LAS VEGAS – Case manager Bryon Johnson turned on a light in a dark tunnel beneath the glitter of the Las Vegas Strip on a fall evening. He crawled into a hole in a concrete pit littered with trash and discarded clothing to search for an underground world for homeless clients.
Beneath the Caesars Palace hotel and casino, Johnson found one of them on a plywood bed. Jay Flanders, 49, had pain in his back, arms and fingers. The homeless man admitted to occasional meth use and mental health concerns. He couldn’t remember how long he had lived underground, but it had been a few years.
“Why don’t you come in,” Johnson asked, trying to persuade Flanders to leave the tunnels. “Come for treatment.”
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Johnson’s job is to get homeless people out of the drainage tunnels beneath Las Vegas, where people hide from law enforcement and shelter from extreme weather, but risk being swept away by flooding. Drugs and alcohol dominate. Johnson tells clients they have a better chance of recovery from the ground up, where they can treat chronic conditions like diabetes, depression and heart disease, and start drug and alcohol treatment programs.
Street medicine providers and homeless workers who travel to the tunnels say they’ve noticed an increase in the number of people living underground as housing costs have risen and local officials have adopted a zero-tolerance approach to homelessness. Workers also face a level of drug addiction, which makes it difficult to get people, many with mental illnesses and other health conditions, off the ground for care.
“It’s meth. It’s fentanyl. They are opioids. We’re seeing more and more,” said Rob Banghart, vice president of community integration for the homeless outreach nonprofit Shine a Light, who lived in the tunnels for 2 half of the five years he was homeless, often using drugs.
Now more than six years sober, Banghart remembered the tunnels that provided a break. “In that state of mind, I said to myself: ‘He has a roof; it’s out of the sun.’ It’s a bit twisted, but it was a community.’
Outreach workers say more people are retreating underground. Although dark and damp, the tunnels provide cover from the harsh desert sun, warmth when temperatures drop, and privacy from the views of society above ground.
Built in the 1990s and measuring some 600 kilometers, the tunnels provide flood control for the city and outlying communities. Homeless outreach workers said 1,200 to 1,500 people live in them. Many have built elaborate shelters, often out of plywood and scraps of metal or brick, beneath the casinos that define the Strip.
Tunnel living isn’t limited to Nevada. Across California’s Central Valley and its southern desert, people who can’t afford housing are falling behind caves and earthen tunnelsthey are often dug along flood control berms, riverbanks or drainage canals where people can escape the heat and law enforcement. In San Antonio, the homeless have it they built tunnel campsand in New York, homeless people have long since retreated to an underground existence in the tunnels and disappeared train corridors.
In Las Vegas, some tunnel dwellers say they are hiding to avoid the constant searches of the camps, which they do increased nationally From the US Supreme Court he promised this year that local authorities have the right to impose bans on sleeping or camping in public spaces, even when there is no shelter or housing.
Others said they descend to escape the unbearable weather. Triple figures are common in the summer; this year, Las Vegas has soared to 120 degrees. And the tunnels offer protection in the winter when temperatures drop into the 30s. It even snows there.
Street drug providers are also trying to convince homeless people to leave the tunnels to receive care. In addition to more drug and alcohol use, they have seen new problems with injuries and skin disorders associated with the street drug known as “tranq,” slang for the animal tranquilizer xylazine often mixed with fentanyl or meth.
Tranq causes deep skin infections that, if left untreated, can lead to bone infections requiring amputation.
Flandes, the homeless man in the tunnels, had some of these skin wounds, which he called spider bites, a euphemism for deep skin wounds caused by tranq. He estimates that he has been to the emergency room at least 10 times this year, and that he has been hospitalized several times.
“Once I stayed there for six days; I almost lost a finger,” Flanders said, holding up an index finger bent by a deep infection as she began to tear up. Despite the dangers, Flands said, he still felt safer living in the tunnels than above ground.
Las Vegas’ booming population has helped drive up housing costs. Rent in the southern Nevada market increased 20% from 2022 to 2023, according to a Clark County. homelessness report – higher than national average.
As more people are displaced, more goes back underground. And often, outreach workers say, it’s not just locals who can’t afford the rising cost of living who become homeless, but also out-of-towners. Some make the city’s entertainment industry boom, while others end up homeless after losing everything in the casinos.
“People come here to gamble or try to gamble on vacation, and they lose everything,” said Johnson, who runs Shine a Light, one of two Las Vegas organizations that offer high outreach, housing referrals and drug treatment services. homeless people in the tunnels.
“The housing market is crazy; rent continues to rise. There’s a lot of people down here,” said Johnson, who lived in the tunnels until he got sober with the help of Shine a Light. “People get stuck.”
However, from Nevada scorching heat and the rain and monsoon pose a great threat to those who live in the tunnels, although it is not clear exactly how deadly life in them can be.
But Louis Lacey, homeless response director for the nonprofit Southern Nevada Help, said homeless people living underground are putting their lives at risk, often when tunnels flood during monsoons. His organization coordinates with the city of Las Vegas and Clark County to get as many people into shelters as possible before the rainy season begins. it runs normally from June to September.
“We go into the tunnels to make sure that people who want to leave are out, but not everyone leaves because they often don’t want to leave their belongings behind,” he said. “People die every year.”
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