Inside Sin City’s growing homeless crisis: Shocking photos show scores of people sleeping in makeshift tents and the sidewalk on iconic Las Vegas strip
Iconic Sin City & It’s Homeless
Building, new hotels, tourists, and millions of dollars raked in, and yet homelessness is ignored, even at the risk of death in the washouts, and extreme temperatures
Introduction
Iconic Sin City, we have all heard of that city, read about it, seen it on the news, or even traveled, but do we know about the other side of that city? The life outside of the flittering lights?
Where housing is unaffordable and not built, where food is hard to get, and where people sleep in the washes hoping to not die in the process. NIMBYism and all its friends thrive here and the people suffer because of it.
Let’s look at His word as we start today
Proverbs 3: 28
Do not say to your neighbor, “Come back tomorrow I will give it,’ when you already have it with you
Luke 10: 27 & 28
He answered him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.” You have answered correctly, Jesus said, Do this and you will live.
What Say You…
Well, It’s That city, they are going to have problems, it is all about sin and lust and money, they can never solve problems, the homeless are just another problem, right
I educate my kids, make them go to school and not cut class, so they won’t struggle as adults, I make them learn, don’t know about them street kids, but life is a school of tough knocks, wake up
Build for Tourism or Affordability
No one goes to Sin City to see, think about, or worry about those lying around on the sidewalks and parking lots. In fact, no one is really thinking about them at all. The numbers alone tell the tale for us all. As in another article I wrote, the numbers just keep climbing and the businesses assigned to help the homeless make no changes but ask for more money. Hotels, resorts, playgrounds of the rich and famous and the soon to be are the primary focus and nothing else comes into focus, period.
California is helping the great boom of the iconic Sin City; they are leaving California in droves due to high taxes and their mansions being taxed as well. So, luxury, high-end, and mansions can be built, but still focused on tourism and the high roller, not the average Joe. The millionaire going to their new apartment, home, or condo, bankrolled from the casino, do they walk around the bump or step over it? The bump is a forgotten human!
85,000 Units short in one year for affordability housing, one year, you can never catch up with that bad math, it is not humanly possible, you are playing a losing hand. That is like telling a child who is now five that maybe when he graduates high school, he will have a roof over his head, maybe. Las Vegas and Clark County have one of the worst affordability shortages in the nation, and they somehow think that can solve homelessness, how? Tourism and the influx of the ones with money will always drive the agenda and the direction of that drive will always be away from affordability.
Housing Crisis Worse than National Average
Okay, why do I mention the housing crisis again? For its hidden impact that nobody wants to be mentioned, the impact on children and their education and maturity. It states that 87% of kids are in fact enrolled in school, but only 77% attend regularly. Kids not in school means troubles of all kinds and some of those troubles the kids will not recover from.
But what it does not discuss, we must think about again, how do they study, read, and prepare for tests with no stability to do housing crisis? School today is nothing like when we went to school. Today there are bullies, different tests, cliches, school shootings, and then mix in housing instability, how successful will that child be? What is the potential end result, generational poverty and homelessness? The cradle to the grave is supposed to be a long and prosperous journey, for many kids, it is getting shorter, more violent, and far less prosperous.
For every 100 units that are needed for the booming housing market, there are only 11 constructed for the affordable market, a serious dichotomy that presents risk factors to stability. Las Vegas and the surrounding Clark County have some of the worst numbers in America. Jobs, schooling, grants and federal assistance alone cannot undo that lack of balance in housing construction and retrofitting.
Las Vegas is simply like a lot of other growing, popular, attractive cities, go after the monies elite who can bring in more money so more big projects can lift off the ground. It is a never-ending circle.
The housing crisis was never so open and upfront and plain for them to see, the nuclear family used to exist and in that people were safe, kept, and protected in crisis. The government has done a great job of teasing, cajoling, and enticing people to move, leave, and exit their nuclear families for the lure of big money far from home.
There was no housing crisis in ages gone by, families lived together, supported each other, and made sure the most vulnerable made it through with shining colors. But, we grew up, we got mature and we left the family in the dust, and housing, shortage, expense and unaffordability is the end result.
Willing to Risk Death
Here is what a lot of folks unfamiliar with high desert country do not know about rain and the desert. When it rains, it truly rains, and since the ground is so hard it does not puddle up. It forms flash flood threats and the underground gullies and culverts and tunnels fill up fast. It brings protection to the city and its people, but, people are living down there for years and are not prepared for the flash floods. Can you even imagine you can’t sleep anywhere else so you end up in the tunnels, resting quietly and suddenly, flash food and that is the end….
Now granted to sleep, rest or inhabit these areas are just as prohibited as the streets of the city itself, but out here, no one you, so no cares, literally. Efforts are made to one degree or another to help people get out of the washes and tunnels, but when there is no housing or shelters, where should they go? They are literally willing to risk death for a quiet place to lay their head at night. Furniture, bedding, clothes, food, tarps, and tents all accompany down there, making it dangerous for all when the floods come.
Now we do not ignore the common three well-known, popular causes of homelessness, but we know that there are many other reasons. If you are struggling with mental illness and people yelling at you all day is a problem, would not the washout be a quiet place, no matter the danger? If you need to lay low and avoid police interaction, the tunnels provide that escape, danger means little when you are trying to hide. Homeless people are just like us, when pressed and pushed, they often do not make good decisions.
Thousands Worry about Having Enough Food
In an area where casinos and restaurants throw away untold tons of food every month why is there not in place a program to convert that food into food for the hungry and hurting of Las Vegas and Clark Country? We are the most wasteful nation when it comes to food, and it boils down to fear, fear of lawsuits, we cannot help our neighbor because we may be sued for something. There would be no food shortage if just the eateries banded together, but add in the casinos, and problem solved and no child or elderly person would be hungry.
As of now, just over 300,000 people through Las Vegas and Clark County worry about getting food. That is not speaking of the homeless, that is every soul living in those impacted communities. If you are not eating regularly, and often enough, everything else starts to fall apart, work, school, church, family life, and eventually your housing, you cannot function without food. I personally think it is criminal what we throw away knowing that the elderly, disabled, and children are literally going to bed hungry every night in this nation.
$24.3000 annual income, is an average low-income earning for a person in Clark County, NV, how can a person survive on that? Rent, bills, and expenses and eat with that, divide it out by 12 and truth be told it is not much and we wonder why those needing food soon slide into homelessness. Post-Pandemic inflation has gone out of control thanks to a deeply irresponsible government and a refusal for the people to hold them accountable and it is the poor and low-income that are suffering and dying as a result. Food is not a luxury, and something must change is a key finding before homelessness happens.
CTA…..
Answer this:
In Las Vegas are the less wealthy supposed to move, to leave, and to go away since the affordability crisis is so pervasive? If yes, then who does all the dirty jobs no wealthy person would consider doing? Is there a proper balance?
Is the only answer to ‘clean up’ the streets to allow the homeless to live in danger of death by going underground, I mean after all they would at least be out of sight. No lumps and bumps to trip over in the night after a long day of gambling, eating and drinking
NIMBYism is the death of nearly affordable housing and shelter within a given area, especially a tourist area, but how do we morally justify allowing them to die while others spend millions
