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He was ready; help was there
A new, more active approach to aiding the chronically homeless has begun to pay off
Sam Morris
For years, Charles Jones lived on the streets, drinking and smoking crack and rejecting offers of assistance. When, at age 55, he was finally ready for help, Linda Lera-Randle El’s Straight from the Streets program got him into an apartment, then provided help with his addictions.
Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Homeless advocate Linda Lera-Randle El testifies before the Assembly Health and Human Services Committee in 2003 in Carson City. Lera-Randle El's approach of going to potential clients rather than waiting for them to seek help has gained support in government circles.
Sun Archives
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- Homeless people swept from downtown camps (5-6-2002)
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- Homeless driven from desert site (3-8-2002)
In 2004, state legislators budgeted $4.2 million for helping the hard-core homeless. It was the first time the state had targeted money at the issue.
At the time, this meant nothing to Charles Jones. Several months later, he woke up near a fence on A Street downtown and decided he wanted out of smoking four or five $20 bags of crack a day and drinking a case of beer and a half-gallon of Jack Daniels a week. After seven years of living on the streets, Jones, then 55, had lifted his head a bit.
Enter Linda Lera-Randle El. Director of the nonprofit organization Straight from the Streets, she had reached her own turning point of sorts.
After years of helping homeless people like Jones off the streets without government money, she agreed to participate in the state-funded pilot project in which six organizations would target the problem of chronic homelessness. A minority in number, the chronically homeless are the men and women who stay on the streets the longest, often costing the system more than the rest combined as they cycle through jails, emergency rooms and shelters.
“I thought I would have to sell out,” Lera-Randle El said about taking the state money. A decade earlier, she had served as interim director for MASH Village, a homeless shelter that received public money and eventually folded amid controversy in 2003. “But then I thought I also would have a lot more people at my back,” she said.
The funding would go to a larger nonprofit organization, HELP of Southern Nevada, which in turn would distribute money to agencies treating mental illness and addiction, as well as Lera-Randle El’s group.
Saying yes was also easier for Lera Randle-El because the money came with few strings attached, basically allowing her to formalize what was an unconventional way of working with a group many see as intransigent.
“These are people who don’t fit in other programs,” Lera-Randle El said.
Four years later, the pilot project has become permanent, now relying on funding from Clark County. And Straight from the Street’s approach has become almost standard for the other organizations: Get out of the office and go where the chronically homeless live — in tunnels, alleys and washes. Build relationships with patience and care. Offer housing “straight from the streets,” without putting up hurdles such as going straight or sober first. Make round-the-clock services available to the formerly homeless in their new apartments. Be flexible.
The success of this approach, called “housing first” by experts in social services, has been documented elsewhere, most notably in New York City’s Pathways to Housing. Since 2005, the Las Vegas Valley project has helped at least 650 people. About 45 percent have stayed in housing at least 12 months, setting straight chaotic lives, said Myrna Pili, director of social services for HELP.
Along the way, dozens of social workers and others who work with the homeless have been trained to apply the approach, stepping out of the confines of most government and private programs.
“It’s been a transforming effort as far as social services for the homeless,” said Nancy McLane, director of Clark County Social Service. The county provides about $1.5 million annually to the program — but doesn’t dictate how the money is spent. “People who are the experts come up with the model,” she said.
McLane and Pili both pointed to another measure of the program’s success: fewer people dying on the valley’s streets. In 2005, when the program started, 75 homeless people died in the valley; by 2008, that number had dropped to 48.
When Jones said he was ready to get off the streets, Lera-Randle El had been saying hello to him most days for years. She would tell him, “You don’t have to live like this,” he recalled.
“I told her, ‘When I get ready, I’ll holler. Till then, let’s just be friends,’ ” he drawled, his voice still dripping with the sound of his hometown, Monroe, La. He found odd jobs while living on the streets, but that was “workin’ for the dope man,” he said.
Work became harder when he suffered a hernia. Lera-Randle El said she could take him to the doctor, help him apply for social services, get a roof over his head.
The doctor also diagnosed him with bad arthritis in the shoulders and knees. Lera-Randle El told him, “Your knees and shoulders aren’t getting any better. If you don’t stop (smoking crack and drinking) your heart’s also gonna give up,” Jones recalled.
Lera-Randle El got HELP’s drug counselor, Ed Vega, to talk to Jones. One day, she brought him some keys to an apartment. Unfortunately, the apartment wasn’t far enough away from old friends. Jones failed to pass several consecutive drug tests, Lera-Randle El said.
“I didn’t kick him out. That would just put him on someone else’s doorstep,” she said.
So she stuck with Jones, connecting him with Harris Springs Ranch, an addiction treatment program near Mount Charleston run by WestCare, another partner in the project.
Within a year, he was clean. He moved to his current apartment near Eastern and Washington avenues and hasn’t turned back. He lives on $892 monthly Social Security disability checks and is back in touch with his family.
Jones said it was Lera-Randle El’s approach that brought him to get off A Street four years ago.
“She would give you a way out, an option. It gives you somethin’ to think about,” he said. “And she would say it like your big sister: ‘I care about you. But, you got to care more about yourself.’ ”
Discussion: 63 comments so far…
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This well-researched article makes a much-needed distinction between people who are on the streets due to addictions and the mainstream homeless, who are primarily victims of our deteriorating economy. It states (accurately) that this "hard core" group is now a minority among the homeless.
I hope this program is successful. However, let's not forget the rapidly growing number of families (mainly women and children) whose reasons for being homeless are entirely economic in origin.
No child should ever experience the hardships and dangers of life on the streets. I'd be interested in seeing an article which focuses on this extremely vulnerable segment of our homeless population (whose numbers are considerable), and what we as a community can do to help.
nationalhomeless.org
If this program had unlimited funds everybody would be off the streets and in apartments. As it stands there is just about enough money for a precious few.
This is completely deceiving. This man is getting a FREE check every month, plus the agency is TAPPING EVERY FUNDING STREAM in his name due to him "QUALIFYING" for being "DUAL DIAGNOSES & DISABLED"; if the homeless person DOES NOT QUALIFY they are left on the streets to perish! This man will NEVER WORK AGAIN (he'll lose his apartment & free everything)!
If you do did not win the "DISABILITY LOTTERY" (takes years) they will not help you! You are left on the streets!
These POVERTY PIMPS like to use the term "Chronic Homeless", but what that means is those people are likely to receive SSI welfare payments which allows the poverty pimps to tap other MASSIVE TAXPAYER PAID programs that keeps the cash flowing into THEIR bank accounts; other homeless are in the same bad/worse conditions, but not qualified for disability are left on the streets to rot!
!00% of the homeless could be eliminated if ALL THE HOMELESS FUNDING went to HOUSING and not paychecks/benefits/pensions of the POVERTY PIMPS and their insane & worthless programs that HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH HOUSING!
So what if he uses crack or alcohol in his apartment; NOW HE IS JUST LIKE 80% of the other Las Vegas residents that DO TOO!
These agencies "THAT CARE", only care if there is massive funding they can tap in the person's name; no funding-no help!
There are homeless veterans lingering & wasting away in horrifying prison-like Rescue Mission shelters, who have not drank a beer in decades but are labeled chronic street inebriates in order to get massive funding for their mat on the filthy floor (most were regular drinkers and never have been drunks, but no funding in that).
"A new, more active approach to aiding the chronically homeless"
WHAT A LIE! It's all MANDATORY 12-Step Religious Cult Conversion, Evangelical Christianity Insanity, Group therapy for life, and handfuls of brain-frying meds! The same old FAILED programs, but with a pretty new bow attached!
There are homeless veterans (sober as can be) literally crawling in HORRIFYING PAIN along the soup kitchen lines for meals with stacks of VA Disability Determination Letters, in hand, STAMPED IN RED LETTERS: CLAIM DENIED!
If any of you "struggling" people reading this had a beer last night and woke up this morning with your home/apt on fire and had to go to a shelter, that beer you had will get you LABELED AN ALCOHOLIC FOR LIFE by the intake worker at the shelter; meaning YEARS & YEARS of alcohol treatment meeting, mental illness group therapy.
Don't believe me? Call up any of the homeless shelters and tell them you need housing...The first question they ask is if you have been "Clean & Sober" for the past 90 days; If not (you had one beer the night before, remember?), YOU ARE A FULL-FLEDGED STREET GUTTER DRUNK requiring years of THEIR treatment!
rejco,
Absolutely. Drug and alcohol "treatment" is where the government funding is. I've heard numerous accounts of homeless people who are told they can't access services unless they sign a statement "admitting" they are addicts.
This practice also helps the City villify the homeless in public opinion and gain public support for its Draconian anti-homeless ordinances. It can point out that most of the homeless "admit" to being substance-addicted, which makes the community far less sympathetic to their plight.
Directors and the administrative staff of non-profits should be limited by law to a very minimal paycheck. Most are now far better paid than the average citizen. Actually, many of these positions could (and should) be filled by volunteers.
there are so many children living in poverty that it makes me sad to see grown adult crackheads get so much funding when they are in their situation by choice, but children are not.
not to mention that our school teachers and fire fighters are taking pay cuts and have limited resources.
In the POVERTY PIMP industry, there is NO SUCH THING as a nice glass of wine with dinner or a beer after work (unless it's at one of their Ritzy Fund Raisers with the Rich & Beautiful people), Any alcohol use IS STREET-GUTTER SUBSTANCE ABUSE requiring THEIR TREATMENT for life (or as long as taxpayer funding is available).
I hope they clean up Las Vegas on fremont St.
I was in Las Vegas in aug. I saw this little old lady sitting on the ground and looked half dead.
She took this hamburge and ate it like she was starving. When she was done she had it all over her face.I ask the local people why this happens.
They are on crack and cannot help them.I think
Las Vegas has a big drug mess and they need to fix it,not jail rehab.
This "EX" crack addict is waiting for the day his CASE WORKER slacks on the SPYING & SNOOPING so he can get his "HO'S" moved-in and his party going again.
You REALLY think he is thriving & lov'in life sitting in a group therapy circle daily listing to people gripe about everything, and when finished with the daily group therapy taking the bus for two hours to his daily 12-Step religious cult NA meeting listening to people gripe for hours, and then when finished back on the bus for another hour to his 12-step religious cult AA meeting to listen to people gripe?
Boy are you people gullible!
wolf85023, that lady was not homeless, she was a vacationer; Las Vegas is so desperate for people, the LV Visitor's & Convention Bureau is marketing to State Insane Asylums & Dementia Homes.
If the "Higher Power" of the 12-Step Religious Cult works, then why do the POVERTY PIMPS drug test their clients with UA's? Isn't the "Higher Power" real? And POWERFUL?
Just looking at the photos of Lera-Randle El and Charles Jones, I noticed that both look very obese and well-fed.
As a taxpayer, I am required to feed these people.
Meanwhile, broke employers are throwing their employees into the street.
What's wrong here?
The "Chronic Homeless" population has a GUARANTEED taxpayer funding stream that gets the POVERTY PIMPS MILLIONS of Guaranteed Taxpayer Funding flowing to their bank accounts (while giving the most needy nasty living conditions & rotten food-bank bean slurry). All other "REGULAR" homeless funding is being cut around the nation. Linda Lera-Randle El is just following the money trail ( stepping over other needy homeless along the way).
I have problem with POVERTY PIMPS spending over $100,000 in taxpayer funding for a "Chronic Homeless" person to be put in a sleazy-drug infested apt complex (not worth more than $450 a month), in a neighborhood one block from his crack dealer, and two blocks from his five girls working the streets corners for him!
Think I'm Joking...
Usually the apts. the Poverty Pimps place their clients in are owned by the Poverty Pimp employee's husbands/wives; where a dumpy $350 a month roach-motel apt. MIRACULOUSLY becomes a "SOBER LIVING" apt where 5 guys/bunkbeds are packed in a one bedroom place with taxpayers paying a total of $4,000 a month in subsidies and a mandatory 12-Step religious cult's AA/NA attendance clause to make it SEEM legit!
Look at that picture; he has that "This place sucks, God I need a hit" look, doesn't he?
SCHNORCHE, At the Soup Kitchens around the nation, more food goes out the back kitchen doors to awaiting Staff cars/trucks than out the front doors for starving people & children!
According to the most recent information I can find, there are more than FIVE THOUSAND homeless children in the Las Vegas area. If these families conform to national statistics, fewer than seven percent of their parents are drug or alcohol-addicted. It's all about the economy.
These families are not getting the attention and help they deserve because so much of the focus is on the most visable element among the homeless. I wish there was more attention being given to helping the youngest victims of this horrific economy instead of people who have given their lives over to addictions.
rejco, in my opinion, I thought he was thinking that if this taxpayer funded freebie runs out, where should I start mugging people?
All the money available is due the HUGE LOBBYING EFFORTS of 12-Step Religious cult affiliated "TREATMENT" Centers (which are all ran by EXTREMELY WEALTHY "12-STEPPER")
The "FREE" 12-STEP AA/NA religious cult-in-denial (and thousands of other Anonymous Groups AA LICENSES for money) is a $30 billion a year industry.
AA 12-Steps, for an organization that CLAIMS no affiliation with anything, they sure are snuggles with all the courts, homeless programs DMV DUII program,..........
AA's 12-Step Religious cult IS affiliated with every org. dealing with any & all human behaviors....AND PROBLEMS ARE EXPLODING AND GETTING WORSE
WHERE IS THIS "HIGHER POWER" that each person can make-up and conjure up? They even have Migraine Anonymous meetings, BUT NO ONE IN ITS HISTORY HAS EVER BEEN CURED/RELIEVED OF MIGRAINES. NO ONE!
WHERE IS IT? "Higher Power" SHOW YOURSELF!
Lets see if this woman can get a homeless person without a SSI/SSDI/VA disability check coming in every month an apt, and job with living wage income.....
IT WON"T HAPPEN!
There are THOUSANDS & THOUSANDS of homeless people that have DONE EVERYTHING PERFECTLY THE POVERTY PIMP PROGRAMS REQUIRE AND ARE STILL HOMELESS, NO TRADE/CAREER SKILLS, AND NO JOB, not even on the horizon.
AA rents out the 12-Steps & 12-Traditions to all the "Anonymous" groups, and receives massive royalties in the millions of dollars every year. The AA World Services headquarter's ARCHIVES in New York City are harder to access than the Roman Catholic Church's in the Vatican. All its dirty little secrets are locked away....
so now were screening people on who deserves help everbody that;s on the streets are there for the most parts of makeing bad dessions in life.No matter what the case may be,some have drug problems some have gambleing problems and some just dont know how to manege money.so take ur pick!
if they know that this loser is doing crack, why is he not in jail? last I checked, it is illegal to possess and use crack! instead, he gets taxpayer freebies while we are in a recession!
Guess who the biggest customer of AA World Services 12-Step Religious Cult literature?
The UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT & it's institutions...
You keep on paying for people to go through religious treatment after religious treatment after more religious treatment after even more religious treatment.......aren't you going to wonder when the "Higher Power" kicks in?
How come AA World Service does not follow the 12-Steps & Traditions and put all its KNOWLEDGE available on one server with EVERYTHING AVAILABLE for downloads for free WITH NO COPYRIGHT? A Killer server would cost $10,000 and a DEDICATED & LOYAL 12-Stepper system Admin could keep it up to date as part of his "Service Work". Nothing compared to its minimum of $10 million in income EVERY YEAR!
Don't they say "You have to give it away"
I researched the scandal plagued ZILLION DOLLAR TAXPAYER FUNDED shut-down MASH Village she ran into the ground, every client that ever passed through the doors is dead, in an mental institution under heavy sedation & in straight jackets, or more addicted than ever before and running rampantly through the streets of Las Vegas like wild animals!
nevadaappleslices, if he goes to jail, their meal ticket ends! He's a cash cow!
I wonder if you people care this much about health care?
People, call up Linda Lera-Randle El and ask her HOW MUCH DID IT COST TAXPAYERS TO GET HIM IN THAT PLACE; TOTAL: From His "A" Street awakening to that apt. HOW MUCH MONEY! ALL COSTS!
PEOPLE, if she told you (and she won't, due to privacy issues) YOU WOULD BE IN COMPLETE CARDIAC ARREST!
I read another article on Linda Lera-Randle El, she goes to homeless encampments searching out people on SSI/SSDI/VA disability checks so she can start cash flowing her way; all other homeless are IGNORED!
tysuave77,
For the majority of the homeless, it's no longer about "poor choices" or drugs. As this article points out, the man it features is a member of what is now a minority element among the homeless.
Near-record rates of unemployment, the loss of millions of living-wage technological and manufacturing jobs to 3rd-world countries, falling wages combined with rising prices, and the massive destruction of this country's more affordable housing through "redevelopment" are now the main reasons people are homeless.
nationalhomeless.org
if this guy does crack, that is "poor choice"!
nevadapppleslices,
Of course it is. My point was that for most of the people who are currently homeless (which includes a great many families), drugs and "poor choices" had little or nothing to do with their situation.
Its parasite incubation programs such as this that fester the very social disease that continues to hemorrhage the working-class tax-paying-chump.
Moving street parasites to tax funded housing projects as social security recipients only exacerbates the troubling issue of social mental illness accompanied by laziness.
Helping society begins by returning these "pay-offs" to America's deserving working class.
Pathetic.
: (
If the crack head needs a house let his dealer pay for it! These adult addicts should not receive one single penny. What a waste of your life smoking crack and asking for handouts. Let him have the consequences of his actions because he chose it. Crack is not cheap! 4-5 bags a day? This guy spent plenty of money buy crack. Put a bullet in his head and be done.
Now this man gets FREE EVERYTHING for the rest of his life for being what I call the "ABLE DISABLED"; all he has to do for the rest of his life is spew "I'm in recovery" & "One day at a Time" & "I'm off to a meeting" mumble-jumbo and he's set! The checks are guaranteed FOR LIFE!
So inspiring to see that there are people out there who care for those less well off.
Everyone who is down and out deserves every chance to get back into life.
A Nation in pain can be healed, if only by mending one damaged life at a time.
God bless him and those who were big enough people to care.
yeah lordglenmore, because after this guy gets all of these handouts from taxpayers, I bet that he becomes a doctor and helps others around him. not.
Now he is no longer homeless, the odds are a lot better that pretty soon he could be a tax payer too. Wheras before he had no chance at all.
I would rather see my taxes spent on helping people than funding Nasa to bomb the moon.
There are 2 mentally retarded/ Down's syndrome kids working their butts off at my local grocery store in produce, backroom, checkout line and THEY HAVE NO PROBLEMS WORKING with their incredible challenges; and they have been there for years!
Give this guy a broom and dustpan and tell him to start sweeping LAS VEGAS!
Get that fat well fed con artist a brrom and cut off his funding! Linda Lera-Randle El needs to be stopped! She is a money hungry pig.
are you kidding me? what kind of work ethic is a crackhead (or even ex-crackhead) going to have? in my opinion, scumbag druggies like this belong in jail and not in taxpayer paid housing. personally, I don't believe that guys like this are ever going to pay taxes, let alone taxes to cover the taxpayer handouts that he is getting? this money should be going to help truly disabled people, and especially children.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqKdLKfnE...
Who lit the fire under rejco100's ass?
yea that's the key lock someone up for haveing a drug habit.I bet some of you people lock yourself's up in the house next to a gun and watch fox news all day!!
too people have computers and time on their hands -- I request that the staff review the junk on here!
nevadaappleslices said, "in my opinion, scumbag druggies like this belong in jail and not in taxpayer paid housing."
Gee, I wonder who pays for inmates in jail? Hmm... taxpayers?
so i just suggested removal of my comments so the staff would see this a here crap!
recoc100 I want you to know you are the reason I keep reading these articles. You are right 100 percent. Keep spreding the truth!
They should have staked him out, followed him to hid crack dealer, then BUSTED THE DEALER!
If money was provided for each person on earth, no one would be homeless.
Each person just has to be responsible for himself. This means some planning for contingencies, saving (whats that???) for a rainy day, and not just sitting around because one 'can't find a job".
Unfortunately, the alternative to the above is swelling ranks of homeless. I know this seems heartless, but its true.
Want to increase homelessness? Reward it.
Homelessness is usually, but not always the result of poor decision making. Personal responsibilty is a lost cause. It's easy to blame others and not look in the mirror at the true problem.
Government is not the answer.
If there's governmnet run health care and I don't work, will it be free?
If the government sponsors free college education, why work?
Free is never free. Someone pays for it. Put the health insurance companies out of business and then who pays the taxes to pay for government run health care?
My point being that so many libs think big business is bad, put them away and who pays?
We do. The more the Preident drives business away, the more your taxes will rise.
Lefties dems want government as a cradle to grave neccesity to justify their existence.
How about a centerist, moderate approach?
Oh and by the way Barack, it's not all about you, it's all about us.
Where do I sign up?