Restroom issue a growing concern

Friday, Nov. 19, 2004 | 11:09 a.m.

For the second time in as many years, homeless people's use of the downtown streets as a toilet has become a problem, drawing to it thousands of dollars in taxpayer money and finger-pointing all around.

The only thing months of back-and-forth among city, county and private officials hasn't brought about is a 24-hour restroom in the area around Wilson Avenue and G Street -- though renting a portable toilet would cost less than a tenth of the price of the taxpayer-funded cleanup under way.

The problem streets intersect at the Las Vegas Rescue Mission, which has found itself "between a rock and a hard place," according to manager Adrian Lee Noffsinger.

The mission has attempted to prove the problem isn't the mission's daily 5 p.m. meals; Noffsinger says the problem is dozens of homeless men and women with nowhere else nearby to go -- to the restroom.

The closest 24-hour restrooms are at the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities, more than a mile away from the area in dispute.

Not far from the Salvation Army, on A Street, the same issue came up in 2002. After there was a sweep of a homeless camp behind Catholic Charities, area advocates set up a portable toilet on A south of Owens Avenue, only to run athwart of right-of-way ordinances. The city took the restroom down.

As this year's version of the restroom wars heated up last week, the mission even stopped offering meals for five days to prove its point -- and most of the homeless still slept at nights in the area surrounding the West Bonanza Road mission, Noffsinger said.

And they still used the streets and sidewalks as restrooms.

The issue was first brought to the attention of the Clark County Health District this summer when a Las Vegas Metro Police officer gave them the heads up, according to Sgt. Dan Zehnder of the Bolden Area Command.

Metro, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman's office and City Councilman Lawrence Weekly's office received calls from area residents in July who "painted with broad brush strokes" the area's homeless. Metro did surveillance and concluded that the area was not "a hotbed of criminal activity," Zehnder said.

So an officer called the health district about the feces and urine on the streets and sidewalks around the mission, he said.

On Aug. 4 the Health District spent about $1,000 on an inspection of the area, complete with 110 photos of feces and urine. Several weeks later, the agency wrote the Las Vegas Neighborhood Services Department, the mission and several area businesses.

The letters told them to clean up what was shown in those photos, according to Glenn D. Savage, environmental health director for the health district.

The Neighborhood Services Department began weekly cleanup operations shortly thereafter at a price of $350 a week, or $18,200 a year, on city property in the area, according to Diana Paul, spokeswoman for the city.

The cleanups will continue "for the foreseeable future," she said.

Meanwhile, from August to October, the mission's attorney traded letters back and forth with the city about who was legally responsible for cleaning up what.

After a meeting with all concerned Tuesday, the mission agreed to pitch in on the cleanup every day and open two portable restrooms on its site an hour before the 5 p.m. meals and an hour after.

Those restrooms are not open at other hours because they would cost too much to keep clean, Noffsinger said.

Orlando Sanchez, head of neighborhood services, said the city and advocates would also be working together in the coming weeks and months to get the homeless off the streets, but that homelessness "is a problem for 200 years and we can't clean it up in two weeks."

The city has also recently posted signs on Wilson Avenue advising that any debris left in the area will be removed. A phone number -- 229-6515 -- is listed on the sign for those who wish to recover anything that has been removed within 30 days. No one answered that number after several calls were made during business hours this week.

Denise Miller, who handles customers for A-Company Portable Restrooms Inc., said a handicapped-access portable toilet could be rented for $125 a month. That price includes weekly maintenance, she said. In a year, that would cost $1,500 -- less than a tenth of what cleaning up the area is costing the city.

Asked about the idea of making 24-hour restrooms available in the area, Sanchez said, "The only thing we can do is go out and clean up."

Savage, of the health district, said "It is is not in our purview to establish or build public restrooms."

Zehnder, of Metro, said he met with about 50 homeless men and women in the area and asked them what would make their lives easier. Restrooms were one of the top items on their list, he said.

"The quick fix is to have sanitary facilities" in the area, Zehnder said.

"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that -- but everybody has a reason for why they can't do it."