NORTH LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — As homelessness continues to rise across Clark County, a social media superstar and community advocate who used to be unhoused herself, is using her nonproft to be an added resource for the community.
Shirley Raines and her nonprofit Beauty 2 The Streetz started helping the unhoused in Clark County in 2019 but made the move from Los Angeles in October.
"Working with Skid Row became very toxic for me emotionally. There was no change. I gave eight years to the community. They began to take me for granted, take my work for granted," she said.
In Nevada, she noticed the gratitude was different, so rather than work daily in Los Angeles and once a month in Clark County, she flipped it.
She also wasted no time jumping into action once she arrived.
This particular day, I caught up with her in North Las Vegas at the Restoration and Recovery Center where she was passing out breakfast to members of the unhoused community.
It's also the location where she started serving the community when she first arrived in the Las Vegas valley.
"In front of this building is where I used to set up," she said. "I got kicked out from over there because it's a business, so they said, 'You have to be in front of this business right here. You can't come over here.'"
The owner of that building eventually sold it, and Raines was worried she might run into more trouble, but fate stepped in.
"When I came to serve, [the new owner] had already had some things going here. I said, 'Dang, he sold the building. I have to take my crowd down the street.' This lady comes chasing me down the street. Her daughter follows me on TikTok, knew who I was, she says, 'No, I bought the building for us. For us.'"
"My daughter, she vets people. She has a criminal justice degree. She vets everything and she says to me, 'Mom, she's the real deal. You're going to love her heart, and I think you two should meet. And it happened. Organically. We didn't push it,'" said Marivelle Nunez.
"We didn't. She bought the building I was in front of for four years," Raines said. "That's wild. Tell me God ain't good."
"God is good," Nunez said.
Now instead of working in front of the building, she has access to the building.
A lot of the donuts she was able to pass out on the day we met up with her came from her legion of followers on social media.
Raines goes live, calls for donations, and they get sent to her location.
"Because I live through it and my audience supports it, I have the ability to try to make people's lives different. I'm no God. I'm just a first responder, applying pressure to the wound, but it's what I can do," Raines said.
And the community members who benefit are grateful.
"I'm living on a low income and these people help out a lot, especially with this. They're always very nice," said Dennis VanDriel, a retired Air Force veteran.
"There's a lot of good people out here who were just done wrong," said Jamyra Russell, a 19-year-old member of the unhoused community.
When Raines first arrived, she said she hit a couple of setbacks from people in the surrounding area.
"It was shell-shocking my first week here to get a complaint about traffic and we were simply making potato salad for the homeless, so I thought oh wow, didn't expect that. Didn't see that coming," she said. "I think that's their biggest fear. 'She cares for the homeless, She's going to bring them home and that's not true.'"
She's still looking for permanent housing in the valley and wants to be accepted in the same way she accepts those whose lives she comes across.
You can follow her journey and contribute to her work through social media at "Beauty2TheStreetz" or on the nonprofit's website.
