State approves landmark funding for homeless

Thursday, June 9, 2005 | 11:08 a.m.

Clark County Manager Thom Reilly said he was "flabbergasted" that the state Legislature set aside $4.2 million for Clark County to help the homeless.

"This is the first time we have had appropriations from the state to local governments for the homeless," he said.

Linda Lera-Randle El, director of Straight from the Streets, a leading nonprofit organization when it comes to the homeless, said, "It's exciting that the issue of homelessness has reached such crisis proportions that they've finally realized it can't be nickel and dimed."

Reilly hopes the money, which was approved in the waning hours of the legislative session that ended Tuesday, will go to support pilot programs such as case management teams for one-on-one follow-up with the homeless, possibly made up of social workers, case managers and nurses.

As written, the bill earmarking the funds also includes plans to pay for services that have caused controversy in recent years, such as access to shower and restroom facilities at the Las Vegas Rescue Mission in the Wilson Avenue area near downtown.

Wilson is the site of ongoing homeless camps numbering up to 300 people, most of whom use the streets and sidewalks as a restroom. The Clark County Health District declared the area a health hazard in August.

Additionally, $50,000 of the money may go to supporting a new one-stop center housing several agencies that help the homeless at the downtown campus of Catholic Charities. The center is scheduled to open Monday.

It is meant to replace one that closed in 2003 at the MASH campus across Main Street that housed up to 40 agencies at its height. The new center is scheduled to include offices from state welfare and mental health agencies, Clark County Social Service, and two nonprofit groups, one that works with women and another that works with children.

The new center has suffered several delays since United Way announced plans last June to build it mostly with donated materials and labor.

The total package of $4.2 million from the state is scheduled to be spent from July 2005 to July 2007.

"It's been a particularly harsh couple of years for moving forward with solutions to the homeless problem in Southern Nevada," Assemblywoman Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, said. She said the last-minute decision on the funds was needed, and "seemed a lot worthier than ... putting someone's name on a building," referring to sorts of decisions that often get made at the end of the legislative session.

"Many people say that homelessness is just a local problem ... but the state wanted to play a role in helping communities (because) it's everybody's problem," she added.

Buckley, as majority leader in the Assembly, helped push through the money under AB 520, a bill meant to capture what are known as "one-shot appropriations," or funds that are left over from this fiscal year.

Reilly, who identified what he thought were gaps in services to the homeless in testimony to the Legislature in recent weeks, said he thought the bill would wind up with about $1 million.

The amount of money offered will not only be important for the services it can buy, however -- it will also help leverage federal funds, Reilly said. The amount of money -- $4.2 million -- is nearly as much as the 2004 federal Housing and Urban Development Department award to Southern Nevada, which was $6 million.

"The big gap (in funding) has been the state," Reilly said. "Now we can say that we have a federal-state-county partnership."

He also said the bill as written is "very ballpark," and specific line items would be hashed out -- and folded into a larger plan to help the homeless -- at a June 16 workshop with elected officials from throughout the Las Vegas Valley. That workshop will include Lynette Boggs McDonald for the Clark County Commission and Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman for the Las Vegas City Council, Reilly said.

Then the plan -- including the $4.2 million -- will be put before the Southern Nevada Regional Planning Coalition in late July. The coalition includes elected officials from all area municipalities. If the plan is approved there, the county will begin administering the money, Reilly said.

A report on how the money is spent will be prepared for the Legislature after one year and at the end of the two-year period, Reilly said.

He said he hopes to get local elected officials "on board" with the plan in the coming weeks.

Lera-Randle El said she hopes that spending the money is done with care. She said she expects to see "a lot of people lining up to get it."

"They have to be the right people lining up," she said, and not agencies that decide to pursue a project simply because there are funds available.

Reilly said that identifying the seven areas that could be funded by AB 520 as it is now written benefited from lessons learned in the last year or so at the Wilson Avenue camp. Las Vegas led a five-day effort in January to help the homeless in the area. The county is currently winding down on a 60-day effort to do the same.

In fact, those who are still left in the camp by the end of the month -- just as plans are being made to spend the first-ever state appropriations -- will be swept from the street.

"It's tough," Reilly said, commenting on those who may still be left on the street even as new plans are rolled out.

"It breaks my heart to see people out there (on Wilson)," he said. "But are we going in the right direction? Yes.

"Do we have all the answers? No."