Homeless plan shifts to awareness

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Saturday, Jan. 28, 2006 | 8:19 a.m.

A regional committee has approved a stripped-down proposal to use advertising for helping the homeless, 16 months after the plan was first pitched.

The idea is to work with Brown & Partners, a local ad agency volunteering its time, on a campaign that will "educate the community" about who the homeless are, why it is important to help them and what they need to get off the street, said Shannon West, regional homeless services coordinator.

The campaign does not exist yet. The next step is to form a small group that will develop it, West said.

The regional committee, composed of administrators from local governments and representatives from private groups and Metro Police, voted for the plan Jan. 19.

The plan is different from what was originally described by the committee in late 2004 as a way of overcoming difficulties in raising funds to help the homeless.

Now the idea is to first "raise awareness," West said.

"Before people invest in something, they need to be educated about it," she said.

The committee, led by Clark County Manager Thom Reilly, was formed in 2003 after another group, led by Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, folded. Goodman's group stopped meeting after voters failed to back a bill that would have raised property taxes to help the homeless.

The new committee formed a trust fund for private donations and began floating the idea of using advertising to stimulate the private sector to contribute.

Nearly 1 1/2 years later, however, the trust fund has only $10,000. The ad campaign originally was supposed to be developed last February, according to committee minutes.

Neither Reilly nor West could say why the plan was not presented until now. Reilly said the trust fund's modest receipts, the length of time it took to come up with a plan and the changes were not nearly as important as other work that the committee had done in the last year.

"We can't look at one piece that isn't working," Reilly said. "We have to look at the whole movement of dealing with the issue.

"We have raised more money than ever before from the federal government and got money from the state for the first time," he said, referring to an annual Housing and Urban Development grant of $5.3 million and a Legislature-awarded grant of $4 million.

He also said the original idea of how to raise money had been changed after the committee saw that "human capital" -- getting employees to volunteer at events to help the homeless, for example -- was an important first step.

"Billboards and commercials elsewhere haven't worked," he said. "That isn't going to increase the money available" for the homeless.

Timothy Pratt can be reached at 259-8828 or at timothy@lasvegassun.com.