January cold snap claimed squatter

Tuesday, March 6, 2007 | 7:04 a.m.

A 67-year-old man died of pneumonia brought on by subfreezing temperatures in a low-rent Las Vegas hotel with no heat, according to a recently released coroner's report.

James Crook was found dead in Room 209 of the Moulin Rouge at 2:15 p.m. Jan. 16, a day when temperatures in the valley bottomed out at 25 degrees. It was the coldest week of the year and the coldest spell in 17 years, with six consecutive days dipping into the 20s.

Crook's death was the outcome of a rock-and-a-hard-place scenario common to poor people seeking a place to live in the Las Vegas Valley.

The situation at the hotel involved tenants living month to month and paying half the valley's average rent; county health officials discovering bedbugs, backed-up toilets and broken sinks; owners attempting to evict tenants to bring the hotel up to code; and tenants refusing to leave.

Things unraveled in August, after county officials alerted owners of unsafe conditions at the hotel. At the time, Herb Sequera, environmental health supervisor at the Southern Nevada Health District, said the site "was a lot worse than what we normally see."

Moulin Rouge administrator Stanton Wilkerson said he issued 30-day eviction notices to about 70 of the hotel's 101 rooms in August.

Some responded by leaving. Others didn't. Constables never enforced the evictions, nor did the property owners follow up.

It's not clear how many tenants remained, but they fell through the cracks. "Our faith was that they finally were going to do the right thing and leave," Wilkerson said.

As for the county: "We didn't go back because we thought they (the rooms) were empty," Sequera said.

The Health District doesn't have the power to evict in such cases.

One thing is clear: The tenants-turned-squatters were "people who can't afford to live anywhere else," as Sequera put it. The units rented for $425 a month before the scenario unfolded.

The calendar pages flipped from summer to winter, and the squatters continued to have access to electricity and running water.

"You can imagine the frustration on our part," Wilkerson said.

Boiler problems meant most rooms lost heat and hot water in late November.

When Crook died in January, there was no heat in any of the rooms, Wilkerson said. An autopsy showed Crook was "chronically exposed to cold temperatures," causing bronchial pneumonia, said Samantha Charles, spokeswoman for the coroner's office.

A reporter's mid-January inquiries to the Health District prompted the agency to return to the site, which in turn prompted owners to return and again ask the residents to leave. Remaining squatters left about 16 rooms in late January.

It is unclear where those people are today.

Wilkerson said the hotel is part of the massive overhaul planned by new partial owners of the sprawling Bonanza Road site, which includes the Moulin Rouge and the Desert Breeze, another 160 or so affordable apartments.

Once the apartments and hotel rooms are renovated, "clearly, rents will go up," Wilkerson said, adding that the site was never meant to be "an answer to the valley's affordable housing problem. It isn't part of the equation."

"That market doesn't exist anymore - and from our business standpoint it can't," he said.

But the underlying goal, he said, has long been to reopen the Moulin Rouge's casino, the short-lived night spot famous for allowing blacks and whites to party together in the segregated Las Vegas of 1955.

As for James R. Crook, Wilkerson said he was surprised at the news of his death, and thought Crook had left his room after the evictions.

Wilkerson remembered the man, however.

"He got some kind of government check," he said. "He was a good guy ... that really saddens me."

At the same time, he noted that Crook "made a choice."

"He wasn't supposed to be there and he knew that."