Ill wind blows at Desert Breeze

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Friday, Jan. 26, 2007 | 8:43 a.m.

A 57-year-old reed-thin former Teamster who drags an oxygen tank around like a despised pet.

A family of 12 - spanning three generations, complete with eight children - stuffed into a two-bedroom apartment.

They are among the tenants at Desert Breeze, a low-rent apartment complex where Las Vegas officials have slapped orange stickers on nearly a third of the 167 doors, labeling all that lies on the other side unfit for people to call home.

The city has ordered Desert Breeze's present or past owners to fix a lengthy list of problems such as broken windows, mold or no hot water, by Monday.

Meanwhile, the tenants wake up each day uncertain about things most valley residents take for granted - lights, heat, water.

The tenants, the apartments and the situation match others in the ever-shrinking pool of affordable housing in the Las Vegas Valley.

Desert Breeze, which sprawls across Bonanza Road next to the former Moulin Rouge hotel, is bigger than most.

Its size and slumlike conditions make it a poster child for the vicious circles and seemingly intractable problems facing the poor when it comes to putting a roof over their heads. Desert Breeze's tenants live off $650 monthly Social Security disability checks, food stamps and church donations.

Many owners don't carefully maintain such low-rent apartments because they're simply biding their time until they can turn a profit by selling the property. (Previous owner CBC Financial has taken current owner Moulin Rouge Development Corp. to court, claiming it has not been paid $1.5 million from the sale and requesting the right to fix up the place, a prelude to collecting rent against the debt.)

Then there's the Las Vegas Neighborhood Services Department, with two inspectors for an estimated 52,000 rental apartments.

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 undergo inspections would be overbearing.

And there are the tenants, many of whom opt to stop paying rent when they get no satisfaction in response to their complaints, in turn offering owners a reason to continue avoiding repairs.

The homes of several tenants who have chosen not to pay their rent for living under what they consider inconvenient, and, by turns, unsafe conditions, offer a window onto the ongoing ups and downs at the Desert Breeze.

George Merrida, a four-year Desert Breeze resident, had just gotten his heat turned on a week ago. Long ago, he learned to live with a kerosene space heater , a necessity in a second-floor apartment he said often has been without heat for months.

Merrida, a former electrician whose arthritis now has him living off Social Security checks, has not paid his $520 rent in five months. A table in his apartment was piled about eight inches high with paperwork, including handwritten complaints he has made to maintenance staff and court documents from ongoing attempts to evict him.

Merrida says he has taken about 1,200 photos of his and other apartments, snapshots that show walls stained black with mold, glass shards for windows, soiled carpets, ceilings full of holes.

A walk outside Merrida's apartment makes some of those photos come alive.

At apartment 2032, Bruce Tate stood in the middle of a living room buzzing with activity ranging from a toddler ready to tip over a chair she was standing on to a fifth grader sitting on the floor, somehow concentrating on a book titled, "If I Ran the School."

Tate's family of 12 has been in the two-bedroom apartment about a month, after waking up Christmas morning in apartment 1018 to find feces flooding across their floor.

Both 1018 and 2032 are listed on Neighborhood Services' Jan. 29 deadline notice and order, with problems that include leaking ceilings and bathroom fixtures, a broken kitchen window, a sink that doesn't drain and no smoke detectors.

Elsewhere in the complex, smashed windows offer views into bombed-out-looking apartments, while in other units, plywood sheets substitute for windows.

On Wednesday, city and Moulin Rouge Development officials reached an agreement to begin making repairs at the site. An attorney for Moulin Rouge estimated that the repairs will cost several hundred thousand dollars. The company and the city are to meet next week to establish a new timetable for the repairs.

"In the interests of the community, we hope that they bring these apartments up to standard," said Mary Ann Price, spokeswoman for Neighborhood Services.

Merrida puts it another way.

"All I want is a clean, safe place to live," he said. "All I want to do is make this a home."