City to keep up homeless pressure

Timothy Pratt and Diana Sahagun

Tuesday, March 26, 2002 | 11:12 a.m.

A day after the city and Metro Police cleared out a 175-member homeless camp downtown, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said Monday he hoped the ongoing pressure on the homeless population would either compel them to seek services or drive them out of the city.

"Either they're going to finally ask for help or they're going to get so frustrated they'll leave," Goodman said of the homeless. "I'd prefer they ask for help."

He added that the cleanup was in the best interest of residents because the camps in recent months had created health hazards around Foremaster Lane and Main Street.

But homeless advocates and officials who serve on a regional task force on homelessness said the operation, which cost nearly $11,000, merely served to underscore how far the Las Vegas Valley was from solving the homeless problem.

Brother David Buer, a Franciscan friar who provides food and other services to the homeless at the Poverello House, said the cost of the operation could have paid for three weeks of shelter at a section of the Salvation Army shelter that closed last September for lack of funds.

The loss of beds in shelters around the city during the past year and Metro sweeps at other areas together led to the swell of the homeless camp downtown, he said.

"It's too bad that taxpayers' money had to be used for this when much of the problem could have been avoided if there was adequate shelter," he said.

Others pointed to the new homeless camps that had risen only blocks away from the one that was dispersed -- on A Street between Washington and Owens avenues and under a bridge on Owens west of the Salvation Army.

"How can the mayor keep saying there's enough beds and the problem is that we don't want them if all these people are sleeping right next to a shelter who couldn't get in?" said Anthony Richards, one of about 60 men and women camped under the bridge Monday.

Goodman is asking Metro and city marshals to maintain a presence in the area, to "help the homeless."

The mayor has insisted there are enough beds, though officials from MASH Village, the Las Vegas Rescue Mission, and the Salvation Army all said Monday their shelters have been full every night.

"We put our names on the list to get into the MASH tent, but in the end, there was no space," Joshua and Rebecca, a couple who declined to give their last names, said Monday. They spent Sunday night under the bridge at Owens Avenue west of the Salvation Army.

Brenda Dizon, who heads the Shade Tree Shelter for homeless women and children, said the shelter had 33 empty beds Sunday night. But she said has run into only a handful of women from the sweep, with 10 new women entering the shelter Sunday.

Another couple, Bernardo Segura and Dolores Barron, said they did not even seek a shelter bed, because local shelters do not allow unmarried couples to stay together.

"If anybody wants a bed and is willing to abide by the rules, I'll make sure they have a bed, if that means going into my own pocket to get them a motel room," Goodman said Monday.

Gary Peck, executive director of the Nevada American Civil Liberties Union, said city officials are lying when they say there is adequate shelter. Peck said homeless people wanting shelter are being turned away.

"The reason that city officials keep repeating the big lie that there is ample shelter space ... is because they understand that absent that shelter space or some other designated reasonable location within the city where these people can go, (the homeless) have a right to be out there," he said.

Tensions are mounting between law enforcement agencies and the ACLU, which says officers are violating the civil rights of the homeless.

The ACLU has argued that as long as there is not adequate shelter, homeless people cannot be arrested while engaged in "life-sustaining activities" such as sleeping or eating.

Only two homeless people were arrested during Sunday's sweeps: A couple were arrested early in the day near Washington Avenue and Veterans Drive on domestic violence charges after getting into a fight on the street.

Allen Lichtenstein, legal counsel for the ACLU, said a Metro officer told him Monday that anyone sleeping on the sidewalk or in a group of more than three people would be arrested. Lichtenstein said this is clearly unconstitutional.

The matter is likely headed to court, he said.

"This is an effort to disperse the homeless and drive them out," Peck said.

The rising tension in the area is not going unnoticed by those who run the shelters.

"What happens in the next week or so is critical," Ruth Bruland, executive director of MASH Village, said.

"If the community slides into thinking, 'Oh, we took care of those guys,' it's not true, we didn't take of those guys," she said.

"We took care of a situation," she said, "but we need to change the way we're doing things."

Those changes may be months off. The Southern Nevada Regional Planning Coalition is scheduled in April to discuss a five-point plan its Homelessness Task Force has devised for addressing the issue. The plan must then be approved by the cities of Henderson, North Las Vegas and Las Vegas as well as Clark County.

North Las Vegas Councilwoman Stephanie Smith, a task force member, said recent events only serve to show how much a regional approach to solving the problem is needed.

"At least five years, ago, I felt as if we were losing track of the bigger picture, and pouring millions into building shelters in downtown Las Vegas without having asked fundamental questions like: Do we know how many homeless there are? Do we know exactly what their needs are? Do we want all the shelters to be grouped in one place?

"Now the time has come to ask those questions," she said.