Agencies’ meeting produces limited plan for homeless

By Timothy Pratt

Wednesday, March 23, 2005 | 11:24 a.m.

A meeting of 10 public and private agencies Tuesday produced a plan to help dozens of men, women and children off the streets -- up to a point.

It was agreed that agencies need to spend more time in the area behind the Las Vegas Rescue Mission at 480 W. Bonanza Road helping the homeless camped there, basically expanding a Las Vegas-led effort that lasted five days in January and got some people into temporary housing, mostly motels.

The idea this time would be to devote 60 days to the effort, with city and county staff, Metro Police and others intensively working to get the homeless into housing, said Orlando Sanchez, director of Las Vegas Neighborhood Services Department.

"But it has to have a sunset," Sanchez said.

"People who want help can get it -- but if they don't want help and on the 61st day they're back ... with their tents, we have to go out there and aggressively make sure people don't set up camps again," he said.

"That will not be tolerated."

The meeting didn't produce a decision by the Las Vegas Rescue Mission to resume providing free dinners to the homeless and low-income residents of the area. That practice was stopped last Thursday as a way of trying to drive away about 100 people camped behind the mission.

"We agreed it is better not to resume feeding until all these entities are in place," said Pastor Jeff Chaves, temporary director of the mission, site of the meeting.

Another meeting is to be held March 30 to follow up on Tuesday's meeting, he said.

The plan discussed Tuesday appears to be a mixture of old and new approaches. On the one hand, the main idea being floated means there would be a more extended, on-the-street commitment from local governments than has been seen before. But on the other, it is also clear that punitive measures would be taken against those who don't take advantage of their help.

Still, Linda Lera-Randle El, longtime advocate for the homeless and director of Straight from the Streets, a nonprofit organization, said the meeting was exceptional because it brought so many organizations to the same table to discuss a controversial issue without confrontation.

"In my 20 years of working with the homeless, it was one of the most honest and possibly most productive meetings on the chronic homeless I've attended," Lera-Randle El said.

The meeting was brought on by the mission's decision last week to stop serving evening meals due to problems linked to camps in the area, including feces and urine and garbage on the streets and sidewalks. The mission had tried a similar strategy in November.

In an e-mail sent to Sanchez last week announcing that the meals were being cut off again, Merlyn Sexton, executive director of the mission, said the problem on Wilson was "'now totally out of control."

"The population has quadrupled ... The tent city has now grown from backpack sleeping tents to family-size tents," he wrote.

Chaves said that the decision was difficult and also emphasized that the move didn't affect those who were living at the mission and enrolled in its various programs.

Until some sort of solution is reached to deal with ongoing camps in the area, however, there will be no evening meals served at the mission to anyone except the people living inside the mission "to see if it abates any of what's happening on Wilson," Chaves said.

If city, county and other agencies do converge on the area to help the homeless, it won't be the first time.

In January, Las Vegas led a five-day effort that got about one-fourth of a camp of about 200 into temporary housing. And when the camp under a bridge on F Street and Wilson was then cleaned by the Nevada Department of Transportation, many of those who remained simply moved up F street or around the corner onto Wilson.

In Tuesday's meeting, however, the suggestion was to create "more of a lasting presence ... until we can bring about a change," Chaves said.

Paula Haynes-Green, regional homeless services coordinator, said, "The goal is to get the Las Vegas Rescue Mission to return to normal operations, comply with health and safety standards and develop a unified approach to dealing with homeless encampments."

"We are not going to turn our backs on people in the street," said Haynes-Green, whose salary is paid for by all local municipalities but who is supervised by the county.

Glenn Savage, environmental health director for the Clark County Health District, had faced the issue of camps near the mission before. His agency spent last August documenting the health hazard in the area and notifying both the city and the mission that something had to be done. He said he was satisfied that the participants in Tuesday's meeting "understood our concerns," and he noted that the city and mission would be resuming cleaning up the area after suspending the effort in recent weeks.

Other ideas discussed at the meeting included possibly closing off Wilson Avenue to traffic in the future, and seeking funding for portable toilets in the area.

One thing all agreed on was that strong-arm methods alone, used several times in recent years to break up homeless camps, were not working, Chaves said.

"It can't be like Foremaster," he said, referring to a sweep of about 175 people downtown in March 2002.

"If you sweep them, the people will just leave and go somewhere else."