WHERE NOW?

By Timothy Pratt

Sunday, July 29, 2007 | 7:02 a.m.

Jessica Taylor has high cheekbones that cut angles as she easily smiles, three children under 5 and a future that looks clear, at least for the next few days.

She, like the other 200-plus single mothers at Buena Vista Springs apartments in North Las Vegas, has been tossed in to the middle of the largest cutback of federally subsidized housing in Las Vegas Valley history.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development stopped paying for the apartments July 1 because the agency gave them failing grades in inspections for the fifth time in four years.

The upshot is that about 800 people are facing chaos, unclear about where they're going to live next month.

In the past week, contradictory messages have been delivered to the tenants of the 233 apartments affected by HUD's decision.

First, Buena Vista's owners told them the rent would increase Aug. 1. With the federal government no longer subsidizing the costs, most tenants would be unable to pay the rent, leaving Taylor and many others facing eviction.

But then word from HUD persuaded some tenants to stay put. Keep paying what you've been paying for rent, HUD said, and the owners can't evict you. And soon, HUD added, we'll be cutting checks to help you move.

Federal, state and local governments, not to mention the property's owner, Creative Choice West, all point fingers. Not surprisingly, there is talk of lawsuits.

The situation also offers a window onto a slice of the black experience in contemporary America, with its cycles of teen pregnancy, single motherhood, poverty, crime and violence.

Audrey Spencer, regional business manager for Creative Choice, said more than 95 percent of the leaseholders in the apartments are women with children. At a Clark County Housing Authority meeting to help tenants apply for federally funded Section 8 vouchers - a program that might help many find places to live - when an official asked how many people needed forms for families with no incomes, nearly everyone raised a hand.

Even those like Taylor who build a plan - a bridge out of the 'hood - face stiff odds.

On a recent afternoon, Taylor dumped her garbage into a trash bin down along an alley and down the stairs from her second-floor apartment. Her two daughters and a son stayed behind, rolling around on the carpet in a nearly empty living room.

Taylor had piled a desk, a television and some chairs into another room. "I want to get ready," she said about leaving Buena Vista after living there two separate times, four of the past five years.

She had just returned from her third day in a nine-month program that would teach her to do medical billing and coding. She had enrolled in the technical school, she said, "because I wanted to go farther."

But that plan, built on financial aid, baby sitting and three hours daily on the bus, was now up in the air because of the move.

She had been to the Housing Authority the week before, where she got a Section 8 voucher.

The Housing Authority was brought into the fray only weeks ago. Executive Director Nancy Wesoff said her agency had never taken so many people into the federal program so quickly. The vouchers help pay rent, but the trick is finding landlords who accept them and apartments that pass inspections.

Taylor had already found an apartment through a real estate agent she called a saint - one of at least three who have appeared in recent days at the sprawling North Las Vegas site, offering to drive tenants around town to search for apartments.

But she didn't have a clue how she would actually get the place, because her $372 monthly welfare check couldn't be stretched to cover the deposit.

HUD said last week that up to $1 million would be available to help Buena Vista's tenants pay for moving and deposits, but Taylor had no contact with the agency until Thursday afternoon, when she called and got word that the check would soon be in the mail.

Unfortunately, that meant she would have to forget, for now, the apartment she had found .

Friday morning, it was back to finding a baby sitter so she could get to class.

Across a hardpan yard glittering with bits of broken glass, Rochelle Trimble had barely unpacked at Buena Vista after leaving her older sister's apartment a cross town six weeks ago.

Trimble is a Las Vegas native whose people, like many on the West Side, are from the South. A photo of her grandmother taken in Mississippi leaned against the wall.

The 20-year-old had recently started laying out what's next in the life she launched four years ago, when her daughter , Taniya, was born.

In order of priority, fixing Taniya's five cavities, enrolling her daughter in school and obtaining her own high school diploma are what she has in mind. She had just applied for food stamps this month.

But now it was time to find a new place to live.

She had left the Housing Authority last week with an $871 monthly voucher and a seven-page list of apartments. Some phone numbers on the list were disconnected, she said. And there was the issue of deposits.

Trimble has a leg up on Taylor when it comes to the search, because she knows the valley better than her neighbor, who grew up in California.

Taylor said her goal was to find "somewhere, anywhere far from here." Like most of the young mothers at Buena Vista, she said the pops of pistols in the yards and alleys made her keep the children indoors most of the time. This month, Buena Vista management issued notice of a curfew, threatening arrest if tenants leave their apartments after 10 p.m.

"The way it's turning out for me, it's people just trying to kill people," Taylor said.

She said her son, who's also 4, asked his dad, who visits, whether he could get a gun. A real one.

Trimble said when her daughter heard a shot recently, she asked her mom, "Should I get on the ground?"

For Taylor, Trimble and many others, the current chaos may be an opportunity, a chance to look back on poor decisions and imagine their children living a better life.

Trimble said she is the first generation in her family to get help from the government. Her father worked for most of his life as a cook at the Sahara. Her grandparents also worked.

"I'm thinking, what happened?" she said, answering with a sharp "Hmmm" and a shake of her head.

Taylor said she wants off of welfare as soon as she can. "It's something, but it's really nothing," she said.

"It's not enough to live on. I need a job."

Meanwhile, she tells her three children, "Mama's going to find a place with a big back yard."