Praying for luck and a voucher

By Timothy Pratt

Thursday, March 29, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.

Candace Cooper took a day off work this week to enter the lottery.

It wasn't Megabucks. But it could change the life of the 20-year-old single mother of three.

Cooper was among 1,738 people from the Las Vegas Valley, as well as California and Tennessee, who visited the North Las Vegas Housing Authority on Tuesday for a shot at having their names picked from a barrel.

On April 10, the drawing will see 200 of those names added to a waiting list for Section 8 vouchers that they can use for free or almost-free rent, depending on their income and the apartment's cost.

Despite the unseasonable cold and the gritty arc of their lives, Cooper and some of the others at the Housing Authority office displayed sunshine and pluck. The line, which some had joined before sunrise, rippled with laughter.

Some laid out survival strategies they have used in the absence of help such as the vouchers.

A woman with emphysema edging to the agency's front door in a walker has learned to use her $50 inhaler one puff a day instead of two, after finding a cheaper version for that second puff.

Another maintains her mother's maxim: "Always keep a whole chicken in the freezer."

One woman who said she had moved from Compton to escape an abusive boyfriend walked to the agency from the Shade Tree shelter five blocks away, bearing a 3-month-old in her arms. She said she was sure of her luck and pointed to winning $2,200 at Jerry's Nugget as an example, even though she was robbed the same night.

Like lottery ticket-holders everywhere, they all saw victory within reach.

Tuesday's event was a biennial ritual for the Housing Authority, one of three in the valley. The other two - the Las Vegas and Clark County housing authorities - do not hold lotteries, but announce a day every few years when people can try to get through on the telephone to have their names added to the dreamed-of list.

Whether it involves waiting in line or on the telephone line, the idea of a hand at getting out from under poverty appeals to tens of thousands. But there are never enough vouchers to go around.

Dolores Sawyer, who works with the Section 8 program at the Las Vegas agency, said 40,000 calls were made the last time that list was opened. Of those, 2,500 people made it on the list.

The Las Vegas agency has 4,200 vouchers worth $34 million - and a waiting list of 400. Clark County has 3,066 vouchers worth $24 million and a list of 1,203.

North Las Vegas handles 1,371 vouchers, costing about $11 million, or nearly 85 percent of the agency's operating budget, said Don England, the agency's chief executive .

Cooper sat in the small lobby down the hall from England's office Tuesday afternoon, looking back at some of the events that had brought her there. In the past year, she had gotten her name on waiting lists for public housing at the Las Vegas and Clark County housing authorities.

"A lot of stuff has happened to me," said Cooper, a $10-an-hour telemarketer.

Her mother told her to go to college before having children. "But I didn't listen," she said, and now has 3 1/2-year-old twins and a 3-month-old .

One morning around Thanksgiving, someone broke into her car and yanked the stereo. She had to drive the children around with a plastic bag covering a shattered window during the three coldest months of the year. Her tax returns brought a new window to the family.

But Cooper has a plan out of all that.

Her ideal scenario is reaching the list, getting the voucher, working a little less to spend more time with her children and going to college to become a social worker. Then she'll save for her children to go to college.

If she does not get a Section 8 voucher or public housing, and because her rent recently went up $20, Cooper said, in June she'll move her family of four to a one-bedroom apartment or studio.

Somehow she is sure of one thing: Her children won't be waiting in a housing authority line one day.

"I don't want them to be sitting here," she said. "I'm here so they don't have to be."