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Real Life Stories
Profile: Creating Space for Second Chances: Las Vegas Rescue Mission.
Program: Affordable Housing Program subsidy of $1 million to construct shared apartments that will provide transitional housing for men who have completed the Mission’s addiction recovery program.
Partners: Nevada State Bank and Las Vegas Rescue Mission.
In 1970, six Las Vegas businessmen founded the Las Vegas Rescue Mission to help the City’s homeless and hungry. They started by distributing sandwiches and drinks from a tiny storefront and providing mats and blankets, so men with nowhere else to go could eat and sleep away from the elements. It was a simple concept, driven by faith and responsive to the needs of the community.
Today the Mission takes up two city blocks, serves 30,000 meals a month, and provides 2,500 beds. A world away from the flashing neon lights of the Las Vegas Strip, its six main buildings include a 300-seat dining hall, an emergency shelter for men, a separate shelter for women and children, and a thrift store serving both shelter guests and needy members of the community. The emergency shelter offers a place to stay for seven days and possibly longer. According to Bob Brunner, the Mission’s Executive Director, “It gives them time to step back, take a deep breath.” If they find a job, they can extend their time at the shelter to 30 days.
 The next phase of expansion will create 12 shared apartments to offer transitional housing to men who have completed the Mission’s well-regarded addiction recovery program. To manage the new transitional housing, he turned to someone who had lived the life of the streets, and could really relate to the clients. Jeff Schombs’ battle with addiction began at age 13, and his problems got worse after moving to Las Vegas. Eventually a combination of alcohol, drugs, and gambling lost him his job in the casino business -- and he became homeless. “I was broken. I couldn’t get off the streets,” he says. “I was on the verge of ending it all.”
After three weeks of not eating while strung out on crystal meth, he suddenly got hungry. So he went to the Mission—just for the evening meal. Then he got a bed in the overnight shelter—just to get off the streets for a little while. “On July 17, 2008, something was placed upon my heart to enter the program,” Schombs says. Ready to change his life completely, he spent 18 months as a client of the voluntary recovery program. Now he’s ready to be a model of success for the men he will be mentoring and supervising as the first resident manager of the Mission’s new transitional housing.
“To give someone a second chance, a third chance—sometimes it’s even a fifth chance—that’s why we have rescue missions,” says Brunner.
A man has to be clean and sober to qualify for apartment living, with a paying job and a certain amount of money saved in an account the Mission provides. Both Brunner and Schombs believe the transitional housing will be a goal program participants will want to shoot for, as well as an important opportunity for those who have graduated from the program on paper, but aren’t quite ready to be fully independent. “It won’t be so overwhelming for them out in the world if they can still stay here,” Brunner concludes. “It might be one year, maybe two; we don’t put a time limit on success when it comes to someone’s life.”
Pictured: Robert Brunner, Executive Director, LVRM, and Jeff Schombs, Transitional Housing Resident Manager, LVRM.
Back to Real Life Stories
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Real Life Stories
Profile: Creating Space for Second Chances: Las Vegas Rescue Mission.
Program: Affordable Housing Program subsidy of $1 million to construct shared apartments that will provide transitional housing for men who have completed the Mission’s addiction recovery program.
Partners: Nevada State Bank and Las Vegas Rescue Mission.
In 1970, six Las Vegas businessmen founded the Las Vegas Rescue Mission to help the City’s homeless and hungry. They started by distributing sandwiches and drinks from a tiny storefront and providing mats and blankets, so men with nowhere else to go could eat and sleep away from the elements. It was a simple concept, driven by faith and responsive to the needs of the community.
Today the Mission takes up two city blocks, serves 30,000 meals a month, and provides 2,500 beds. A world away from the flashing neon lights of the Las Vegas Strip, its six main buildings include a 300-seat dining hall, an emergency shelter for men, a separate shelter for women and children, and a thrift store serving both shelter guests and needy members of the community. The emergency shelter offers a place to stay for seven days and possibly longer. According to Bob Brunner, the Mission’s Executive Director, “It gives them time to step back, take a deep breath.” If they find a job, they can extend their time at the shelter to 30 days.
The next phase of expansion will create 12 shared apartments to offer transitional housing to men who have completed the Mission’s well-regarded addiction recovery program. To manage the new transitional housing, he turned to someone who had lived the life of the streets, and could really relate to the clients. Jeff Schombs’ battle with addiction began at age 13, and his problems got worse after moving to Las Vegas. Eventually a combination of alcohol, drugs, and gambling lost him his job in the casino business -- and he became homeless. “I was broken. I couldn’t get off the streets,” he says. “I was on the verge of ending it all.”
After three weeks of not eating while strung out on crystal meth, he suddenly got hungry. So he went to the Mission—just for the evening meal. Then he got a bed in the overnight shelter—just to get off the streets for a little while. “On July 17, 2008, something was placed upon my heart to enter the program,” Schombs says. Ready to change his life completely, he spent 18 months as a client of the voluntary recovery program. Now he’s ready to be a model of success for the men he will be mentoring and supervising as the first resident manager of the Mission’s new transitional housing.
“To give someone a second chance, a third chance—sometimes it’s even a fifth chance—that’s why we have rescue missions,” says Brunner.
A man has to be clean and sober to qualify for apartment living, with a paying job and a certain amount of money saved in an account the Mission provides. Both Brunner and Schombs believe the transitional housing will be a goal program participants will want to shoot for, as well as an important opportunity for those who have graduated from the program on paper, but aren’t quite ready to be fully independent. “It won’t be so overwhelming for them out in the world if they can still stay here,” Brunner concludes. “It might be one year, maybe two; we don’t put a time limit on success when it comes to someone’s life.”
Pictured: Robert Brunner, Executive Director, LVRM, and Jeff Schombs, Transitional Housing Resident Manager, LVRM.
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