Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Out of HOPE: Funds run out for homeless grant

On a recent afternoon Norman Bangs had his hands on a spoon serving macaroni and green beans to drunks and addicts drying out at Westcare, a Las Vegas nonprofit.

But not too long ago he had his hands on a needle or in somebody else's pockets.

Bangs, 36, had used heroin, cocaine and alcohol for 15 years and had been on the streets, often robbing to feed his habit.

But when Bangs overdosed two months ago, Kathleen Kelly, a social worker at University Medical Center, knew one group in town might be able to help him.

The group came from a pilot project, called Homeless Outreach Pilot Evaluation, or Project HOPE, the first state-funded program to send small teams of experts on addictions and mental illness into the streets, emergency rooms and jails of the Las Vegas Valley to find homeless people who suffer from both problems and are unlikely to seek treatment on their own.

The project's grant ends today. Run by Westcare, its preliminary results include finding that addictions and mental illnesses may be the primary obstacles facing thousands more of the valley's homeless than previously assumed.

Workers also discovered that seeking these homeless people out -- instead of waiting for them to look for help -- may go further toward getting them off the streets and into housing, saving hundreds of thousands of tax dollars in the process that are now being spent on emergency rooms, jails and other services.

According to preliminary data, 31 of the program's 63 clients used emergency rooms 30 times in the past year and spent a total of 184 days in other wings of the valley's hospitals. They also spent a total of 230 days in jail.

The estimated cost to taxpayers was at least $250,000 -- or half the program's total cost, organizers said. Not included in that estimate were costs associated with the victims of crimes committed by the homeless and some of the salaries of hospital and jail personnel.

Linda Lera-Randle El -- director of a nonprofit called Straight from the Streets and a 15-year veteran of homeless outreach in the Las Vegas Valley -- called the project "something I've been waiting for for years."

She said that long-term outreach focused on addictions and mental illness is key to getting many of the valley's homeless off the streets.

"We're talking about a relatively volatile, highly mobile client (who is) more difficult than your average client," said David Black, whose specialty is addictions and who worked with one of the project's two three-person teams.

"It's immensely difficult for them to access services without our help," he said.

Take Bangs, whose April visit to the emergency room was his third or fourth in recent years.

"A lot of folks aren't going to go out and look for help," Bangs said outside Westcare's kitchen, where he was volunteering before beginning a new job at Opportunity Village this week.

"Here they put a fire under my butt ... and took me by the hand. It wasn't like just telling me to go out and do something."

The HOPE team took Bangs to dry out at Westcare's facility and to enroll in an Emergency Medical Technician course at the Community College of Southern Nevada. The recovering addict wants to become an EMT.

They also took him to his job interview and have counseled him on repairing relationships with his three sons and divorced wife, who live in Las Vegas.

"They told me to be honest and take it slow, instead of making promises I can't keep," Bangs said.

On a recent trip with his children to see "The Hulk," his 9-year-old son Ryan said, "You haven't been drinking or nothing?"

"I said I wouldn't be seeing them if I was."

But not all of the hundreds of people seen by HOPE's two teams in the past six months or so have moved as far and fast as Bangs.

Case Manager Shantris Barkdull -- who has been awakened at 1:30 and 4 in the morning to visit hospitals, halfway houses and local jails and who has traveled through washes and fields to find camps of shacks and tents -- said that progress with this population takes time and is often measured in small steps, like saying hello.

According to the project's preliminary report filed in April, 232 people had made contact with HOPE's two teams, 132 of whom gave team members their names and other information, and 63 of whom began to seek help.

"We often had to make contact eight to 10 times to start working with them," Barkdull said.

The project's lifespan didn't help, said Jim Osti, Westcare administrator, since it took several months to find people who were willing to work in the streets, not in an office. The $500,000 grant from the Nevada Division of Mental Health and Developmental Services had to spent by June 30, though the winner of the grant wasn't announced until October.

"During our interviews I weeded out a lot of people," Osti said.

"I told candidates, 'You don't have a desk, you don't have an office, you don't have a schedule and you're on call 24/7."'

On a recent weekday afternoon, team members Barkdull, Black and Ed Vega -- also an expert in addictions -- went in search of some people who had been run out of a camp several weeks earlier in an industrial part of the southwest area of the valley.

About 300 yards from the original campsite, Rachelle Dolan, 46, crawled out of a shack with the hull of a pickup truck for a foundation, pieces of plywood for walls and plastic sheets for doors.

Dolan said she had seen the HOPE team about four times, but had not left the camp with them to seek any help.

"But they're somebody to talk to so you don't go crazy," she said. Dolan, who referred to herself as the camp's "watchdog," said she had wondered if the team would find her at the new site.

She has lived two years in the area and would not even come out of the shack during the team's first few visit to the camp, Vega said.

"She made no eye contact and didn't say hello," he said.

"If we had about six months more, maybe we could give her some help," Vega said.

Osti said that more time would not only mean more help for the homeless, but more savings to the community.

"Though final results haven't yet been compiled, my hypothesis is that it costs less to provide assertive treatment than having them in the streets," he said.

Osti said that a complete analysis of the costs in taxpayer dollars of the homeless who suffer from mental illnesses and drug or alcohol addictions has never been done, and hoped that project results available in July would come closer to providing answers.

Osti said the HOPE teams estimate that more than half of the valley's population -- which he said might be between 10,000 and 12,000 -- may suffer from those two problems.

Though the state funding ends today, Osti said he will apply for federal funds to revive the project at a later date.

Carlos Brandenburg, administrator for the state division of mental health, said that the project helped shatter the "myth ... that the homeless want to be homeless," and said that some state employees will be applying the project's methods in a new program set to begin in the downtown area in the coming months.

In Bangs' case, he has summed up his philosophy with the tattoo on his arm that says: "Born to lose, live to win."

As for the HOPE effort, Bangs said: "If these types of projects help one out of 100, it's worth it."

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