Columnist Jeff German: More help needed for homeless

Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2003 | 10:55 a.m.

Las Vegas is the only city in the country that promotes itself as a hotbed of sin and decadence.

"What happens here stays here" is the city's marketing slogan.

If the National Coalition for the Homeless is right, Las Vegas also is becoming the modern-day version of Sodom and Gomorrah, the biblical cities God destroyed because of their debauchery and, according to Ezekiel, their failure to help the poor and needy.

The Washington-based homeless coalition came to town Tuesday to inform us that we live in the nation's "meanest" city when it comes to treating its most unfortunate brethren.

The coalition held a news conference outside the Four Queens in the heart of the Fremont Street Experience, the publicly financed pedestrian mall that keeps the mighty casinos in business but does little good for anyone else.

It was an irony that did not go unnoticed.

The city's shameless shilling for the casinos was one of the big reasons the homeless coalition put Las Vegas at the top of its list in its nationally issued report -- ahead of San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta and 142 other cities.

Las Vegas was criticized for conducting -- and bragging about -- "dozens of downtown sweeps" to arrest the homeless on minor jaywalking and pedestrian obstruction charges. The sweeps were aimed at cleaning up the areas around the Fremont Street Experience for, you guessed it, the casinos.

City leaders, it seems, wanted visitors to be able to practice their vices downtown in a clean and safe environment.

"If the violators were tourists or businessmen, they were given a friendly warning," the 80-page coalition report stated. "But if they were among the more than 1,000 undesirables who were snagged ... they were cited and carted off to jail to languish for days and even weeks while awaiting court appearances and trials."

Sheriff Bill Young pooh-poohed the coalition's report, suggesting it's just another cheap shot at Las Vegas.

Young then took a cheap shot at the homeless when he said "... I choose to get up and go to work every day," casting himself in the shadow of Mayor Oscar Goodman, who seems to think the homeless are lazy.

Many homeless people are not capable of working. Some have physical problems. Others need mental treatment. Many who can work have no way of knowing where to look for a job and often can't find an employer willing take a chance on hiring them. These include men and women with families.

There are no easy answers here.

But instead of arresting the homeless for being a nuisance, just to make a few casinos happy, we should spend our resources to develop new programs to help the homeless turn their lives around.

If we take a more positive approach, we might actually solve the problem, which will make everyone happy.

And Las Vegas no longer will look like the nation's "meanest" city.