For valley’s homeless, it’s even colder out

Saturday, Jan. 13, 2007 | 7:10 a.m.

A thin woman named Suzanne appeared from the brush wearing a large coat, her big toe sticking out of a torn sock in flip-flops.

About an hour earlier, at 8:35 a.m., the overnight low temperature in the Las Vegas Valley had bottomed out at 35 degrees. An hour before that, high winds had reached 32 mph.

The weekend's cold front had arrived in Southern Nevada. Forecasts included lows in the mid-20s, an arctic chill that has hit the area only twice in the last 10 years.

Suzanne and others didn't need Doppler radar to tell them that.

"That's some goofy stuff," Dave Bill said, staring down at Suzanne's bare toe as he warmed his hands over a fire in a 55-gallon drum.

Nearby, Wade Hochhalter's hands shook in the icy air.

The three were among as many as 150 homeless people stirring in a huge lot near Decatur Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue, attempting to figure out a way not to spend Friday night outdoors.

Linda Lera Randle-El, director of Straight From the Streets, a nonprofit organization, had just forced her Hyundai over the curb and down the hardpan hillocks.

For years one of the few people who find their way to such spots with offers of help, Lera Randle-El dialed county officials on her cell phone to pass along news of emergency shelter to the gathering group.

She said that years of talk among the valley's municipalities about planning for such weather had finally paid off, as Clark County led the way in arranging for extra shelter at the Hollywood Recreation Center at 1650 S. Hollywood Blvd.

The center will be used this weekend if emergency beds at Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army in the so-called homeless corridor downtown don't meet the need for what could be life-saving shelter. Public buses will transport people to the center, county officials said.

From late November to April 1, Catholic Charities normally provides 200 beds for men, while the Salvation Army provides 60 for men and 46 for women, said Shannon West, the regional homeless services coordinator.

As temperatures drop below freezing in the coming days, however, up to 600 men and 100 women and children will be sheltered at Catholic Charities. There also are vouchers for area hotels available in Henderson and Boulder City, West said.

Over at the lot by Decatur and Tropicana on Friday morning, Bill's comment about his friend's less-than-adequate winter wear reflected the stoicism and black humor common in the group.

The men, all older than 40, had been on the streets for years, but they looked particularly worn against the ashen, chilling landscape.

Larry, a 60-year-old house painter from Nashville, Tenn., had built a shack two months ago about five yards from the drum. He had just gotten out of the hospital Monday, laid low by a nasty case of pneumonia caught in the winter air.

Echoing the others, he said, "I don't like shelters - it's like jail to me." But he was thinking twice about sleeping in his little plywood box this weekend.

The three of them traded stories of cocaine, beer and speed addictions, past glories, lost jobs, cars stolen, families estranged, pipes smacked across foreheads, blankets and sleeping bags ripped off by other homeless people who lived across the bigger-than-football-field-sized lot.

Each of the men wore at least two coats. Their hands were lined with the furrows that weather makes.

The shrinking fire soon cut short their talk for a trip across the street, where the men scavenged for pallets behind a Home Depot and looked for odd jobs from customers leaving the store.

Looking up from the drum, Bill made a vow.

"We're not going to die out here - I know that."