Print
E-mail
Share
digg
Newsvine
Facebook
Stumble
Technorati
reddit
Fark
twitterPolice breaking up homeless corridor
Soon these sidewalks will be clear, but not everyone is pleased
Steve Marcus
Metro Lt. Ted Snodgrass, right, walks by a homeless encampment on Foremaster Lane Wednesday, July 29, 2009.
Friday, July 31, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Sun Archives
- Street sweeps won't solve street sleep (4-17-2009)
- Metro rethinks 'Don't feed homeless' (4-14-2009)
- Growing homeless settlement vexes business, Goodman (4-3-2009)
- LV City Council addresses homeless issues (3-18-2009)
- Despite pressing needs, wishes are modest (12-22-2008)
- Annie Wilson, Metro Police's liaison to the homeless (12-10-2008)
- First things first: For homeless, a home (4-22-2008)
Two months ago the valley’s largest and most visible tent city appeared headed for a turnaround, with bushels of money and hordes of social service workers coming to help the homeless.
Now the few remaining tents along Foremaster Lane will disappear within weeks, not because the dozens of men and women in them had somewhere better to go, but because Metro Police asked them to leave, an extension of a plan to “take back the area,” Lt. Ted Snodgrass said.
What was at one time a camp of about 300 people is now down to about 50.
When the last tent is gone, does it mean months of work in the area were successful?
Some people involved in the effort say yes. They said 40 to 60 people have been moved into housing or social service programs since May, when the area was the subject of various news reports and visits by Las Vegas City Council members.
But an exact tally of how many got what kind of help was unavailable. Metro Deputy Chief Gary Schofield pointed the Sun to the county’s regional coordinator of services for the homeless, but Jennifer Knight, a county spokeswoman, said she could not provide even a rough estimate because the efforts at Foremaster and Main Street “did not follow regional protocol.”
Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a Washington-based group that advises Congress on the issue, said not having one source of data on the number of people helped and how means one thing: “You really don’t know what was done.”
“So it feels like a solution because the tent city is gone, but it may not be, in the absence of data.”
What is certain is most of the homeless men and women have scattered from the camp increasingly in recent weeks, as Metro’s plan has become clear, signaled by steel barricades stretching along strips of sidewalk, barricades that make it impossible put up tents there.
•••
The tent city’s 15 minutes of fame started this spring, as Las Vegas announced plans to apply for $2.1 million in stimulus funding to help people on and around Foremaster at Main, the so-called homeless corridor. The tent city was one in a series that have popped up in the same area over the past decade. Nearby shelters and the availability of free meals have long drawn street people to the area.
In May, Schofield gathered together dozens of private and public agencies, after a Sun story noted that police were hassling church groups for handing out sandwiches. Those agencies together came up with the Hope Corridor Strategic Plan.
But the hope that the corridor plan and the stimulus money appeared to offer didn’t last long.
First, the federal government made Las Vegas widen its proposal to cover the rest of the city. Then the meetings hosted by Metro shrank by half, as groups experienced in working with the homeless lost patience for debates over policy and strategy. New groups, mostly religious, showed up.
And Metro Police began putting up the barricades, laying claim to land piece by piece. Snodgrass said he decided on this approach about six weeks ago, after the owners of properties in the area asked whether Metro could help clear part of the sidewalk to ensure public access.
In any case, Snodgrass added, the barriers help realize the Hope Corridor Plan’s vision: “Safe streets for all who live and work in the corridor.”
Many of those who lived in the corridor have left for parts unknown, however, so how safe they are remains in question.
The way it was all handled did involve unprecedented, intensive collaboration between public and private agencies, at least, which has included officers “starting to look at these people as people,” Snodgrass said.
Officers accompanying social workers on weekly visits to the tent city announced which stretch of sidewalk would be covered next, giving people time to gather shelters, blankets and bags. As this unfolded, “nobody’s been arrested, nobody’s complained,” Snodgrass said.
First the west side of Main Street was cleared. Then the east side. Next, and last, comes Foremaster.
On Wednesday, the weekly combination of social work, Las Vegas Neighborhood Services Department cleanup and announcements on what’s next played out with dawn’s arrival. The scorching sun brought with it a rising, fetid stench.
A man helped another drag a tent across the street ahead of arriving backhoes and trash bins for clearing garbage.
Ronald Marek and his wife, Cindy, had just moved their belongings in advance of the barricades. Marek pulled from his wallet a Veterans Affairs card, a reminder of his two tours in Vietnam. He told the story about why the couple and their 18-year-old, mentally disabled son came to the camp: a fire in their apartment, no help from any agency, a donated tent. He lifted a pant leg to show burned skin.
Where will they go when the barricades come to Foremaster?
Cindy called to one man, who asked another, who said another camp is forming nearby.
“I guess we’ll go there,” she shrugged.
•••
Roman, a national expert on the subject, said Las Vegas is not the only city to have problems with a central, controversial tent city. Most of them are on public property, but they often cause problems for private businesses and homeowners. Responses have ranged from officials in Portland, Ore., setting aside a “permanent tent city” — “a little more orderly, but not the solution,” Roman said — to New Orleans finding housing for hundreds.
Roman noted that many people living in tent cities are chronically homeless, meaning they have been on the streets the longest and cost society millions of dollars for time in emergency rooms and jails, not to mention short-term services such as shelter accommodations.
“The bottom line,” Roman said, “is that these people have complicated problems and need to be in housing with intensive services. Moving them around from one place to another is a whack-a-mole approach that doesn’t solve the problem.”
Two months of intensive work at the Las Vegas site has brought order to area businesses such as Palm Mortuary and reduced crimes including drug sales and prostitution, Snodgrass said. Also, the large agencies that give the neighborhood its “homeless corridor” name, particularly Catholic Charities and The Salvation Army, have benefitted from increased calm, he said.
“But have we displaced some chronically homeless people? You’d be a fool to say no,” the Metro lieutenant said.
Harry Batiste lives on Foremaster, advocates for his fellow homeless in the camp and wants to be “the last man standing” when the tents are gone.
“It’s been good to see an attempt at openness,” he said of the Metro-led meetings, at least a half-dozen of which he’s attended. He reels off names of people who weeks ago slept in tents next to him and now lie down in beds at apartments across the valley.
But he also knows others who have taken their tents to other streets, and fears they will be cut off from further help.
And where will Batiste go?
“I’ve thought about that moment very seriously. I don’t know for sure.”
Discussion: 51 comments so far…
Post a comment
- Most Read
- Discussed
- Most E-mailed
- Man, 26, dies in collision with truck traveling at 100 mph
- Nevada’s just not for us, many top high schoolers say
- CityCenter completion might spur home foreclosures
- Casino venue in Singapore will have Las Vegas flavor
- MGM Mirage: CityCenter not affected by debt woes
- Fontainebleau retail component seeks bankruptcy
- Metro admits to improper release of criminal history data
- Holiday Auction 2009 items
- Real estate experts cautiously optimistic about market
- Locomotives win inaugural UFL championship
Blogs
The Kats Report
Could a savior of shuttered Las Vegas Art Museum be ... Peter Max? (6 Comments)
For Paul Stanley and KISS, rock and roll is not over (6 Comments)
Twenty years ago today, Human Nature took root on the farm (1 Comment)
Robin Leach's Las Vegas Celebrity Watch
Photo Gallery: Donny Osmond’s triumphant return to the Flamingo
The Kats Report
'DWTS' champ Donny Osmond still deft afoot in return to Flamingo (8 Comments)
Politics: The Early Line
Meeting of GOP governors draws challengers, not Gibbons (5 Comments)
Politics: Ralston's Flash
Oscar loves forcing developers to sign labor peace agreements, Culinary loves the city's downtown plans and all is forgiven (10 Comments)
Calendar »
- 29 Sun
- 30 Mon
- 1 Tue
- 2 Wed
- 3 Thu
-
Tahoe Takeover at The Bank
The Bank | 10 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.
-
Playboy Club model search
Playboy Club | 10 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.
-
Queen of Queens at Revolution Lounge
Beatles Revolution Lounge | 10 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.
-
Zowie Bowie's Vintage Vegas Show at Monte Carlo
Lance Burton Theater
The Sun
Locally owned and independent for more than 50 years.
The tent city people should move into foreclosed homes.
They could probably get into an empty house and as long as they lay low they would stay off metro's radar.
The cops are too busy serving foreclosure notices and busting hookers at the Rio. With the declining tax revenue the city won't even be able to support a police force in 2011.
'40 to 60 people have been moved into housing or social service programs"....In other words...JAIL!
The homeless have already gone through the POVERTY PIMP'S programs 50 times and are STILL HOMELESS, NOT TRAINING FOR ANYTHING, and 50 times worse off than before!
REAL HOUSING, REAL TRAINING, and REAL JOBS!
No more forced EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY INSANITY & 12-STEP RELIGIOUS CULT NONSENSE!
As in most cities with a homeless population, the majority of these people "want" to be homeless. You can't force them to live in housing; they like their little community on the street. Go drive by there a few times dudring the week and see how many pregnant women that are around. And how many are walking around with the proverbial "brown bag", smoking cigarettes, etc. The majority of these people do NOT want job training so they have to go to work. That's not what they want.
Sabibaby:
What are you suggesting? THese people go squatting in neighborhoods? Is that okay with you and your neighbors if they dedcide to "squat" next door to you? You'd be the first to start screaming on why Metro isn't doing something about it.
Metro doesn't serve foreclosure notices.
this is the true cost of a house price boom
Also another group that has been hit hard are the seniors. The affordable housing is limited here and those with disabilities get first crack at available units and the seniors are put back on another waiting list, with most never being able to move into senior/afforable housing.
This city and state have to realize that it is more than tourism and gaming that runs things, but I don't think it's ever going to happen. They will care more about Frank and Ethel from Dubuque, Iowa or Candy and her Bridal Party and Jason and his Bachelor Party from Anywhere USA so they can all come here and spend their money before they care about the people who actually live here.
And America's decline into third world country status continues...
hey, liberals:
SHUTTIE!
all of you...every one of you could easily make room on your sofa for one of these people to sleep at night, but do you?
no.
so SHUTTIE!
Try a version of New York City's solution: buy them a one way ticket back home if there is someone there who will verify they can stay with. Greyhound is cheap and goes everywhere.
What happened to all that money? 90% used for overhead expenses by the city/police/social workers etc.?
These stimulus grants are turning into welfare for the rich and connected. Jack sh-t is trickling down. I hope the scum that siphoned off the money intended to help these people choke and die on it.
Katie do you not realize we're in a depression?
The squatting suggestion was meant tongue and cheek.
Just an FYI -> When capitalism fails people lose their homes and are kicked out onto the streets. When socialism fails people at least still have a place to live. I'm not suggesting socialism is the answer, just giving you the straight facts.
A good mental exercise is comparing the current collapse of the US to the collapse of the USSR. This will be much worse and it's only just beginning.
Not one PENNY of the homeless funding EVER touches a homeless person's hand. It all goes to the POVERTY PIMP'S paychecks, benefits (luxury sedans), and pensions. The homeless hear everyday from the POVERTY PIMPS: "There is NO HOUSING, THERE IS NO TRAINING, and THERE ARE NO JOBS, NEXT"!
I tried tenting in Vegas in 110+ (it was horrible) - how can the homeless stand it!
Why aren't these guys hanging out in front of Home Depot & Lowes looking for day laborer jobs in place of the illegals? They don't appear to be very busy.
What a waste of life! Get off you asses and get after it!
These people chose this lifestyle for various reasons but mostly because they first chose to do drugs and be lazy. Some have mental illness and don't know any better. I will not fell sorry for someone who does drugs or drinks and smokes. If they can afford these vices then they can afford a place to sleep. Average Meth addict spends from $100-$200 a day staying high. Liquor and Smokes cost money. We have a library in every community where they could educate themselves if they chose. America is full of opportunities we all get up and go to work everyday and have since we where young. These people like the street life and no amount of money you throw at a drug addict is ever enough. What a waste of money.
Katie, you are so wrong about these people wanting to be homeless. Most of them have mental issues and can't deal with the ins and outs of living in society. They are incapable of paying rent on time, paying billis on time, holding down a job, dealing with friends and relatives. In short they are unable to deal with society as you and I are. Nothing will change until they get the psychological help they need. And thats hard to do on both sides.
I'll admit, I'm one of the alleged do-gooders who would occasionally go down to Main or Foremaster and give out water or sandwiches, and maybe perhaps try to provide some spiritual encouragement.
I have to agree with some of you in that there are those that are happier being perpetually homeless akin to the hoboes of days gone by. Then there are the unfortunate who have fallen upon hard times due to job loss, catastrophic illness in the family, a gambling spouse or a host of other reasons and they just lack the wherewithal to find social programs and understand the bureaucracy. There were also those that were thrust in the homeless situation and came from a semi-normal life prior and are just shellshocked and biding their time through the bureaucracy to get some help and get back to what we consider a normal life.
The social service system is difficult for people to navigate - unless you're born to it. Case workers are stretched to their limits and many have lost the compassion and desire to truly help people, and the remainder are just government workers showing up to collect a paycheck. The charities have taken a harder edge to weed out the perpetual gladhanders and scammers and thus make it harder on those truly in need. Throw in the fact that we have bred generations of entitled and it's a quagmire of frustration and in some cases hopelessness. Lastly, so many of these folks do discover the path through the social service maze and realize the lack of followup - once they're approved for everything - provides a sort of easy street existence and they are content to live on the dole and have no impetus to be self-sufficient.
Is there a single good answer to the problem? I don't think so. It's hard to undo years and years of societal training to feel entitled, and it will take years and years to undo the mess that social services has become despite its initial good intentions.
Take the MANDATORY EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY INSANITY & 12-STEP RELIGIOUS CULT out of the "Homeless System" and the homeless problem would be gone!
My next door neighbor like to do LINES of COKE & DRINK, and has for 20 years; he has a GREAT JOB, HUGE HOUSE, HOT WIFE.....OH, he has not been CAUGHT and DESTROYED BY THE LEGAL SYSTEM! Any legal issues on your records now day can be VERY LIFE-LIMITING, and costs society BILLIONS!
Even though my neighbor uses cocaine recreationaly, he is ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN to hire anyone with a drug conviction/arrest by law!
rejco100: Good idea! We should drug test all of them before we waste our tax money or any money on them for that matter. Urine and hair test before you can receive any assistance and if you are found to be clean of drugs and drink then and only then can you start to receive some assistance. If you cant pass test you get a quick escort out of the city.
it's cruel, but we need to let some of these people die off.
if they are too mentally ill to pay bills on time, get to a job on time, then wouldn't we be doing the ethically correct thing and euthanize them?
like pigeons or stray cats?
Stevem you wouldn't happen to be a descendent of German Nazi's would you?
@ Debbie Lynn
Wanna go camping?
(Option A - For adults without children.) Must be some empty warehouses or other large structures with nearby charity soup kitchens that could be used as single sex homeless barracks with shared facilities. Get them off the sidewalks & benches. If they don't like it, they can leave.
Then offer those who want work a 90 day min wage laborer job with the County if they can stay clean; if they can handle that, and it has to be hard work, then we can offer some serious assistance in getting their lives back on track. But without that commitment their part, we're just wasting our $$$.
(Option B - For adults with children.) A tougher nut to crack. If the adult(s) are users, the kids should go into foster care and the adults into Option A. Otherwise, into a family shelter unit of some kind with the kids into daycare/school while the adults work a 90 day min wage day laborer job with the County. If they can handle that, then we can offer some serious assistance in getting their lives back on track. But without that commitment their part, we're just wasting our $$$. And if they washout, Option A for the adults and foster care for the kids.
Sounds a little harsh maybe, and it wouldn't do anything for the mentally ill or those who've grown used to the homeless lifestyle, but trying to help someone who doesn't want to be helped is pointless. All they'll do is milk you for what they can and then get right back to it.
I hit the "suggest removal" button under the post by stevem. Hopefully, someone will remove stevem.
The homeless were out on the streets long before the latest batch of NEW HOMELESS as a result of recent foreclosures.These tent cities arose after the whole economic issue that is going on now. Some have bowed out of life and issues and responsibility, others because support from family doesn't exist. There's a whole range of "homeless" out there...how to sort them out though.
Salibaby:
Yeah, I am very well aware of the financial mess we are in. I am a victim of it and have been since February. SO please don't preach to me. I had to make the decision to leave Las Vegas and go back east so I can at least be close to family and friends so I DO NOT end up living on the street.
LV4LIFE
PLEASE go around this area. Yes, there are mentally ill people that are homeless, but go see for yourself. My guess is a small percentage are mentally ill.
See Matois' post. First one that makes sense and breaks it down.
Why in the world would a homeless person want a minimum-wage job; THAT'S WHAT GO THEM INTO HOMELESSNESS!
The mentally ill people you see on the streets all the time HAVE HOUSING; they run around all over town all day long, and will for the rest of their lives.
so...people have a right to express their opinions...until they conflict with yours?
extreme problems require extreme solutions.
rejco100 - I sincerely doubt that having a min wage job got them into homelessness. A min wage job may not have kept them from falling into it, but I'll bet it's more likely a consequence of some very poor choices in life or the result of some catastrophic event beyond their control. In either case, before taxpayers start footing the bill for helping them, it only seems fair for them to show that they're serious about changing their circumstances. And talk won't cut it -- but staying straight and 3-6 months labor for the County at min wage, that would at least show some serious commitment and a potentially worthy taxpayer investment.
We are always forwarding the funny stuff received via email.
Take a look at this NBC interview with Warren Buffet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu5B-2LoC...
Warren Buffett doesn't think it's right that his tax rate is lower than his secretary's.
Way to go, Warren.
Click here to contact your congress people and senators
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dire...
shrek, he doesn't think it's right, does he know her deductions, her marital status or even if she owns a home?
The homeless situation is a problem, but extremist views on either side don't hold water.
Our country needs to develop a "hand up" policy and not a "hand out" policy.
Keeping religion out isn't an answer as the current shelters are overwhelmingly religous.
Non-profit shelters are normally scams and money making ventures that are overlooked by an overwhelmed system.
Yesterday these people were your neighbors helping to pay into the system as moral upstanding citizens and now today they are mentally ill,drug addicted,homeless wanna be, vermon!!!
Do some of you people actual beleive that all these people are what you say they are!
I can hear lady liberty weeping a symbol of our american heritage.
This weighs heavily on my heart.
katie, stevem, your ilk is as depressing to me as the poor homeless out in the summer swelter.
Yes, you have a right to express your opinion.
I and others have the right to tell you that
it is sickening and abhorrent. Having compassion for your fellow man is not a liberal thing, it is a human thing. Society in 2009 could do with a few less egocentric megalomaniacs such as yourselves.
I have a lot of compassion for the homeless.
I am very generous when I encounter homeless people and will give them money. I know my $5 won't solve anything but if it gives someone a meal or a beer it might make them happy that day. That is truly all I know how to do. Homelessness will ever go away, there are a large percentage of homeless people that will refuse to live any other life. It breaks my heart that people live like that.
I also know that it's not fair to the residents and neighbors that have to use Foremaster Lane, to make mothers walk by that filth with their children. They had to be moved. That area has got to be a biological nightmare after that tent city sprouted.
We absolutely cannot allow to have a Mumbai style slum develop in downtown Las Vegas
I think Kate must be related in some way to Senator Ensign. Maybe they could make some room for some of the homeless in their little fraternity promise keeper house in Washington.
HELP of Southern Nevada's, Mobile Crisis Interventon Team, has been offering resources, specifically in the Foremaster area for the last three summers. We are a regional team who understands the unusual circumstances that surround the Foremaster area. The faces of Foremaster are ever changing, as are the challenges the new faces represent. A portion of the Foremaster population, in my experience, is not chronically homeless, and does in fact have minimal income. The income, is at times, used to provide activities other than housing.
MCIT keeps up to date numbers on all unduplicated contacts as well as numbers of individuals who want no contact or services for every intervention we participate in.
HELP of Southern Nevada's, MCIT, is required to report all of it's "numbers" to the Southern Nevada Regional Planning Coalition. The SNRPC is completely up to date on our Foremaster findings. HELP of Southern Nevada's, MCIT continue to avail ourselves to Metro, the business community and our faith based service providers, in an effort to move individuals WHO ARE READY TO EXIT HOMELESSNESS, into the resources that will alow that person to prosper.
Imagine living on the street (maybe)in a tent. There is no bathroom or water readily available.
People around you may be stoned or drunk, or an ex-con, or a mentally ill person, or smelly, or violent, or maybe just really stupid. It would be scary, your antenna would be on high alert all the time. You would have to be careful to watch what possessions you had. You would need all your wits about you just to survive the day, especially here in this very hot sun.
Have some compassion, these people are in dire straights, nobody plans on this outcome.
What's Not to Like?
Reform? Why do we need health-care reform? Everything is just fine the way it is.
Oh really? this article at Newsweek "Nails IT"
http://www.newsweek.com/id/209817
Could one of you conservatives opposing health care reform could issue a logical response to this article above, I would like to hear your response. Really!
shrek,
I know this is off-topic, but I'm going to answer your question.
I can only speak for myself. The health bill they are currently proposing sucks. One of my biggest issues with the bill is that Democrats keep telling us that illegals will not be eligible to participate in the public insurance option. Yet Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee voted (26-15, straight down the party lines)to kill an amendment offered by Dean Heller that would have prevented illegals from receiving government subsidized health care under any reform proposal.
While the bill says illegals are not to recieve coverage or tax credits, Democrats refuse to include the standard eligibility verication requirements (the same standards already in use for welfare and medicare) that would ensure these benefits are provided to legal citizens.
Take into consideration Obama's own words about exceptions needing to be made for illegal children.
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/07/21/...
I do not trust this bill or what they are telling us about it. They need to write a bill with clear and definitive eligibility standards.
And that's just for starters, I have other issues too, but this is the showstopper for me.
I have been homeless, have any of you? If a person does not have a family to help them when they lose a job, home, and next the car, the next step is homelessness. I have navigated the social system, it is not easy and unless you have a lot of patience (like seeking every agency for help) there is none one to help. A woman with a male child has few options for shelter. The mentally ill (since Reagan) have fewer and fewer resources. It's funny to me people that have never been homeless or tried to navigate the system have so many suggestions. None of you must go to church or have read the Bible. Before a monetary system was founded there was no homelessness. It would be nice if these boards were full of thoughtful insightful, smart people not just idiots and there emotional responses. Repeating your emotional comments with caps lock doesn't make them any more valid. Obviously none of you has had to deal with a mentally ill family member. Homelessness is probably one of many tests of humanity, how will those that have deal with those that do not. plead on judgment day your lack of humanity for your fellow man, plead how homeless are useless because they lack resources, how do you think that will go over with the Creator? I am not my brothers keeper, I will judge, I will go against everything the Father taught us, because I am arrogant, insensitive, ignorant, and lack compassion.
After wakeup's wake up call, all I can hear are the crickets. Well said, my friend.
I applaud your tenacity and courage. Stay well and safe.
"But for the grace of God, there go I"
Homelessness can happen to anybody. A series of bad breaks or financial mistakes or your hit with a mental illness like depression or some physical problem and there you go your out on the street.
I suggest you people show some empathy for these people.
That lady is right,it's hell on a sidewalk, hot enough to fry eggs, even with beer and cigs, meth, smack,coke,oxycotin,to put up their arms or in nose or ear or as a suppository, in my eyes,I have reservations about being in close proximity, yet, like the rest of us, mostly, we have compassion, except ol' stevem, who thinks death squads are a solution,thanks for you honesty, I hope karma doesnt come and bite you in the butt. This is a free country, I am sure, that camping in 100+ heat is no picnic. I don't have the wherewithal to "adapt a bum" nor do I want to be exposed to desperate people, however, I am good for a cup of coffee, so hit me up, if you need to. and let's remember, we are all related.
wakeup, I too was homeless years ago. I do not understand why any of these people choose vegas to be homeless in. Summer is too hot, winter is too cold, so there must be something drawing them here. Access to drugs, people to prey upon, beat up, rob and rape. Homelessness is a life of scheeming and scamming, spending all energy trying not to work instead of following the rules and working for something. Not all homeless people are this way but most are. It is very dark and for those who are not some sort of predator it is very dangerous, until they learn the ropes. To you bleeding hearts, be cautious, if you try to help a snake don't be surprised when it bites you.
Hey,
Maybe if these barriers work on the homeless we can try them out on the southern border?
Katie, I work just up the street from that area. I see them almost every day. I smell the stench almost every day. I have even talked to some of them. Yes I am sure that it would be your "GUESS".