Down and Out in Las Vegas

If you're mentally ill, addicted, homeless, and very lucky, you might find a home in Las Vegas.

Very high unemployment and the highest foreclosure rate in the nation has taken it's toll on this resort vacation destination spot in the Nevada desert. And the tourists that come here are not very friendly to the homeless.

Can you imagine living in a dark and dingy tunnel underneath Sheldon Adelson's beautiful and elegant Las Vegas Sands Hotel and Casino on Las Vegas Boulevard?

ABC News - "Underneath Sin City's most famous casinos is a secret world: a labyrinth of tunnels that run for miles under the Las Vegas Valley. Built to protect the desert city from flash floods, the tunnels have become home to hundreds of Las Vegas' homeless."

Journalist Matt O'Brien wrote a book, Beneath the Neon, about this elaborate subterranean world of beds with headboards, makeshift pantries, and even art on the walls (pictured below. More here). Now O'Brien's interest has turned to advocacy — he's connected folks in the tunnels with a local non-profit group called HELP of Southern Nevada, which has since started an outreach program

But if you already have a mental or physical disability (including drug addiction), you might qualify for $637 a month in Social Security disability payments.

And if you've also been living on the streets (or under them) for a very long time (being chronically homeless), and if you get very lucky, you might also qualify for a low-cost apartment in North Las Vegas.

Horizon Crest on 13 West Owens Avenue (pictured below) has 66 low-rent apartments for the poor and 12 apartments for the chronically homeless, those who have been on the street the longest. It's a nice complex, but just a few blocks away are some very nasty neighborhoods with a lot of gang activity in the surrounding area. (I didn't bother to research the nearest food store, in case one doesn't own a car.)

The federal government defines the chronically homeless as people with a physical or mental disability who have not had permanent housing for at least a year — or four times in three years. The Las Vegas Valley’s homeless population is estimated at 12,000, but Horizon Crest only consists of 78 units (think of a lottery).

Nevada HAND, a housing developer, built the apartments for $11.5 million, using federal low-income housing tax credits as well as Las Vegas and state money.

The formerly homeless tenants have a case manager who is on-site Monday through Friday. The idea is to get people off the streets and into housing without first forcing them to jump through such hoops as getting a job, completing a de-tox program or going to church — as is common in many other programs. The hope is that the anchor of an apartment, plus on-site or nearby help for addictions, mental illness and other problems, will be enough to keep people from going back to the streets.

The formerly homeless tenants put 30 percent of their incomes toward the rent with the remainder covered by county or state money. The tenants receive a rule book of sorts on entering the program, including requirements of weekly meetings and plans to develop daily routines leading to long-term housing. (I have no idea how one might qualify if they have no source of income.)

47-year-old Michael Sumling had been on the streets or in jail most of the time since leaving his home in Charleston, Mississippi when he was 16. By his count, he has been in 40 emergency rooms and clinics in dozens of states, whenever he was overrun by depression and heard voices in his head. He gets $637 a month in Social Security Disability* checks for his mental illness.

* I've been waiting for over a year on my own Social Security Disability claim, and I'm currently waiting for a hearing date before a judge after two rejections already. I've been living with a friend and using food stamps all that time.

At first, after being on the streets in Las Vegas for several months, Michael Sumling wound up at a short-term program called New Genesis, where a caseworker from HELP of Southern Nevada told him about the Horizon Crest apartments. The main requirement was the ability to prove that he had been on the streets for a long time.

Because of his mental condition, Michael Sumling has a tote bag filled with Prozac and other pills*. Recently he made the mistake of assuming he was “better” and stopped taking those pills. Soon after, "the voices" came back.

* I assume that like myself, Sumling is using state Medicaid through the Clark County Social Services to receive his medical care. If it wasn't for my new friend, I too might have ended up homeless. But because I wasn't "chronically homeless", I would never have qualified for one of those lost-cost apartments, because living on the street was never an option for me.

A case manager at Horizon Crest says tenants like Sumling could be evicted if they don't comply with their "program", which includes having to attend sessions to help them develop skills, such as looking for a job (in a jobless city). Although there may not be many hoops to jump through for getting into the program, there are requirements for staying.

A study of this program showed that nearly 9 of 10 chronically homeless people with mental illness stayed in housing for 5 consecutive years with round-the-clock help.

(Pictured below) Michael Sumling chats with a friend in his Horizon Crest apartment. Would you be willing to live like he did before being able to qualify for one of these low-rent apartments?

Crystal Williams is case manager for HELP of Southern Nevada. The 59-year-old has worked in human services for 35 years, the last three as a case manager of chronically homeless people. Most of the 25 people on her caseload are dealing with long-standing addictions and mental health problems. She is used to meeting people at rock bottom.

Crystal will travel to every corner of the Las Vegas Valley to visit the homes of her clients, each at a different level of independence. Caseworkers like Crystal keeps extra keys to their client's apartments in case they need to check on the welfare of clients.

She took two of them grocery shopping and stopped at the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for a third.

One of Crystal Williams' clients is 33-year-old Jason McKenzie, who was homeless for about a year before joining HELP's program nine months ago. He had trouble staying sober, even with outpatient treatment. Now he's got a month's worth of sobriety under his belt.

Crystal dropped in on another client, David Matthews, 51, who lives in a tidy apartment in south Las Vegas. Matthews is a former airport screener who got hooked on opiates after injuring his back years ago. He spent three years living in a Henderson homeless encampment before outreach workers from HELP of Southern Nevada came along. He's been clean eight months.

Later Crystal dropped in on a female client who asked not to be identified. The 48-year-old former cocktail waitress is trim, her blond-gray hair thick and stylish. She has been a HELP client nearly two years.

Her next stop was Fred Beutler, 40, who is a former iron worker who has been in HELP's program just three weeks. He spent two of them in the hospital because of health problems caused by chronic alcoholism. His liver is now so damaged that drinking a single beer sends him to the hospital.

HELP caseworkers encourage clients to wait until they have achieved a long stretch of sobriety before looking for a job. "It's a bad idea to give newly sober people access to a lot of cash," Crystal says.

Crystal spent the rest of the day visiting other clients around town, most of whom are at home when they are not at doctors' appointments or attending counseling, substance abuse treatment and vocational rehabilitation.

Some clients eventually succeed, become independent and leave the program. Sometimes it takes years. Others fail, though Crystal doesn't see it that way. "On average I feel we have made a difference in one way or another," she says.

It's not until later, when Crystal arrives back at her small HELP office, on Flamingo Road just west of Maryland Parkway, that she takes a moment to breathe. It's about 4 p.m. Her day started at 7:30 a.m. She'll spend the next hour or so doing paperwork, then head home. Tomorrow is another day for her.

Programs such as HELP of Southern Nevada, Medicaid, food stamps, and Social Security are the very programs the Republicans want to cut — just to offset the cost for more tax breaks for the rich. That's why I hate Republicans.

My Related Posts:

• 1 in 200 Americans were in a Homeless Shelter
• Homelessness Higher and Rising
• To Be A Homeless Man
• To Be A Homeless Man (Part Two)
• Nearly 25% Unemployed in Fabulous Las Vegas

* Excerpted and edited from the Las Vegas Review Journal - HELP of Southern Nevada gives hope to addicts, homeless and the Las Vegas Sun - First things first: For homeless, a home

1 in 200 Americans were in a Homeless Shelter

What it's like to sleep in a homeless shelter: "My biggest concern about having to spend a night in a homeless shelter was the bedbugs. I've learned that some shelters keep the feet of the bunk beds in soup cans, which are half filled with diatomaceous earth -- which is dirt from a sedimentary rock made up of fossilized algae. If the bedbugs make their way to the mattress through the soil, it scratches their shells and kills them."

In Atlantic City on the boardwalk there is a new $2.4 billion casino called the Revel. The CEO of the casino says he wants the nearby Rescue Mission gone. Republican Governor Chris Christie's "zero-tolerance" policy for the homeless in Atlantic City may help make that happen. (Read: The Republican's War on the Poor)

Christie's predecessor, the former Democratic Governor of New Jersey, is just the opposite. Richard Codey disguised himself as a homeless man to expose shortcomings in homeless shelters. "To find a place to take you if you're homeless was impossible essentially," he told the news source, "unless you're on some government entitlement program."

In a TV interview on CNN Richard Codey said that if someone is male or mentally ill, they have the most difficult time getting in to a homeless shelter.

HUD's last report finds that 643,000 persons were homeless on a given night in 2009 while roughly 1.56 million people, or one in every 200 Americans, spent at least one night in a shelter during 2009; and the number of homeless families have increased for the second straight year.

The average length of stay in emergency shelter was 69 days for single men, 51 days for single women, and 70 days for families.

In a recent approximation USA Today estimated 1.6 million people unduplicated persons used transitional housing or emergency shelters. Another approximation is from a study done by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty which states that approximately 3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them children, are likely to experience homelessness in a given year.

How many unemployed Americans are now on the verge of needing a homeless shelter? In 2012 almost 30 million are either under-employed or unemployed. Even if the unemployment rate stays the same, many will still  face foreclosures and evictions. (Read: Obama's Welfare State)

And almost half of all working Americans earn less than $27,000 a year - - when the poverty line for a family of four is $22,314. According to the USDA, in 2010, about 43% of households on food stamps had gross incomes at 50 percent or less of the poverty line. A full 85% had gross incomes below 100 percent of the poverty line -- that's only $10,830 a year for a single person such as myself. The remaining 15% were often elderly beneficiaries on fixed incomes such as Social Security.

Barbara Poppe is the director of U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. One day she spotted a man, huddled in the frigid doorway of a bank, near the automatic teller machine. He looked old and tired. He said he was resting his feet, waiting for the nightclubs to close so he could go out and shake his cup and beg for change. He said he was on a list for housing.

“I hope you get off the streets real soon,” she told him before she left him.

Back out on the street Barbara remembered a McDonald’s gift card that she had in her coat pocket. She paused in the cold, then turned around and went back and gave the card to man. He thanked her and tucked it into his ragged gray blanket.

If he's lucky, he might find an available bed tomorrow night. He'll worry about the bedbugs later.

My Related Posts

• To Be A Homeless Man
• To Be A Homeless Man (Part Two)
• It's illegal to be homeless in America
• The Top 1% Mocks Homeless at Halloween Party
• Why Not Blame the Homeless?
• Corporate Giant AT&T Sues Homeless Man!

The Economy is Roaring!

The U.S. unemployment rate fell last month to its lowest level in more than 2 1/2 years! Wow!

Charles Payne, a Fox Business Network contributor and CEO of  Wall Street Strategies reported yesterday: "One of the best days in the history of the stock market follows the best ever Monday after a Thanksgiving holiday week, and there could still be a ton of upside from here."

Two days ago on November 30, 2011 the DOW JONES closed 466 points higher, and as of this post, it is up again today.

Corporations are still profiting, executive pay is still very high (and they're still partying like it's 1929), and the unemployment rate dropped from 9% to 8.6% (I imagine a few elves were hired to help Santa get through the upcoming Christmas holiday with part-time low-paying jobs.)

But MSNBC just reported that the REAL unemployment rate is 15.6%. But we all know that just a few weeks after jobless benefits expire, the unemployed are no longer counted, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports them as "no longer looking for work". 315,000 Americans were reported as "no longer looking for work" just since last month.

I wonder how many just had their unemployment benefits expire? It's odd that so many people would just all of a sudden just give up trying to find a job. I wonder why? Don't they have to pay for food, heat, and rent?

So in other words, with this fabulous news,13.3 million Americans still remain unemployed (8.6%), but 24.2 million don't have a job (15.6%). Now I understand!

Of those who are still working, half of them earn less than $27,000 a year.

155.0 million total workforce - 77.5 million earn less than $27,000 a year     77.5 million sub-total - 24.2 million don't have a job    53.3 million are doing OK (about a 1/3 of the work force)

The economy is roaring! Happy days are here again! After all, we shouldn't complain, because in China the wages are "too high", so now they're hiring robots! Yikes!

Homelessness Higher and Rising

Once someone's little baby girl, now she's a lonely statistic.

We have a homeless epidemic in America and the 1% is partying like the Roaring Twenties. But the Republicans want massive cuts to social programs and more tax beaks for the rich.

The number of people in poverty has increased to a record 46.2 million and the poverty rate of 15.1 percent is the highest on record since 1983. The poverty rate is defined as a single person living on less that $10,890 a year.

The Social Security Administration researchers reported earlier this month that half of America’s workers earned less than $26,364 last year (the vast majority of the 99%).

Both the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Office of Budget and Management (OMB) in their respective economic outlook reports have revised their forecasts to reflect the worsening economic conditions across the country. The expectation is that the country will continue to see poor economic conditions for years to come with, for example, the unemployment rate projected to hover near 9 percent until 2013 and then not reach pre-recession levels until 2016 or 2017.

The continued poor economic conditions likely means high levels of poverty and deep poverty will remain. In fact, the Brookings Institution projects poverty will continue to increase through 2012 and that the poverty rate will stay above 15 percent through 2014. The Brookings’ research predicts poverty will stay above pre-recession levels through 2020.

Deep poverty follows a similar trajectory, so it is predicted that the deep poverty rate will remain at levels not seen since before the current economic downturn.

The Homelessness Research Institute examined previous evidence of the relationship between unemployment and poverty, and the relationship between rates-of-deep-poverty and rates-of-homelessness. Based on this, it projects that increases in the number of people in deep poverty will result in a significant increase in homelessness.

Because of many new "broken windows" or "quality of life" ordinances springing up all around the country, it makes it very difficult for the homeless to loiter or to even look indigent in public spaces.

All over the country police have moved in on the tent cities of the homeless, from Seattle to Providence, in raids that often leave the former occupants without even their minimal possessions. What the homeless from all walks of life are now discovering is, that to be homeless in America is to live like a fugitive.

The Homelessness Research Institute projects the overall homeless population could increase by nearly 5 percent in the next three years. The baseline, 1.6 million people, is the number of people who were homeless from October 2009 through September 2010, as documented by The 2010 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress (AHAR).

Based on this, the projected increase in homelessness over the next three years, due to the recession and continued economic downturn, is 5 percent. This would be the largest increase in homelessness since regular reporting on the size of the homeless population began in the 2007

There are other factors that support a concern that this projected 5 percent increase is a conservative estimate. First, it should be noted that homelessness is a lagging indicator, meaning it can take several months or years following a recession before homeless population increases are realized.

Second, this projection does not take into account the deep cuts to state and local government programs, and any future cuts to federal programs, that protect people against homelessness and help them when they are homeless. (The new super-committee will most likely be cutting social programs.)

Finally, the projection does not take into account the rising cost of housing, which is statistically linked to homelessness.

Allowing over a million people to become homeless every year has enormous economic, social, and human costs. The nation can learn from recent successful initiatives, and prevent the economic downturn and increasing poverty from creating a new class of homeless people. There is evidence of increases in homelessness emerging.

ALSO:

The Top 1% Mocks Homeless at Halloween Party

Why Homelessness Is Becoming an Occupy Wall Street Issue

The New Resentment of the Poor

Fewer Americans have access to basic necessities.

To Be A Homeless Man

To Be A Homeless Man (Part Two)

Throw Them Out With the Trash

It's illegal to be homeless in America...

...so don't lose your job, or if you do, hope there's room for you at the local homeless shelter.

Starting with Mayor Rudy Giuliani in New York, city after city has passed "broken windows" or "quality of life" ordinances making it dangerous for the homeless to loiter or even look "indigent" in public spaces.

All over the country police have moved in on the tent cities of the homeless, from Seattle to Providence, in raids that often leave the former occupants without even their minimal possessions.

What occupiers from all walks of life are discovering is that to be homeless in America is to live like a fugitive. (Full Article).

The Census Bureau recently determined that Atlanta has the most income inequality. The day before the new census data was released, Atlanta city officials cleared out an Occupy Atlanta encampment and arrested dozens of occupiers.

An aide: A recent study found that those who sit on "boards of directors" average just 4.3 hours a week on board work, and the nation’s top 1 percent took home more income than America’s entire bottom 40 percent. The Social Security Administration researchers reported earlier this month that half of America’s workers (the 99%) earned less than $26,364 last year.

By comparison: Larry Ellison (the 1%), the CEO at Oracle, has just listed a 6.9-acre home and horse farm he owns in Northern California for $19 million. He has a $33 billion net worth. The Oracle kingpin owns at least 15 homes, including two in Southern California’s Malibu. Says Malibu mayor John Sibert: “One or the other of his yachts shows up here about four times a year, right off shore. Other than that, we don't see him around town very much.”

But Americans aren't even allowed to live in a tent if we lose our jobs and are evicted from our homes. We have to live as homeless roamers.

Right now the occupiers on Wall Street have been reduced to using bicycles to produced electricity.

Police in Austin, Texas made 39 arrests early Sunday as they moved to enforce a new rule banning food tables in the City Hall plaza where protesters have camped out.. "On a night where there are hundreds of drunks driving around town, they have all these resources here to take down three food tables," protester Dave Cortez told the newspaper.

But how can the Occupy Wall Street Moment ever expect to make real change when sporting events, concerts, royal weddings, and presidential inaugurations draw much bigger crowds.

More than 3 million people marched through Rome in opposition to the U.S.- led invasion of Iraq in 2003 (as Americans had also been protesting all along), but 8 years later as of October 2011 we're still in Iraq - - and the corporations have been profiting the entire time.

And I also noticed that much smaller countries have gathered much larger crowds. Will things have to get much more worse in the U.S. before there can really be mass protests...enough so as to influence political and corporate behavior?

On January 20, 1980 the Super Bowl was attended by a record 103,985 spectators, which remains a record through today. How many people are in Zuccotti Park trying to end political corruption and corporate greed?

It looked discouraging when I looked at past U.S. protests and compare them to what the people in Europe and the Middle East have done.

It would help if all the colleges got involved the way they did during the Vietnam Era. While although they have no fear of being drafted into war these days, they still have unemployment and college debt to fear.

So now it's almost illegal to be jobless and homeless through no fault of your own. Only in America.