Homeless advocates take to streets for headcount

Thursday, Jan. 27, 2005 | 10:55 a.m.

Just hours after an announcement that the Las Vegas Valley will receive nearly four times as much federal funding as it did last year to help the homeless, hundreds of volunteers spread out across the valley to try to keep federal funding levels as high as possible.

The teams, led by UNLV sociology Professor Fred Preston, began trying to count the valley's homeless shortly after 10 p.m. and continued into this morning. The census was done to meet a requirement for annual funding from the Housing and Urban Development Department. It was the second time in nine months for such an effort. A similar count was conducted in April.

HUD had announced its response to the valley's 2004 application for funding to help the homeless on Wednesday morning: $6 million to be divvied up among 15 projects in the region. Included in that list is the first project in Henderson to draw from the funds, an indication, officials said, of how the homeless population has spread out from the downtown area.

The application brought in nearly four times more than the previous year, in part, officials said, because of April's census, which was conducted to get a jump on HUD's new, requirement that urban areas nationwide tally the less fortunate in every odd-year in order to know how many need help.

But the earlier count, which estimated the area's homeless population at 7,800, did not exempt Southern Nevada from the 2005 requirement. So Preston and about 200 volunteers, mostly students, were at it again Wednesday night, entering the night's washes, lots, bridges and alleys.

Those volunteers included Genoa Barrett, a junior majoring in biology who said she signed up for the night because she had "never seen where they (the homeless) are, or what it's like for them."

Preston said the project is "very challenging, because the homeless population is essentially invisible."

The volunteers' tally, which will be added to a count from the valley's shelters, will not be available for several days. But one discovery by Preston's crew was that a controversial camp near Wilson Avenue and F Street remains large, with 116 people staying under or near a bridge at that corner Wednesday night.

A camp at the same corner drew the Clark County Health District to declare the area a health hazard in August because men and women were urinating and defecating in the streets. Las Vegas city officials and the camp's neighbor, the Las Vegas Rescue Mission, worked together to maintain the area clean, but city officials also said they wanted to find people in the camp a place to live and get them out from under the bridge.

A week-long effort earlier this month brought 45 people out of an estimated 200 some form of housing. The first business day after the effort ended, a Nevada Department of Transportation crew came through and cleaned the area, moving along the more than 100 who had not been helped by the city's program.

Wednesday night, Preston saw that many homeless people remained in the same area.

A man who only gave his name as Junior was in a small group of tents in a lot north of the bridge. He said he had also camped under the bridge, as well as at a lot on Owens Avenue that had more than 150 people driven from it in late December.

Others said they had gone through the city's makeshift offices on Wilson Avenue weeks earlier only to find they weren't eligible for any of the services being offered.

Haynes-Green said government officials' dispersing of the homeless from these types of camps makes it harder to do an accurate census.

"My concern is where did everyone go? I'm very concerned about getting a gross undercount because of this," she said.

Haynes-Green, who works for the county but has her salary paid by all area municipalities, also said the city's effort at the Wilson and F camp was "well-intended -- but one of the things we have here is services that are eligibility-based and many of these people weren't eligible."

"So we need new rules or new funding sources that are more flexible," she said.

Standing on a downtown corner around midnight, Preston remarked that although his effort is simply a count, he was struck by what he has heard and seen leading the censuses.

He was told that members of a group of immigrants in the camp sleep under the bridge and seek day labor in the mornings nearby at Bonanza Road and Rancho Drive.

"The thing that always strikes me is that these folks are from a wide range of backgrounds, including veterans, some with college degrees, some who work everyday," he said.

"People need to know this, since this is a vulnerable, stereotyped population, and not all of them fit the stereotype."