Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Home means dignity

At times, Linda Lopez could not accept that she was homeless.

Not as she brushed her teeth each morning in a McDonald's restaurant bathroom; not as she washed herself during an afternoon swim in the municipal pool; not as she sat up until the midnight closing of a Borders bookstore drinking tea and reading novels.

But when she crawled into her 1985 Toyota Corolla in the wee hours, kicked off her shoes and covered herself with a blanket to endure yet another restless night of glaring car lights and potentially dangerous passers-by she was well aware of her seemingly hopeless situation.

Lopez, 50, does not fit the profile of a street person.

She has a bachelor's degree in social work and had spent 15 years in the Navy working with computers in an intelligence unit.

But, in August, after losing what was the latest in a line of go-nowhere jobs and watching her former boyfriend slip into the pitfalls of alcohol and drug abuse, Lopez found herself on her own - and on the streets.

Last week, Lopez shed the yoke of homelessness when, with a referral from the Veterans Administration, she moved into the Genesis Apartments, a 75-unit low-income complex that was established specifically for military veterans at 1455 S. Main St.

"I'm so relieved that I will finally have a place where I can walk in, lay my purse down, lock the door behind me and feel safe," Lopez said after filling out paperwork to move in on Dec. 18.

"Now I can focus on taking care of myself, going back to school, getting a job - anything to get myself back to being a productive person."

Erected on the site of the old MASH Village homeless shelter, the Genesis Apartments pushed Las Vegas over the 6,000-unit plateau for building low-income private housing during the last 11 years.

Genesis, which opened in November, also was the third low-income housing structure built in Las Vegas since 1999 by the New York-based HELP USA, a 20-year-old nonprofit organization that has constructed more than 1,600 low-income housing units nationwide and provides counseling and job placement assistance for its tenants.

Its first project here was the 120-unit St. Vincent/HELP Apartments on Main Street.

Genesis' first phase was built for $8.7 million, with $1.3 million from federal funds funneled through Las Vegas, $400,000 from the VA, $600,000 from Clark County and $6.4 million from HELP USA through its sale of low-income housing tax credits to private industry.

The other two phases will add 125 more apartments at a cost of about $16 million. Completion is expected by the end of 2008.

Genesis Phase 1 is more than half full with 42 men and four women.

Lopez, albeit just briefly, had been a troubling statistic in several categories lumped under the term of homelessness:

"At Genesis, one of our goals is to help restore pride and dignity," said Beverly Johnson, executive director for Genesis and for HELP USA's other low-income veterans housing complex, the 75-unit Bonanza View Apartments, which was built at 640 McKnight St. in 2001.

"It's one thing to get someone off of the streets and into an apartment, but it's another to remove the persona of being homeless. This is not a pity party here. You are treated like you are not homeless anymore."

Average monthly rent for Genesis' apartments is $250, and is based on a formula that takes the client's income into account.

Amenities include 24-hour security, a laundry facility, an exercise room, a storage facility, a computer room, ceiling fans, full-size refrigerators, an intercom system and paid utilities. Services include employment counseling, case management and educational assistance.

Clarence Kirsch, a 60-year-old Navy veteran, pays $171 a month in rent at Genesis, which he says enables him to get by on his sole source of income, a $603 monthly Social Security disability check.

"I could not afford housing any other way," said Kirsch, a retired truck driver who has lived in area shelters for four years and in the Bonanza View veterans apartments the last three years.

"I can afford to live here if I stay out of the casinos. My one luxury is $49 a month for cable TV. I have a roof over my head. I'm happy."

Marcia Evans, program manager for the local Veterans Administration community-based outreach program, said projects such as Genesis are vital to the VA's goal of vastly reducing the number of homeless veterans.

"A third of the homeless in this country are veterans," she said. "Therefore addressing the issue of veterans' homelessness is important to us."

Evans said several factors contribute to so many veterans being homeless, including the impact of war on their mental status and disabilities from wounds and other health complications.

VA research has found that 45 percent of homeless veterans suffer from mental illness and 70 percent have drug or alcohol problems.

As a result, Evans said, finding decent and affordable housing for veterans such as Lopez has become a high priority for the VA in recent years.

"We've made progress in Las Vegas when you consider that six years ago we had nothing here," she said. "It's slow, but it is progress."

Of the thousands of apartments that have been built in Las Vegas since 1995 that meet the federal definition of low-income housing, only 187 units in three complexes have been earmarked specifically for the homeless. St. Vincent/HELP is the largest of them.

More specifically, only two complexes totaling 150 units - Genesis and Bonanza View - were built primarily to assist homeless veterans.

Stephen Harsin, director of neighborhood services for Las Vegas, said the greatest need for low-income and affordable housing has been for poor families and seniors, some of whom could have come from the ranks of the homeless, but not necessarily.

Since 1995, 25 low-income family complexes with 3,765 units were built in Las Vegas.

During that same time, Harsin said, 15 complexes with 1,843 units were built for seniors.

Also in the last 11 years, two complexes with 49 low-rent units have been built for the disabled, and 40 scattered units, including Habitat for Humanity homes, have been erected, bringing to 6,034 the number of affordable housing units within the city's limits.

Harsin said future low-income projects likely will be affected by skyrocketing real estate prices and higher construction costs. He said the city will continue to attempt to increase subsidies to encourage developers to continue doing such projects amid those rising costs.

"A lot of this comes from federal funding through HUD (Housing and Urban Development), where there is never enough money to go around," Harsin said. "We leverage what we do have as far as we can."

Larry Belinsky, chief executive and president of HELP USA, agrees that more money needs to be set aside by Washington to help defray capital costs, as incentives for developers to build these apartments.

"And there needs to be more counseling and education (for tenants). It is a lot more than just giving a person a key and a lease," Belinsky said.

Tim Whitright, manager of the city's Neighborhood Services development division, says when it comes to potential new low-income housing, some residents have expressed a not-in-my-back yard attitude, labeling low-income housing as cheap and substandard. Many such complexes like Genesis are sturdy, modern and attractive.

For homeless people such as Linda Lopez, who desperately wanted to get off the streets, the more choices for low-income housing the better.

"Because we cannot afford first and last months' rent, deposits and all that stuff, many of us are forced to couch-surf from the homes of friends to the homes of family," she said. "Finally you say, 'Enough is enough.' You wake up each day and think that today things have to change.

"Tomorrow I will wake up and for the first time in four months things will have changed for me. It was my lucky day to be referred here."

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