Homeless up against cold winter

Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2003 | 11:19 a.m.

Thousands of coats and blankets and hundreds of shelter beds will be sorely missed by the Las Vegas Valley's homeless this winter.

Together the two shortages foretell a tough winter for thousands of homeless people in the Las Vegas Valley, said Brian Brooks, chairman of the committee that puts together the annual Stand Down for the Homeless, which this year will be without coats and blankets for the first time in its 11-year history.

"If you don't have shelter and you don't have something to keep you warm, you're going to be in deep trouble," he said.

"We're going to see more health problems due to exposure," said Brooks, who is also director for the Health Care for the Homeless Clinic downtown.

The bad news came in separate reports given at the Southern Nevada Homeless Coalition's monthly meeting.

Nearly 2,500 people went to the Stand Down last year at Cashman Center, and almost as many blankets and coats were given away. The event also offers help with jobs, haircuts, dental care and other services.

The Department of Defense donated the blankets in previous years, but this year never responded to queries about making a similar donation. The local corporate sponsors of a coat drive, Station Casinos, also pulled out, Brooks said.

Louis Emlund directs the Key Foundation, the local nonprofit that receives and distributes the blankets. He said he "sent in the paperwork for the blankets months ago." But Jane Koons, who works in the Defense Supply Center in Philadelphia, said she had no record of the request.

"It looks like your area won't be receiving the blankets this year," she said.

As for Station Casinos, Lesley Pittman, the company's spokeswoman, explained that while the company had conducted a clothing drive every October for the past three years for the Stand Down, this year the company's employees chose to help the Make A Wish Foundation during October.

"Every month, the team members choose a nonprofit to assist, and we will probably select Stand Down again sometime in future," she said. "The clothing drive is a tremendous amount of work for our team members, though. It's a huge project."

There will be emergency shelter provided this winter but it will be less than there was last year: 1,427 beds are expected to be available in the coming months compared with 1,808 last year. Some of the beds are available for single men and some are for women and children. Some fall into a "no strings attached," free of charge category, while others are tied to employment or other programs.

The main drop from last year will be seen at Catholic Charities, where a shelter with 164 free beds for single men was closed down in the last year to make way for a one-stop center with services designed to prevent homelessness.

That shift, said Shawna Parker Brody -- an analyst at Clark County Community Resources Management who offered the report on winter housing at the coalition meeting -- is being seen nationwide.

"This mirrors national trends ... where the emphasis is being placed on preventing, rather than managing, homelessness," she said.

At the same time, she said, "weather-related temporary stopgaps are not managing the homeless, but preventing illness and death."

Frank Richo, director for homeless services at Catholic Charities, said he supports the idea of emergency shelter with no strings attached, just not at his agency.

"It is not right to warehouse people," he said. "We're about employment, getting people back on their feet and self-sufficiency.

"The idea is to cut down on the numbers of people ... on the streets year after year.

"If you don't have programs like (ours), you'll have more people dying on the streets."

Richo said he was approached by Clark County about delaying the demolition of another building owned by Catholic Charities in order to supply from 64 to 88 beds during the winter. Use of that building would cost from about $74,000 to $104,000, he said.

"We're willing to do it and are just waiting for an answer (about funding)," he said.

In previous years Las Vegas also provided funds for winter shelter. From 1998 to 2002 part of that funding went to a tent for up to 250 men at the now-closed MASH Village shelter.

Attempts to reach city officials for comment were unsuccessful.

After Parker Brody finished her report to about 25 public and private agencies at the coalition meeting Tuesday, there was little comment on the issue.

"There's a feeling of helplessness," Parker Brody said. "There's no tent, no building available, potentially no provider and seemingly no funds."

Brooks said the lack of blankets, coats and shelter has him expecting more men and women with hypothermia, bronchitis and pneumonia in his clinic this winter.

"We're concerned that we will not be able to give them all the tools to survive," he said.