County to receive less money for food, shelter

Monday, Dec. 27, 2004 | 11:24 a.m.

Federal funding for emergency food and shelter in Clark County is lower than at any time since the year 2000, prompting some who receive the funds to suggest the formula driving the amounts year after year -- based on unemployment rates -- should be changed.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced last week that $749,267 would be coming to the county for services ranging from food to rental assistance.

But that amount is the lowest in four years and only slightly more than the $718,815 given to the county in 2000.

That year, due to the census, the funds jumped above $500,000 for the first time in the 15 years since they were authorized by the McKinney-Vento Act, a law passed to help the homeless.

Since then, according to Dan Goulet, president of the United Way of Southern Nevada -- the agency charged with putting together a board of local private and public agencies to administer the funds -- the driving force behind the yearly grants has been unemployment rates.

"The money is not keeping pace with the growth of the community and its needs," Goulet said.

"It would be nice if the formula was changed and based more on community needs to take into account other factors besides the unemployment rates," he said.

The state's most recent figures, from November, show that Southern Nevada's unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, 1.3 percentage points lower over the year.

Jaime Weller-Lafavor is executive director of Lutheran Social Services, a nonprofit agency that has received money from the federal grant for rental assistance and food in recent years.

She said her agency used $42,094 in the emergency food and shelter funds last year and would be applying for at least $60,000 this year.

Applications for using the funds are due in January and decisions on the applications are made within a month, said Rosemary West, director of community development for United Way and, until recently, the person in charge of assembling the board that administers the funds.

West said the board includes several large nonprofit organizations in the valley -- such as Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army -- that also receive the funds.

Weller-Lafavor said the funding formula used by the federal government causes a lot of people in the Las Vegas Valley to be left out.

She said her agency used the money to help the working poor, a growing part of the population as wages don't increase at the same rate as housing and other costs.

"It's not reflecting the people who we're serving with the funds," Weller-Lafavor said.