Homeless spend their final night in shelter tent

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Friday, June 14, 2002 | 11:04 a.m.

Thursday night, while the rest of the Las Vegas Valley slept or didn't, 180 men rolled into their bunk beds knowing it would be for the last time.

Their beds were taken from them today, as the tent that housed them was broken down and trucked away.

The shutdown of the tent was the first step in the closing of the region's largest homeless shelter -- downtown's MASH Village -- as San Diego-based Father Joe's Villages approaches the end of its contract with the city of Las Vegas in October.

Father Joe's Villages is trucking the tent, which cost $205,000, to California, where it also will be used for shelter.

The mood on the final night of the tent's four-year run was one of gratefulness, some nostalgia -- and plenty of uncertainty.

During the last four winters and some warmer months, the tent sheltered thousands of men -- including last night's group, less than the capacity of 250 due to the high temperatures inside.

Among them was Don Cipolla, one of 34 who passed every night in the tent since it opened in November -- a month earlier than in previous years.

Before sitting down with a few dozen other men to watch "Pearl Harbor" on a large screen installed near the tent's entrance, Cipolla, 67, said he has two college degrees, is a blackjack tournament winner and has been on the streets of Las Vegas on and off for at least eight years -- most recently after losing $9,500 shooting craps 15 months ago.

He says he doesn't know where he'll sleep tonight -- probably somewhere in the desert.

"I also think we're going to see a lot of arrests in the coming weeks, since a lot of us really have nowhere to go," he said.

Cipolla's fears were shared by many, as the last year has seen three sweeps of homeless camps within a six-block radius of the tent by law enforcement and city officials.

Brother David Buer, a Franciscan friar and homeless advocate who has lobbied local government officials for funding each of the last four years to keep the tent open, also spoke of the men's fate in the coming weeks.

"The thing is, the Salvation Army opened up 130 beds last night, and Catholic Charities will open about 200 in August, but there will still be a window of time where a lot of men will be on the streets," he said.

"I would hope there could be a moratorium on sweeps until the new space is made available."

Leon Coley, the tent's program coordinator, said he'll miss the guys in the tent, who he said were like family to him.

"I've learned a lot from these guys," he said. "I've seen a former UNLV professor and a confessed murderer. And I've never had a problem we couldn't talk through."

Coley recalled New Year's Eve outside the tent, when a man joined him to watch the fireworks burst over the Strip and confided that he was scared to face the next day, because his son had come from Minnesota to see him for the first time in 23 years.

The man said he was thinking of not going.

"I told him, you can't keep running from your past, and said I'd save a spot for him in the tent if he wanted to take a few days to meet with his son," Coley said.

"He went, and only came back to thank me and say goodbye; he was going back to be with his family. I never saw him again."

Nearby, men packed their belongings. Many were stuffing paperbacks into sacks.

Keith Rennie, 50, said that a book swap club thrived in the tent, and that he had read a book a day since entering the tent in February.

"I like authors like Ludlum and Clancy, because you can vicariously jump into the characters," he said.

"You eat well, drive fast cars, meet beautiful women. Then you go to sleep and wake up homeless again.""