On one of the first warm mornings this spring, Clark County officials hosted a ribbon cutting at the site of the former Safari Motel on Fremont Street—now a bridge housing complex that provides supportive services for 50 clients at a time, or up to 184 homeless adults per year.
With U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford present, officials announced the 90-day bridge housing program was made possible through public-private partnerships. Although the housing is not exclusive to veterans, the local chapter of the national nonprofit U.S. Vets runs the housing, known as the BETterment Community.
Since opening in late February, the complex has served more than 20 clients, according to staff. Stephen, 56, a resident who declined to provide his last name, told the Weekly that he feels staffers there “want you to succeed.” Prior to losing his job at a gaming counting room in February, he was living paycheck to paycheck, he explained, but was “never homeless.”
“We don’t feel set aside here. Everybody’s got their own story,” he said as he helped put away chairs at the April 6 ribbon cutting.
Giovanni Lo Magno, BETterment’s program manager, says the program can help during a transition point that largely hinges on making a steady paycheck.
“I’ve had clients living here who’ve told me, ‘I can’t get anywhere in the shelter,’ because they put you out at 6 in the morning. You have to go back at 8 o’clock so you can take a shower, but you may be waiting until 12 o’clock. By then, your day is over,” he says.
U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford tours a room during the BETterment Community launch.
“Here, we afford them the opportunity to have their own space, be able to go out and look for an appointment. … We try to wrap every single service around them that they possibly need.” For example, transportation for medical appointments, getting ID, volunteer opportunities to build a résumé, internet access to apply for jobs or help with job interviews, he says.
Bridge housing is designed to serve as temporary housing for those transitioning from homelessness. On any given night, more than 5,600 estimated Southern Nevada residents are sleeping in emergency shelters or on the street.
“We need 50 more of these, and that is [our] focus … in terms of how we provide this to people with successful outcomes,” county manager Kevin Schiller said during his remarks at the event. “As we look to the models that we’re funding, and we look to shelters and other pieces, we have really moved to this model of public-private partnerships, so we can have four walls around individuals with services. That is so important to the success of where we go.”
Clark County has put $4 million toward two years of BETterment, the “BET” portion of which stands for Bridge, Employment and Training. Supportive services include case management, provided by local nonprofit Caridad, and employment assistance from Help of Southern Nevada.
Haley Exon, BETterment’s project director, acknowledged that 90 days, an industry standard, is a “short time frame” to transition to permanent housing. “We focus solely on employment, training and housing,” she said at the event, adding that their model includes “therapeutic classes, and what we call a ‘therapeutic community.’”
The renovated motel provides a unique Vegas vibe and includes wheelchair-accessible rooms, laundry machines and a spacious courtyard with a zen garden donated by the Venetian. Each room includes a bed, closet, bathroom and kitchen equipped with a refrigerator and appliances.
“There’s nothing [of this nature] across the country,” Michele Fuller-Hallauer, Clark County’s social services manager, said at the event. The seed of the project initially was planted in 2019, when she noticed a bottleneck in bridge housing services for homeless residents.
“I told [Schiller] that, in the fall of 2019, we had 2,000 people in our community queue—our list of folks who’ve had housing assessments and who’ve let us know that they’re ready to be housed. And of that 2,000, we had about 1,000 that really only needed employment assistance to get back on their feet and some assistance getting housed,” she explained.
Fuller-Hallauer said she looked to a bridge housing program run by U.S. Vets as a potential model that could work.
“Providing supportive services in bridge housing is a proven solution in an individual’s journey toward sustained recovery and stability,” Shalimar Cabrera, executive director for U.S. Vets Las Vegas, said in a statement following the ribbon cutting. “We’re pleased to lead an effort that can help individuals transition into long-term housing.”
Stephen Peck, president of U.S. Vets, said that since the nonprofit started in the early ’90s, it has helped reduce homelessness for U.S. veterans by about 85% in areas in which it operates.
“The number of veterans experiencing homelessness in our community is going down, while the number of individuals who are non-veterans and experiencing homelessness is going up,” Cabrera said during his remarks. “And even since that time, it’s gone up [more than] double, since 2020.”
Fuller-Hallauer says that today, about 1,500 people in the Valley are in need of bridge housing, and the county’s community queue is now some 4,000 names long—double the amount from 2019.
Lo Magno—once a client of U.S. Vets and now an employee—says this kind of supportive housing and programming “saves lives. It gives them something to put on their résumé. It gives them a sense of community. And when they’re helping each other out, it shows that they truly care.”
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