.

"But there can't be the same number forever," Lera-Randle El said.

HUD's Bush said the same sort of dilemma exists nationwide.

"Are we doing what needs to be done with the resources we have?" he said. "In most cities, we just don't know."

The issue has become increasingly controversial locally, most recently in a debate that lasted several months leading up to the June 30 closing of the Crisis Intervention Center downtown.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman insisted that all major local municipalities should ante up to keep the one-stop center for social services open, since homeless people from all over the valley used it.

Henderson refused to contribute. North Las Vegas, which said it already combated homelessness with low-income housing, offered to pay less than Las Vegas officials sought.

No hard data could support one side or the other. Now that will change, those who work with the homeless say.

"This will give us information about who is out there, how they became homeless, what services they need and where they are staying," said Shawna Parker, policy analyst for Clark County Community Resources Management and the chairwoman of a committee that will choose which agencies will use the system in its two-year start-up phase.

The project will cost $338,354 in those two years and should be self-sustaining after that, Bush said. Data generated by the system will be available to all agencies, not just those who have the computers, Claridy said.

In addition to helping inform policy debates, however, Lera-Randle El said the project's greatest benefit would be to the homeless themselves.

"It will help us get to first-time users (of services) before they slip further into the system and get to some of the people that stay in the system much too long," Lera-Randle El said.

"It will help weed out the needy from the greedy."