Bit of Luck for Vegas Homeless

In a city replete with broken dreams, repair work is under way at a sprawling complex catering to the homeless just blocks from downtown’s casino-lined Glitter Gulch.

Thousands of homeless flock here annually, drawn by warm temperatures, once-plentiful jobs, a low cost of living and casinos that tout riches at the pull of a handle.

But when the nights turn cold, the jobs run out and lady luck abandons them, the homeless find the problems are the same in this capital of glitz as anywhere else in the country.

“These people come to Las Vegas thinking it’s the land of golden opportunity,” Sylvia Van Patten says. “They’re finding Vegas is like any other place in the world.”

Van Patten runs Crossroads, a new shelter for families that opened in August. It is part of a complex that includes Shade Tree, a shelter for homeless women and children, and St. Vincent’s, a complex that provides food, clothing, shelter--and hope--to hundreds of people daily.

On a recent cold day, half a dozen young children scampered about the tile floor of the warm confines of Crossroads, a building renovated to provide separate rooms for eight families.

The eight families include 18 children, ranging from a 3-month-old to 16-year-old twin boys attending a Las Vegas school.

Lorraine Sandoval, 28, watched as her two boys, ages 4 and 3, played with other children at the facility.

“This place helped us when we couldn’t find help anywhere else,” she said. “We came here from New Mexico, looking for a job. Then everything all fell to pieces and we found ourselves on the street.”

Across the parking lot in a building that once housed a discount store, Kay DeNeal explained the house rules at St. Vincent’s. Each night, 138 men stay in the second-floor barracks, and 600 others sleep on mats and sleeping bags on the shelter’s floor. The 138 have been screened and accepted into a special program in which St. Vincent’s helps them find jobs.

DeNeal draws a distinction between the homeless and street people.

“A street person is out there by choice,” he said, pointing to hundreds of scruffy people in a fenced section cluttered with makeshift tents and shopping carts carrying worldly belongings. “A street person wants no responsibility. Those street people think of one thing--gimme, gimme, gimme, and give nothing in return. You can spot them by their attitude. They don’t like rules and regulations.”