Columnist Susan Snyder: Homeless can’t be swept away

Friday, Jan. 21, 2005 | 5:16 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursday and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

WEEKEND EDITION

January 22 - 23, 2005

As President Bush encouraged Americans on Thursday to "always remember that even the unwanted have worth," homeless Las Vegans idled in an area from where state crews had cleared their worldly possessions.

They stood or sat in clusters near F Street and Wilson Avenue, where on Tuesday a Nevada Department of Transportation landscape crew had sprayed bleach on the personal belongings of about 125 homeless people, then carted the items away.

"It was a public safety issue -- not only for the homeless people living in the area, but to the people who have homes in the area," Bob McKenzie, NDOT spokesman, said Thursday.

And it's hard for everyone -- including the state landscaping workers whose job more often than not these days is eradicating homeless people like clumps of weeds.

"It's very hard emotionally," McKenzie said. "It's very hard to displace people."

There are reasons to be aggravated with transportation officials and the decisions they make. But blaming them for the plight of the valley's homeless residents seems a reach, even for the most stubborn critics.

Clark County Health District officials had declared the F Street encampment of homeless people a health hazard in August. Rain, the holidays and more rain bought social service agencies five months to find housing for 200 people, but they managed to find it for only 45.

The week before Tuesday's cleanup, transportation maintenance workers -- not social workers -- visited the camp twice daily, telling people they were being moved.

"My crew supervisor was out there telling them, 'You've got six days left. You've got five days left. You've got four days,' " said Dave Sangster, NDOT maintenance supervisor.

And while Tuesday's effort has been among the most publicized, it is far from isolated, he added.

"This is something that happens damn-near every day, now," Sangster said.

He described a recent call from Metro Police, in which NDOT crews were asked to clear a camp from a concrete culvert box near Interstate 15 and Robindale Road.

It was more than a few sleeping bags, Sangster said. The camp's residents obtained electricity by tapping into a nearby power pole.

"They had electrical lights. They had TV," he said. "They had watchdogs down there."

What they didn't have was a place to go. But that was true long before Sangster's workers showed up.

Our social service and mental health systems are in shambles. Public officials make declarations and promises of temporary housing they can't keep, then use street-level transportation landscape workers to play the villains.

Take a broad view of Tuesday's images from F Street and Wilson Avenue and watch human dignity fade on both sides of the bleach hose. Nobody had decent choices, whether it was the guy who lost the only photos he had of his kids or the guy driving the front-end loader that carted them away.

Neither man wanted to be there.

"It's a lose-lose situation no matter what," McKenzie said. "We need to address the homeless issue."