Donald Fuller smokes Wednesday at the Frank Wright Plaza in downtown Las Vegas. Fuller has been homeless for several months after he lost his last job. Photo by John Locher.

In the TV spot, a good-looking young man talks about how he became homeless.

"It's hard just to survive knowing that there's no chance of you getting a job because you can't read or write," the man says in an interview taped on the street. "I don't use dope. I don't smoke crack. I don't do speed. I don't drink. It's the opportunities that are few and far between."

The spot is one of several featuring local homeless people that the Southern Nevada Regional Planning Coalition's Committee on Homelessness is using in a new public awareness campaign starting today. The committee hopes the campaign will help:

• Dispel stereotypes about the homeless.

• Draw attention to the homeless problem.

• Encourage people to donate time and money to help fight the problem.

The TV spots combine slogans such as "It can happen to anyone" and "Doing nothing costs something" with vignettes of real people living on the streets.

"These are real people who are interested in telling their stories," Shannon West, regional homeless coordinator, said. "It's a real picture."

The spots are scheduled to begin airing immediately on channels 2 and 4, the city of Las Vegas's and Clark County's cable stations.

The Internet site www.Help HopeHome.org is part of the campaign and is scheduled to go live today. The site includes links to social service providers, volunteer opportunities and demographics about the homeless population. West estimated more than 14,000 homeless people live in the Las Vegas Valley.

The site also encourages people to donate to a Homeless Trust fund, administered by the United Way of Southern Nevada, to help pay for case management, basic needs and housing for the homeless.

The Web site and TV spots were created with volunteer help from Bitfocus Inc. and Brown & Partners, a local public relations and advertising firm.

Homeless service providers say anything that draws attention to the problem is good.

"We're getting complacent," Linda Lera-Randle El, director of the Straight from the Streets program that helps the homeless, said. "We're used to watching people shuffle down the street with a shopping cart, a mother dragging kids through the homeless corridor, as if it's the way it's supposed to be."

Terrie Stanfill, director of HELP of Southern Nevada, hopes the campaign will help change some common misconceptions.

"A lot of people just think the homeless want to be homeless," she said. "Maybe they will take a different look at the individual they see on the street."

Lera-Randle El agreed.

"People think homeless people are all lazy, shiftless drug addicts who want to be on the streets," she said. "There are so many aspects of this issue people don't really understand."

Lera-Randle El said people don't necessarily equate things like a lack of affordable housing and rising gas prices with homelessness.

"They don't understand that many of the working poor are barely hanging on."

Straight from the Streets is one of several local nonprofit organizations that joined ranks last year in a pioneering coalition designed to get "chronic" homeless people off the streets for good. The regional Committee on Homelessness agreed to give it about $4 million in state funds toward fighting homelessness.

Other agencies in the coalition include HELP of Southern Nevada, the Center for Independent Living, U.S. Vets and the Jewish Family Service Agency.