Efforts launched to get blankets, coats for homeless

By Timothy Pratt

Thursday, Oct. 23, 2003 | 10:57 a.m.

A local business and a coalition of 18 religious congregations have launched two separate efforts to collect thousands of blankets and coats for the homeless after learning there would be a shortage of both this winter.

The parallel efforts got off the ground after organizers of the Stand Down -- an annual daylong event that has helped more than 23,000 homeless people in the Las Vegas Valley during the last 10 years -- said they would have no blankets and coats to give away this year.

Both AAA of Southern Nevada, with nearly 400 employees, and a group of churches and one synagogue that together form the Interfaith Hospitality Network, a volunteer project that helps homeless families, moved to do something.

"We thought, there would be more illnesses and deaths if they can't keep warm at night," said Kristin Chandler-Sharrer, family counselor for the network.

"I know there are people out there that care -- all we have to do is put the word out," she said. She said the network's 18 congregations range from 120 to 3,000 members.

Brian Brooks, chairman of the committee that organizes the Stand Down and director of a downtown clinic that offers health care to the homeless, said there is up to a 60 percent increase in exposure-related illnesses in the homeless population from November to March. The total homeless population valleywide is estimated at 10,000.

Stand Down, scheduled for Oct. 29 at Cashman Center, offers health care, job applications, legal assistance and other services to the valley's homeless. Last year, nearly 2,500 men and women attended and about as many blankets and coats were also given away.

The shortfall this year resulted after the Department of Defense -- source of the blankets -- failed to respond to the annual request for a donation, organizers said. Defense officials said they never received a request.

And Station Casinos -- organizer of an annual coat drive during the last three years -- decided to shift its efforts to another cause.

Chandler-Sharrer noted the contrast between the nation's war effort in Iraq and the absence of coats and blankets this year.

"Here we are at war ... (and) we can't take care of our own people," she said.

Cindy Detwiler, volunteer program coordinator for AAA in Northern California, Utah and Nevada, said she heard about the problem at a Las Vegas event last week where more than 30 local companies looked at the issue of corporate philanthropy in Nevada.

"We talked about how we share the responsibility for the needs of the community," she said. "Then the news came out about the coats and blankets."

The company has set up a website -- www.aaaclothingdrive.com -- listing drop-off points for coats and blankets across the valley.

The religious network will be accepting donations at Lutheran Community Church, 3270 E. Tropicana Avenue.

Brooks said the efforts to help the homeless showed a different face of the valley than is often seen, and he mentioned a national nonprofit's naming Las Vegas the "meanest city" in the nation to the homeless earlier this year.

"This puts the kibosh on the idea that we're the meanest city," he said.

"There are many ... caring people stepping forward in our time of need."