Vegas homeless looking for spots to sleep after weekend sweep

Monday, March 25, 2002 | 5:22 a.m.

LAS VEGAS AP) - About 175 homeless squatters were looking Monday for new places to sleep after being swept from a downtown Las Vegas encampment and moved again when they set up tents in a nearby vacant lot.

"They're making us like flies and shooing us from place to place," a homeless Robert Courtney told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Leaders of the local American Civil Liberties Union chapter were issued trespassing summonses while trying to defend the homeless people during the pre-dawn Sunday sweep ordered by Mayor Oscar Goodman.

A federal judge on Friday turned down an ACLU request for an injunction to stop the sweep.

The move, during a rare Las Vegas rain, was peaceful. Las Vegas police and neighborhood services officers urged campers to seek help at nearby shelters - the Salvation Army, Shade Tree for women, and MASH Village.

However, the service providers reported they had few beds available.

Goodman insisted Sunday that anyone who wanted a bed or shelter could find it.

"The number of beds is not going to be an excuse," he told the Review-Journal. "If they want a bed, I'll make sure they have it."

City officials and police said Sunday that people who remained on the street refused shelter. They counted 10 beds available for men and 41 beds for women.

But at the Salvation Army, administrators reported they were had no space available. They said they turned away about 130 men.

MASH Village, a shelter for homeless families, said it has been full for months. It offered passes letting the newly displaced homeless go to the front of agency service lines on Monday.

The Las Vegas Rescue Mission reported it had five beds available.

"It's like a shell game that will never stop until people acknowledge the problem," said Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the Las Vegas-based ACLU of Nevada.

"The problem is there's no shelter space," Lichtenstein said, "and (city officials) just keep moving things around trying to hide the problem instead of dealing with it."

In 1999, UNLV researchers reported that 6,700 homeless people lived in the Las Vegas area, but that only 1,212 emergency shelter spaces were available.

Since then, shelter space has diminished. One shelter closed for construction but is expected to open with 900 beds in July. Others cut services because of budget constraints.

Sheriff Jerry Keller has estimated the number of homeless in the area at 8,000. Homeless service providers put the number at 12,000.

Last June, officials bulldozed another homeless tent city along the Union Pacific railroad tracks, about a half-mile from the sidewalk site swept on Sunday. Both times, officials cited unsanitary conditions and public health risks.

"If they'd left everyone at (the railroad (side)- tent city," said homeless camper Carl Steiner, 25, "they wouldn't have all of us camping on the street or the sidewalks."

Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal