High hopes, bitter disappointment

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Wednesday, April 11, 2007 | 7:32 a.m.

Let's talk numbers.

Like 50 or so people, all but eight of them women, crowded into a small lobby for 60 minutes.

They're waiting on a woman to pull 200 numbers one by one from a barrel, hoping one of them matches theirs.

They got the numbers two weeks earlier, when the North Las Vegas Housing Authority, one of three such agencies in the valley, opened its doors for eight hours to 1,738 people hoping for a break.

The break: Being put on a waiting list for Section 8 vouchers, a piece of paper indicating the federal government will pay up to 100 percent of your rent, depending on how much you earn.

Another number: no increases in funding for the program since before the war in Iraq began four years ago, despite there being nearly one-third more people living in the valley now than in 2000.

Despite all this, the crowd bustling before the barrel Tuesday morning was surprisingly upbeat, almost like a Saturday night bingo hall. Although all 200 people picked will be notified by mail, the lobby was filled with the kind of people who don't like to wait for good news - or bad.

One woman wearing a blue bandanna on her head called a friend to ask her what number was on her ticket, then said to no one in particular, "I'm going to have to have an ambulance come get me if they pick mine."

Fewer than 50 numbers into the drawing, no one in the lobby had been lucky . Yet all still seemed to feel as if today could be their day.

When the woman pulling the tickets said, "9569," a woman seated rolled her eyes. Her ticket: 9508.

The stack of blue cards grew as another housing authority employee wrote each number on yellow sheets, 50 numbers per sheet.

About 100 numbers in, a woman in an NBA All-Star game jacket shouted, "Hey!" and fluttered her feet in an Ali shuffle. But she was off by one number.

About 20 numbers later, a woman in the back, near the door, blurted : "Shake 'em up! All the good numbers are at the bottom."

Good or not, none of the numbers drawn Tuesday belonged to anyone in the lobby. The closest was someone's sister, who was at work.

As the last 50 or so went by, a guy stepped outside in frustration, explaining to a few people smoking that the woman at the barrel was picking only the 800s, or maybe it was the 900s.

The jokes faded. The last number flowed from the black magic marker onto the poster. The lobby cleared in seconds. Someone complained about a fix.

About 10 minutes later, Ashley Johnson stood before the posters and announced to an empty lobby, "I got it!"