Trash removal a key homeless issue

By Timothy Pratt

Monday, April 15, 2002 | 8:34 a.m.

More than a week after a portable bathroom was removed for obstructing a public right of way in one downtown homeless camp, the ebb and flow of filled trash bags in another camp reveals an ongoing struggle over hygiene.

The two new camps arose on A Street near Washington Avenue and on Owens Avenue west of the Salvation Army in the days following a March 25 sweep by city and county officials of a homeless camp at Foremaster Lane and Main Street. The homeless in the new camps have tried to keep the sites clean after Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and the Clark County Health District said the March sweep was necessary to avoid a public health hazard.

In the camp under a bridge on Owens Avenue, the effort has included bagging garbage on a daily basis. The bags had piled up for at least nine days until a city agency sent a truck Friday afternoon to pick up the bags.

During that period residents and a homeless outreach program, Straight from the Streets, petitioned the city of Las Vegas' Neighborhood Services Department to take away the trash.

"You'd think it would be in the city's interest, since getting rid of the trash helps prevent the problems of the earlier site," said Brother David Buer, a Franciscan friar and director of another program that offers services to the homeless.

But Sharon Segerblom, director of Neighborhood Services, said the section of her department that would pick up the trash has 10 people and receives an average of 1,900 requests weekly, making a rapid response difficult.

In addition, she said that it was difficult for the department to determine which bags contain belongings and which contain trash.

Segerblom did not say when the next pickup would be.