Tuesday, May 30, 2006 | 7:21 a.m.
Family Promise was, by all accounts, a great program.
For 10 years the nonprofit has shepherded homeless families to churches, synagogues or mosques for the night.
The group's West Las Vegas headquarters, where families did laundry or showered and their children played, operated so quietly that apparently no one really knew exactly what was going on inside the two-story house at 502 Van Buren Ave.
But when a zoning conflict pushed Family Promise before the City Council, the organization was the unfortunate victim of complaints that the is home to too many social service programs.
"It's time for the neighborhood to draw a line in the sand," said Councilman Lawrence Weekly, who represents the economically depressed area between Bonanza Road and Lake Mead Boulevard and Martin Luther King Boulevard and Interstate 15.
Echoing comments from some of his constituents, Weekly said the neighborhood's prospects for economic prosperity are limited by the concentration of social service providers there.
For years the city oversaw the expansion of social service facilities for the homeless and needy in and around West Las Vegas.
There's the shelter and free food provided by the Salvation Army and Las Vegas Rescue Mission, as well as job training and a state welfare office in the half-empty Nucleus Business Plaza. AIDS treatment programs also are found there, and Weekly says illegally open halfway houses also are scattered throughout the area.
It is all the result, Weekly says, of "years of bad zoning in the area."
"It was convenient and there was the homeless corridor to the east, so there was the thinking that it all made sense to have everything centralized," Weekly said.
"But what you have done is continuously attract a population of people that need help."
Now, however, the pendulum appears to be swinging in the other direction.
"If the west side is ever going to come back, we can't have more of these social service things in the neighborhood," Mayor Oscar Goodman said.
Weekly said the solution is to stop new social programs from moving into the area, while working to bring new housing to West Las Vegas.
The city has helped Habitat for Humanity build houses there, and the city also holds seven properties earmarked for private development. Some of those properties are within a few blocks of the Family Promise headquarters, but city leaders insist they are not eyeing the Family Promise land for future development.
It's is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city - it is home to a 1923 schoolhouse that was one of the city's first - and also is just northwest of downtown. Both factors, some say, contribute to its status as one of the poorer parts of the Las Vegas Valley.
The neighborhood is now closer to being the geographic center of the city, as the city's population and boundaries have expanded west and north over the years. And as in most other cities, as Las Vegas' population grew, many of those who could afford to left the inner city for the suburbs.
Being close to downtown put the neighborhood close to the bus and train stations, and the traditional centers of government services.
As nongovernmental services for the needy sprang up and grew, it was natural to set up shop near those who would need the services.
Spreading services among all neighborhoods would make it more difficult for those in need to get help, while centralizing services near the targeted population provides economies of scale and convenience, said Keith Schwer, director of UNLV's Center for Business and Economic Research.
But Schwer also said that being home to a cluster of social service facilities tends to make an area less attractive to potential home buyers and businesses.
"So in essence you are sacrificing one neighborhood for the better of the whole," Schwer said.
UNLV sociology professor Ron Smith says the central issue is about much more than where social service programs are located.
"The fundamental issue here is poverty, and that's a pocket of poverty," Smith said of West Las Vegas. "It wouldn't change if you took out the social services programs. What would that do to the people who they are helping? Those programs are there because that is where the need is."
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, in the ZIP code that makes up nearly all of West Las Vegas, 21.2 percent of the households were below the poverty level, with the median household income being about $28,500. Nationally, 9.2 percent of households were under the poverty level and the median income was nearly $42,000.
Las Vegas Rescue Mission Pastor Jeff Chaves said some of his neighbors depend on the mission to make it through the month.
"Part of what we do is feed people who have a need, and some of those people live in the area," he said. Toward the end of every month, the number of meals served daily jumps to more than 500, up from the normal 375.
Willie Baker, a neighborhood resident for 33 years and security guard at the Nucleus Business Plaza, said that for now, the neighborhood needs those service providers and needs them close by.
"The majority of people don't have transportation," Baker said. "We're better off with them than without them."
Douglas Bell, the Clark County manager of community resources, said that while there are legitimate arguments both for concentrating more services in the area and dispersing them throughout the city, a dramatic change is unlikely anytime soon.
"These are facilities no one wants near them, and that's why it's almost impossible to move them," he said.
That has not stopped West Las Vegas from attracting some development. The newly renovated Edmond Town Center is home to several businesses, and the city's Enterprise Business Park also is filling. But a telling sign of the daunting challenges ahead can be found in the fact that the city has not yet had any takers on the numerous incentives it was offered to attract a supermarket to move into the neighborhood.
The key, Councilman Larry Brown said, is to be patient.
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