Marisa Cervantes, the chief operation officer for Family Promise of Las Vegas, shows one of the rooms in the organization’s recently opened complex to provide transitional housing for families experiencing homelessness. (Photo: Michael Lyle/Nevada Current)
Tonya Jones was days away from being evicted when she began scouting out bridges and tunnels around Southern Nevada where she and her 3-year-old daughter could potentially sleep if they couldn’t find a place to stay.
Jones had been able to work from home since the pandemic. But in the summer of 2022 when she unexpectedly lost her child care, she couldn’t make it to work, lost her job, and quickly fell two months behind on rent.
“I found a job in the middle of September, a week before my actual eviction day,” she said. “I just needed a little bit more time.”
On a rainy September morning as a lockout of her apartment loomed, Jones remembered calling and emailing countless resources looking for help when she stumbled upon Family Promise of Las Vegas, a nonprofit that provides shelter and support services for families and children experiencing homelessness.
The organization put Jones and her daughter in an extended stay motel for the next several weeks until she was able to save up money and move into her own place. Jones, 43, and her now 6-year-old daughter, have been stably housed ever since.
The number of families experiencing homelessness has grown over recent years in Southern Nevada, but there aren’t a lot of shelter options, especially private rooms, available for them, said Family Promise’s chief operations director, Marisa Cervantes.
Gender and age restrictions often lead to families being asked to go into separate shelter spaces.
“A lot of times they’re often faced with a hard decision to make, whether it’s to separate and go into different shelters or to maybe sleep in their car, a park or somewhere where people are not meant to be,” Cervantes said.
Family Promise recently opened its 10-room Family Navigation Center to provide much needed transitional housing for families with minor children who are experiencing homelessness. The organization hosted a grand opening of the complex near Twain and Eastern avenues Sept. 30.
In addition to private rooms, families will receive case management and wraparound services to help them obtain secure housing stay employed.
The opening of the complex comes as Nevada, like much of the country, is seeing a rise in homelessness. Nevada saw a 17% increase in the number of unhoused people last year, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Southern Nevada’s 2024 Point-in-Time Count, an annual snapshot of homelessness on one particular night, identified 7,906 unhoused people. The finding was a 20% increase from the previous year, and a 13-year high.
The count, often called the homeless census, is unable to capture the complex nature of homelessness, and the figure is considered an undercount.
Of the number counted in 2024, the report found nearly 20% included families with children. The report doesn’t include the actual number of families counted.
The 2023 report found there were 794 families with children experiencing homelessness in Southern Nevada, 12% of the total point-in-time count that year.
As the need for housing grows, Family Promise receives hundreds of calls every day from families seeking help, Cervantes said.
The end goal is to make sure all families they assist become stably housed, but some families need a transitional space to stay while they stabilize.
These families “just need some extra support so they can get that job, save the income and they can find housing that fits their needs,” Cervantes said. “We’re here to, like, step in and fill that gap.”
The Family Navigation Center cost about $14 million and utilized funds from Clark County andthe City of Las Vegas as well as private donations.
The first family moved into the complex June 29. Another nine families joined shortly after. The first two families to reside at the complex have already moved on to stable permanent housing, Cervantes said.
A private space
Family Promise wasn’t the first time Jones had sought shelter in Southern Nevada.
After leaving an abusive partner in 2019, she and her then 4-month-old baby stayed at a domestic violence shelter.
“I stayed in a room when there were eight women and children,” Jones said. “We shared one bathroom.”
Because the location of the shelter was kept confidential for the safety of residents, Jones would get up at 5 a.m. every morning and walk several blocks before calling a rideshare.
She would then drop her baby off for care before heading to work. Jones would pick up her child and return to the shelter late in the evening, doing same thing over and over again for several weeks before she transitioned into her own apartment.
“It was not the best model,” Jones said of the shared shelter space, especially compared to a private room she stayed in with Family Promise.
In both instances, it didn’t take long for Jones to find her footing and get stably housed. She wouldn’t have been able to do it without a place to stay in the interim.
Filling the gap
When Family Promise was first founded 29 years ago, it relied on a network of interfaith organizations to house families experiencing homelessness inside churches.
Like other government agencies and nonprofits, Family Promise began placing families experiencing homelessness in extended stay motels as shelter several years ago.
Even though they have the new Family Navigation Center to house up to 10 families, Cervantes said they still plan to use extended stay rooms to serve the sheer volume of clients in need of help.
The organization served 788 families, or roughly 2,400 individuals, last year, with 91%of those families moving on into stable housing, she said.
Families usually stay with the organization’s program for about 90 days before moving on to permanent housing. Even after they leave the program, families get 30-day check-ins from the nonprofit over the next several months to ensure unforeseen problems didn’t arise.
“Many people are aware that there’s a major affordable housing crisis in our community,” Cervantes said. “For every 100 households who are low income in need or looking for affordable housing, there’s only 17 units available.”
The figure Cervantes cites comes from a 2025 National Low Income Housing Coalition report, which found “Nevada needs to make 78,000 more homes affordable for extremely low-income households.”
Even before Covid-19 shut down the state, the nation, and most of the world, Family Promise had been working toward opening up its own transitional housing complex.
It had secured federal and local funding to build the complex prior to the pandemic and had land donated from Clark County.
“Then the pandemic hit, inflation happened, and the cost for construction skyrocketed,” Cervantes said.
The vision to open the facility was pushed back several years while the organization raised additional funds and applied for more federal and local grants.
The complex means the organization is able to expand the number of families experiencing homelessness it serves.
Families Promise also tries to help people obtain rental assistance and other support services to stave off homelessness, Cervantes said.
“If they experience some type of unexpected hardship, loss of a job or loss of hours because of illness, child illness, or whatever it may be, if it’s a justifiable loss of income we can step in to pay their rent and utilities,” she said, as an example. The organization can help “fill that gap, to prevent them from losing their home.”