Story changes, squalor doesn’t

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Friday, April 6, 2007 | 7:17 a.m.

Stepping into Sabrina Bradley's apartment, you are hit by an odor that mixes open sewer with must.

A greasy black carpet sponges up underfoot, soaked with four months of leaks.

Bradley's 40-year-old body wrenches with an asthmatic cough, sending her back toward the bedroom, also flooded.

For all this, Bradley, her husband and a friend are charged $800 a month for two bedrooms at the Desert Breeze apartments, although they haven't paid the rent since February because of the water creeping across their floors and ceiling.

Her story is not an isolated one at Desert Breeze.

In the past month, the new owners of the complex - formerly the Moulin Rouge - have gone from promising Las Vegas officials that they would fix the place so that dozens of poor tenants can live decent lives to promising to find those tenants other places to live while the owners do a really good job of fixing the place.

Clark County Social Service staff are expected to visit the site today to begin interviewing remaining tenants and find them another place to live. Other apartments have been emptied in recent weeks through evictions.

As of Wednesday, city and county agencies have fined owners more than $120,000 for violations in the apartments.

The scenario makes little sense, as months of visits from Las Vegas inspectors, meetings at City Hall, judges ordering repairs, and promises made and unmade all have done nothing for tenants like Bradley, living under Dickensian conditions day and night.

For the past year or so the situation has been a window onto life for people at the poverty level in the Las Vegas Valley, particularly when they land in apartments neglected by owners.

Everyone has a finger ready to point.

Bradley points to the light in her hallway as it flickers , a sign of water entering the apartment's wiring. The stove is also electric, so they don't cook much.

She and her husband, who has a back injury, get a monthly Social Security disability check for $895, but she said she doesn't see why they should pay the rent with the ongoing leak and with sewage bubbling up through the bathtub drain, forcing her to pay neighbors to take a shower.

Bradley's apartment had somehow slipped through Las Vegas Neighborhood Services department inspections in recent months.

The inspectors work under a system that responds to complaints. Attempts at building a system with proactive, annual inspections and penalties for failing collapsed last year after Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said requiring owners to pay into a system and undergo regular inspections would be a burden.

In the absence of such a setup, the agency tries to work with private owners and has the right to issue fines when repairs are not made. Although the process can drag on - as seen at Desert Breeze - the alternative, shutting apartments down, is controversial, because it results in people being displaced, at times to the streets.

"Basically we're going on their word as a business," said Devin Smith, manager of the neighborhood response division at Neighborhood Services, in describing the agency's approach to working with owners.

"We have to assume they're honorable. We're just asking them to get units that people are living in up to a minimum, livable standard."

Since moving to Apartment 1017 in December, Bradley said, she has received eight eviction notices. Only the most recent one, served in early March, made it into the court system.

She contested it, based on the apartment's condition, and the judge ordered repairs to be made and back rent paid within a week. Neither event occurred.

Las Vegas Municipal Judge William Jansen said the court has no way of knowing whether ordered repairs are made, unless the tenants put the issue back on the court calendar.

Meanwhile, Arnold Stalk, a partner in Metro Development Group, partial owner of the property, has gone from announcing in late January that it would "preserve badly needed affordable housing and ... offer support services to the residents" to opting in recent weeks for a "relocation plan."

Stalk said the scope of work at the site's 160 apartments is larger than originally thought, costing as much as $3 million rather than the initial estimate of $500,000.

Asked about recent evictions in advance of the relocation plan, Stalk first said the residents had not paid their rent, then said he had nothing to do with the evictions, adding that he wouldn't "throw anybody out on the streets" today.

The plan involves the valley's regional homeless coordinator, Shannon West, and staff at the Clark County Social Service department. West said she didn't know about recent evictions but was prepared to help anyone remaining at the site.

"We want to make sure we can prevent homelessness," West said.