Commissioner says county should rehab more motels for homeless intake, not build a mega campus

In the years Leonard Martinez spent living on the streets in Southern Nevada, he has never tried staying at one of the homeless shelters. For the last couple years, he has opted to stay by himself in a homeless encampment near Summerlin.

Until recently, the 61-year-old, who has struggled with panic attacks throughout his life and has been chronically homelessness since 1989, hadn’t slept in a bed in nearly two years. 

That changed this month when Martinez came to Clark County’s new Navigation Center, an old Motel 6 property in East Las Vegas converted into an intake center for unhoused individuals.

Along with a bed and a hot meal, service providers will help Martinez and other residents obtain identification, apply for health insurance, get long overdue medical screenings and figure out next steps to fully exit homelessness. 

The center opens as Southern Nevada has seen an increase in homelessness and housing insecurity in recent years and officials have struggled to respond to the crisis.

Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom, who has worked four years to open the facility, wants to convert more motels into intake centers in order to scatter resources for the unhoused population throughout the valley.

In the recent legislation session, lobbyists for the casino and resort industry backed Assembly Bill 528, which established a $100 million matching fund to build a centralized campus, similar to the Courtyard Resource Homeless Center in the City of Las Vegas, to be a new hub for homeless resources.

“We don’t want a $100 million courtyard,” Segerblom said. “Our thought is rather than have a giant courtyard to have 10 of these (navigation centers) with that same money. We are working to see if that legislation will permit that. Hopefully it will.”

AB 528 was sponsored by Speaker Steve Yeager and introduced on the third-to-last day of the 120-day session.

The inspiration behind the project is Haven for Hope, a regional homelessness “transformational campus” in San Antonio, Texas. The same model was used to build Las Vegas’ courtyard, which has operated since 2018.

The proposed campus could possibly be located near the Grant Sawyer Building, less than a mile from the Corridor of Hope, an area near downtown Las Vegas where homeless resources, including Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada, Salvation Army and the Courtyard, are already located.

“The city has their courtyard, but that’s a huge facility,” Segerblom said. “We are trying to avoid that and have smaller places like this around the valley. The goal is to have enough navigation centers to address the population.”

AB 528 was overwhelmingly supported by lobbyists from the resort and casino industry. 

Segerblom said he had “very limited” conversation with lawmakers prior to the drafting or passing the bill.

“That was the hotel process,” Segerblom said. “The casinos decided this is what they wanted to do. They went to San Antonio and decided this was perfect for us.”

The Current asked Yeager how much input was sought from the county and homeless service providers before drafting the bill and if the legislation as passed could fund navigation centers.

Yeager didn’t respond to requests for comment.

‘An entry point’ for the unhoused

Homelessness has been on the rise in Southern Nevada, as well as across the nation.

The 2022 Point-in-Time Count, an annual snapshot of homelessness on one particular night, counted 5,645 people. It was 5,083 in 2021. An estimated 13,972 were expected to experience homelessness in 2022, up from 13,076 the previous year.

Clark County manager Kevin Schiller pointed to rising rents as the reason the valley is seeing more people enter into homelessness, in particular among families.

“The need is much higher than the resources we have,” he said.

The new 70-bed center is designed to temporarily house homeless adults without children.

Located near downtown, the facility allows for case management, which is provided by the health care company WellCare, and for people to get connected to the resources and services they need to potentially exit homelessness.

They can do this while having a warm shower, a hot meal and consistent roof over their head, though they might have to share a room.

Segerblom called the facility an “entry point” for the unhoused, who will either be referred there by other agencies or dropped off by law enforcement as an alternative to jail.

“When I got in this morning, there was a cop car here,” Segerblom said. “The cop had picked up a homeless guy at the airport. A lot of homeless people are going into the airport because it’s cool and they can charge their phone. But they can’t stay there.”

Last week, when parts of Southern Nevada saw heavy rain, Martinez struggled to stay dry. It was at that point he met a police officer who told him about the center.

“Some officers aren’t as nice,” Martinez said. “I learned that the hard way.”

Not every experience with law enforcement, Martinez said, has been great. He said during the pandemic when he struggled to stay sheltered, he experienced harassment from officers for staying near Boca Park near Summerlin.

Segerblom acknowledged that relying on law enforcement to refer people might hinder unhoused folks from coming to the center: “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

“Maybe we don’t use police and we have social worker teams,” he added. “A lot of times you have to have police involved to accept services.”

Segerblom said the facility is more cost efficient than unhoused folks being taken to jail or going into the emergency room, which are typically utilized by those experiencing homelessness absent of other services or forms of housing.

Embracing non-congregate shelters in covid

During the pandemic, Schiller said there were issues with traditional congregate shelters.

Some shelters had to temporarily shut down due to covid outbreaks or offer a reduced amount of beds to prevent the spread of the virus.

Within the first month of the pandemic, the parking lot of Cashman Field was used to provide nightly sleeping accommodations for unhoused individuals, but the setup received ample criticism after photos circulated showing people sleeping on the ground.

The county began securing master leases for entire motels, including Super 8, Rodeway Inn and LaQuinta, to offer non congregation shelter, or private and individual rooms, for those experiencing homelessness, both individuals as well as families.

“What we typically do is look at a provider and master lease the entire property and then we bring the services and provider in to manage that,” he said.

Nearly 1,000 units have been created since 2020, Schiller said. 

From March 15, 2020 until Nov. 30, 2022, the county served 4,766 clients at non congregate shelters.

The new navigation center, Segerblom said, is designed to have a “rapid turnover” to be only for 30 days to help “get people on their feet.” Afterward, people can move to other transitional housing units.

Since the current center took four years to bring online, which Segerblom said was delayed because of the pandemic, he wasn’t sure how long it would take to create additional centers.

But there could be an additional issue on the horizon.

Residents around the valley have voiced concerns about the rising number of unhoused folks setting up encampments in neighborhoods and parks.

“The truth is, a lot of people don’t have a place to live, so are living on the street or in the wash,” Segerblom said. “My constituents complain they are in their neighborhoods.”

Though adding more navigation centers could help with that, Segerblom said it’s a possibility residents might also oppose those facilities too saying “not in my backyard.”

The success of the inaugural center, he said, could help mitigate some of the concerns from neighbors.

Segerblom stands by the desire to spread facilities across the valley rather than concentrating it on one specific area.

“Anytime you concentrate people in an area, it’s going to create problems for the neighbors,” he said. “No one wants to put it in Summerlin. They always want to come to East Las Vegas.”