Survey of tent city inhabitants under way

Thursday, June 7, 2001 | 11:45 a.m.

The city of Las Vegas is holding off plans to take action against a vagrant tent city while a "needs assessment" study of the inhabitants is conducted.

Four Salvation Army workers have headed into the field to question the inhabitants of the campsites along Owens Avenue on the boundary between Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, Salvation Army Administrator of Homeless Services Duane Sonnenberg said. The survey should take about two weeks, he said.

The survey began Monday in an area including Owens and Washington avenues, where at least 100 campsites were counted. The sites along the Union Pacific Railroad tracks at A Street are blighted with ramshackle cardboard-box homes. There is no running water. Sides of buildings are commonly used as bathrooms, as there are no toilet facilities. Garbage is heaped high.

The survey comes in the wake of a meeting with property owner William Smith of Boulder City, his Smith Family Trust and city officials.

"He is being cooperative with the city to help us reach a solution," said city spokeswoman Andrea Smith, who is not related to William Smith or the Smith Family Trust. "The city will not be taking any action until the needs assessment study is completed."

The city's Neighborhood Services Division cleans up about five to six vagrant camps a week, but they are so small they have failed to grab the media attention that has been given to the sprawling camp site that abuts the Salvation Army shelter on West Owens Avenue.

The camp also is a political football between the city of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas. Sonnenberg said Wednesday that he has noticed that the North Las Vegas side has been cleared of tents and property was bulldozed clean.

Where those homeless people went is pure conjecture, but officials suspect they just crossed the street and set up camps in the city of Las Vegas, which has taken heat recently for its efforts to deal with the homeless.

The criticism came in part from a contract dispute the city had with MASH Village, which runs one of the city's largest homeless shelters. In addition, Councilman Lawrence Weekly toured the encampments last month, saying they could "no longer be tolerated."

On May 14 the city of Las Vegas sent a routine nuisance/litter abatement letter, giving the Smith Trust two weeks to clean up the property or face a potential $500 fine or six months in jail.

City spokeswoman Smith said that was a form letter, and that the city sends out 1,100 to 1,200 of them a year as the first step in the abatement process, in which the city cleans up the property, then forces the property owner to pay the costs under threat of a property lien.

At issue, however, is that while most abatements involve trash, broken down cars and other junk, the tent city sites are filled with people -- people who feel they have no other place to go.

"We have so far seen all types of homeless," Sonnenberg said, noting that groups include people who lost their jobs and were recently forced to live in the streets, as well as vagrants who don't want to go to shelters with restrictive rules and the mentally ill.

"One of the men we talked to told us he was doing OK and did not want to go to a shelter because he didn't want to take up a bed that someone else really needed," Sonnenberg said. "He felt his basic needs other than shelter were being met. He could not recognize his own needs."

On Wednesday Salvation Army field agents took food and water to the tent city dwellers in an effort to convince them that in the shelter they would not need for such basic necessities.

The Salvation Army has not gone unscathed during the rise of the tent city. Salvation Army fences have been cut, officials believe by those who sought access to portable toilets on the Salvation Army campus.

In the 10 years the Salvation Army has been at the site, Sonnenberg said, its officials have tried to persuade vagrants who refuse the Salvation Army's shelter "to get into a program or move on. We have had a good working relationship with the railroad police, city marshals and Metro Police."

The city of Las Vegas said a solution has to be reached because of the safety issue. Among them is the potential of camp dwellers being run over by trains and the safety of train engineers, who could potentially derail trains trying to make emergency stops to avoid hitting vagrants.

Sonnenberg, who also serves as housing chairman for the Homeless Coalition, said one long-term solution to tent cities, as proposed by a recent study, is for downtown business organizations to coordinate efforts with area service providers to motivate homeless people toward the available services.

He also noted that Las Vegas does not have enough emergency shelter beds, lacks transitional housing and is in need of affordable housing for those who earn 30 percent of the median income -- all factors that would make a dent in homelessness and vagrancy.