Las Vegas Sands on Wednesday contributed $300,000 through its Sands Cares global community engagement program to Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth.
Sands’ long-term partnership with NPHY, which began in 2014 and has resulted in $2.9 million in funding, was called one of the company’s “top community engagement priorities” according to a news release.
“Over the past decade, Sands has been a key part of our growth and transformation by helping to nurture our objectives through both funding and involvement in strategic programs,” NPHY CEO Arash Ghafoori said in a statement. “Our vision has been to address the systems-level change that must happen to truly impact youth homelessness, while growing and enhancing our youth programs and the capabilities of our organization.
“Sands has been with us every step of the way, contributing to our efforts to become a more sophisticated organization that is well-equipped to work with the growing number of youth in Nevada facing homelessness, along with a formidable leader in the fight to address this serious crisis in our community.”
The Sands Cares donation supports three core strategies:
• Meeting the immediate needs of youth in crisis with funding for NPHY’s outreach efforts, emergency shelter and housing programs.
• Building lasting solutions to address youth homelessness with a portion of the contribution earmarked to help NPHY strengthen organizational capacity.
• Fueling advocacy and awareness initiatives with funding designated for the Movement to End Youth Homelessness, including the annual Nevada Youth Homelessness Summit and a new Movement Youth Action Board.
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, youth homelessness in Clark County increased 34% from 2023 to 2024. Statewide, the number of young people experiencing homelessness increased by 27% from 2023 to 2024. Homelessness risk factors have accelerated as Nevada faces the most extreme shortage of affordable housing in the nation, with only 17 affordable rentals available for every 100 extremely low-income rental households, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Via Sands Cares’ support, NPHY served 681 youths across its programs in fiscal year 2023-2024. The 2025 contribution underwrites NPHY’s outreach efforts, Safe Place mobile crisis intervention, family reunification, the drop-in center and housing programs including emergency shelter, transitional housing and rapid re-housing.
The 2025 Sands Cares funding also enables NPHY to work with youth while adding new positions to support the growth of NPHY’s development, communications, systems-level and advocacy work.
The Sands Cares investment will support NPHY’s leadership during the Movement to End Youth Homelessness at the Nevada Youth Homelessness Summit, presented annually by NPHY and Sands since 2017. Funding also supports NPHY’s Movement Youth Action Board to ensure young people with homelessness experiences can provide leadership on solutions and systemic change; the re-vamp of the Movement’s website to streamline advocacy learning; and NPHY’s advocacy goals for the 2025 Nevada legislative session.
“We have seen NPHY greatly accelerate the fight to end youth homelessness on numerous fronts – from helping define a pathway toward bright futures for youths in crisis to leading the statewide charge for responding to Nevada’s high incidence rates through collaboration, advocacy and policy change,” said Sands Cares Senior Vice President of Global Communications and Corporate Affairs Ron Reese. “Our continued support stems from our commitment to solving the youth homelessness crisis, and the confidence we have in NPHY’s vision and leadership.”
