No room at the inn for 100 homeless evicted from lot

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Thursday, Dec. 23, 2004 | 11:10 a.m.

A day after more than 100 homeless men and women were driven from a lot downtown, Las Vegas city officials said they hadn't thought their order to the lot's owner would displace so many people so quickly and most shelters in the area said their was no room for those people.

The city's Dec. 17 order gave West Owens Management LLC, the owners of the lot, 11 days to clear up trash and secure the site, which had become home to more than 100 tents and lean-tos since October. The owners responded Dec. 20 by giving the homeless people on the lot 24 hours to leave.

"Quite honestly -- the best way to tell you this is to just say it -- I guess what was not anticipated is that the (owners) would respond as quickly as they did," said David Riggleman, spokesman for the city.

Clark County, Metro Police's team that works with the homeless, and private agencies all said they wished the city had warned them about the ordered eviction of the squatters so they could have done more to help people.

"It would have been helpful to know about this," said Maj. William Raihl, Clark County Coordinator for the Salvation Army, which neighbors the lot to the west on Owens Avenue downtown. "Maybe we could have done something ... or at least say, 'Hey guys if you evict them from there, there's nowhere else to go -- and everybody else is at capacity as far as I know.' "

Riggleman said that he thought there was the proverbial room at the inn, however, because he received an e-mail from area shelters Monday morning -- the day before the eviction -- offering what he said was a different picture.

He said that Catholic Charities, a block to the east of the lot, told him there were 42 emergency beds available for men Friday night.

But Sharon Mann, spokeswoman for Catholic Charities, said "we've basically been filled since mid-November." She said that there was space for 200 people, and that a low of 194 and a high of 219 had been reached in the last week. Tuesday night, she said, there were 200 men at the shelter.

The Salvation Army has been filled -- with the exception of 5 to 15 beds available to women -- also during the last week, said spokesman Charlie Desiderio.

A total of 237 beds are available -- most for men -- at the Salvation Army, he said.

As for the Shade Tree, a shelter for women and children also on Owens Avenue, Executive Director Brenda Dizon said that anywhere from 174 to 200 beds out of 210 available beds had been taken up in the last week. The minimum was reached on Sunday and the maximum was reached Tuesday night, apparently due to the eviction, Dizon said.

Though Dizon's numbers suggest 28 beds were available Sunday night, Riggleman said he was told in the e-mail that there were 66 beds free that night.

As for the Las Vegas Rescue Mission, a shelter more than a mile away on Bonanza Road, manager Adrian Lee Noffsinger said 46 beds for men and 12 beds for women had been taken up "every night in December."

Riggleman said he had to "trust those institutions to give us the correct information," when asked about the differences between the numbers he received and the numbers those same institutions gave the Sun.

"The numbers fluctuate, but clearly there are beds available based on reports from shelter in recent days," Riggleman said.

Regardless of whether there would be any place for the homeless people to go to after being driven off the lot Tuesday, Riggleman noted that the situation was different from the lot's earlier troubles, which included evacuating the residents of 100 mobile homes from what was at the time the Sky-Vue mobile home park and demolishing the lot earlier this year.

Those actions were brought on by a series of health and building code violations. But different agencies attempted to help those affected by the tearing down of the lot, offering vouchers to stay in hotels and other services.

But this time, no private or public agencies were notified.

Riggleman said such he recognized that "one way or another, we all wind up being affected by the movement of these people -- whether government entities or nonprofit organizations."

"It creates a ripple effect of needs."