Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Deadly streets: Shelter solutions sought as fatalities rise

Gale Wheeler was 74 when January's tumbling temperatures caught her only blocks from Boulder Highway's brightly lit casinos. Homeless, she died of heart disease and exposure.

Deborah Rupe fell under July's heat at the age of 43 on Main Street, surrounded by the Las Vegas Valley's four main homeless shelters. The coroner's office linked her death to heart disease and exposure.

Then there was Rodney Geist, a former mechanic who overdosed on cocaine and alcohol at age 47, according to the coroner's office.

Forty-seven people died in the streets of the Las Vegas Valley, the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan area, by Oct. 31 this year, according to the Clark County coroner's office. That total doesn't include a homeless man who died over the Thanksgiving weekend after the drainage ditch where he was sleeping was flooded.

The number, which surpasses last year's total of 43, will doubtless grow as winter advances, say the outreach workers, Metro officers and health professionals who are on the valley's streets day after day reaching out to those who need help. About one-third to one-half of the valley's estimated 8,000 to 10,000 homeless people are on the street on a given day, homeless advocate Linda Lera-Randle El said.

As the cold advances, Clark County is considering funding extra beds in at least two downtown Las Vegas shelters, while the city has no stated intentions to follow that lead. The two boards have historically shouldered the burden of funding services for the homeless, though homeless live -- and die -- throughout the valley.

Sharon Segerblom, director of the Las Vegas Department of Neighborhood Services, said that the city has spent $5 million helping the homeless since 1998.

"In the perfect world, the city council ... would want everybody who needs shelter in inclement weather to have it -- but there's not enough resources for that," she said. The only way the problem will ever get solved, she said, is if the region's local governments work together on a solution.

The one body that includes the region's major municipalities -- the Southern Nevada Homelessness Task Force, chaired by Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman -- is not scheduled to meet again until January.

One of its nine members expressed frustration about the group's inaction after nearly two years of meetings and the drafting of a five-point plan.

"At the (task force's) last meeting, a comment was made -- 'I hope the answer comes from somebody,' " said Gus Ramos, deputy executive director for the Clark County Housing Authority and a task force member.

The comment came from Goodman. The mayor was unavailable for comment Monday due to a full schedule, according to two city spokeswomen.

The plan would offer employment assistance, mental health treatment, voice mail for the homeless and outreach and proposes a trust fund dedicated to homeless services.

"The answer has already been laid out -- it's in the plan. ... It's a matter of biting the bullet and funding the plan, since everything is there already," Ramos said.

"It gets extremely frustrating, especially when you see people dying on the street -- it's unconscionable," he said.

Those who have died will be remembered during an annual vigil scheduled for next week, one that underscores the dangers of the oncoming winter to the homeless.

"Part of it is nobody should have to die alone ... and you don't want this number to be meaningless," said Metro Police Sgt. Eric Fricker, explaining why he goes to the memorial and takes his teenage daughter as well. Fricker is head of Metro's H.E.L.P team, a group of four officers who work with the homeless.

Michael Stoops, director of community organizing for the Washington-based National Coalition for the Homeless, said that he has seen such vigils spread nationwide since the '80s, Las Vegas' being one of about 100 held annually around Dec. 21, the first day of winter.

Lera-Randle El, director of the outreach group Straight from the Streets, is organizing the vigil, as she has since 1996. In those years she has seen the number of homeless deaths rise from 32 in 1997 to 47 in the first 10 months of this year.

She knew many of the 40 men and seven women on this year's list.

She said 12 homeless senior citizens died this year.

"That, to me, is a great American tragedy," she said.

The high number of seniors dying on the streets here is mirrored elsewhere in the nation, Stoops said.

"People are staying homeless longer and our homeless population is graying just like the rest of America," he said.

There were also seven deaths from overdoses of drugs like cocaine and heroin, often mixed with alcohol, and 14 people whose heart problems were listed as a cause of death.

"I often think their hearts just gave up on them," Lera-Randle El said.

They were found in places all over the valley, from Summerlin to Henderson. Still the valley's homeless services remain concentrated in downtown Las Vegas, she said.

Brian Brooks, director of Nevada Health Centers, a nonprofit that runs a clinic for the homeless, said that many of those who died this year could have been saved by more of the outreach his staff and others do.

"These deaths can be prevented in many cases," he said. "If you could get more people out there catching the homeless with high blood pressure, high blood sugar, addictions, mental health problems" and get them health care, many could be saved, he said.

"The thing is, they're people -- fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers -- human beings who have died desperate and alone ... some of whom chose to be there, but most of them, because of mental health problems, have no choice," he said.

Fricker has also saved many from dying in the streets over the years, the sort of bang-your-head-against-the-wall work where it can take a year to figure out who somebody is and where they're from.

He has an equation: "More outreach plus more shelters plus more mental health and addiction treatment equals less deaths."

Lera-Randle El said it often seems that a step forward is matched by another step back in trying to save lives on the streets. She said that a report made to the Las Vegas City Council last week pointing to an increase in total beds for the homeless from 1,343 to 1,675 in the last year is misleading.

"Really, the actual need for beds in the community has never been met anyway. And the number is not taking into account beds for single men versus beds for families, or that last year the number went down because Catholic Charities closed," she said. Since last year MASH Village shelter closed downtown, while Catholic Charities reopened after extensive renovations.

"The problem is, this is really not a political issue, it's a social issue. I can't be anything but baffled by the committee reports and so on, when we're packing up people in body bags," she said.

Brooks, whose clinic sees many homeless, says the time of year is approaching where the issue becomes simple.

"When it gets to 40 degrees or rainy, that's when you get hypothermia, pneumonia and other diseases. And if we don't have enough shelter for all those that need it, then there will be more deaths.""

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