Las Vegas developer plans on a project called Tropicana Trails, an affordable-rent apartment building on an empty lot in the Whitney area of Clark County, off of Boulder Highway and Tropicana in Las Vegas, Nevada, Wednesday, February 7, 2024.
Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2024 | 2 a.m.
A Las Vegas developer wants to build an affordable-rent apartment building in the Whitney area of Clark County, but some neighbors are raising concerns it could drag down property values and attract “bad actors.”
To the contrary, developer George Gekakis and backers of the $32 million project said it would help clean up the area and combat homelessness.
“We are going to revitalize that area,” said Ridge Claridy, director of grants and compliance with Help of Southern Nevada, which assists needy people with direct services, training and referral to community resources.
“It’s not a homeless shelter. It is not going to be a resting place with people bringing in carts, things like that,” Claridy said.
The project, which will be seeking federal grant money to help build it, is called Tropicana Trails and is planned for near Boulder Highway and Tropicana Avenue. Gekakis described the area as a challenged neighborhood that had a significant number of homeless camps.
Tropicana Trails would be a two-story building with 50 units — 48 studio apartments and two 1-bedroom apartments. There will be staff on site around the clock to assist residents with access to transportation and medical care.
The building will feature an interior courtyard to discourage loitering in the parking lot, Gekakis said. Plus, a 5,055 square-foot community center is planned for the project.
“This development is for people at risk of homelessness,” Gekakis says. “It’s also for (victims of) dating violence or marital violence, domestic violence.”
The Jan. 25 homeless census found that 6,556 people were experiencing homelessness in Southern Nevada, according to the homeless advocate group Help Hope Home. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires a count annually in the last week of January. Data from the 2024 count will be available in the summer.
The January census showed that 2,654 individuals were sheltered in Southern Nevada, and another 3,912 were living on the streets or at the homeless courtyard in downtown, the group reported. In 2022, there were 5,645 homeless on the night of the count.
The model for Tropicana Trails is largely focused on serving elderly and clients with disabilities who are receiving disability benefits as their source of income.
Americans 55 and older are the fastest-growing demographic experiencing homelessness, according to HUD. In 2023, 19.8% of the homeless population was people aged 55 and older, the agency said. But the most recent Las Vegas count found the Las Vegas area was worse off with 33% of the total homeless over age 55 to show the need for the new project.
“They’re getting $914 a month. Where are you going to live with that money? Nowhere, absolutely nowhere,” Claridy said. “And that’s why you see people in the drainage ditches and in encampments because there is nowhere else for them to go. Homeless shelters are full.”
The Nevada State Apartment Association reports that apartment rent in Las Vegas costs an average of $1,480 a month across all unit sizes.
Residents of Tropicana Trails would sign one-year leases that they could extend indefinitely. They would pay 30% of their income for rent.
During an informal neighborhood meeting last month, some people reacted with skepticism to the proposal, which has yet to receive county approval.
Gekakis sent mailers to neighbors living within 1,500 feet of the proposed development — about 1,200 people — though many at the meeting were from outside the zone.
“This area is already very congested with low-income housing,” said Joel Tyning, who lives in the area around Stephanie and Clark streets.
“We support the mission. We support the cause. But we just don’t support more low-income housing in our area. We’d like it to be kind of shared throughout the rest of the valley,” he said.
Neighbors questioned Gekakis about what would happen to the homeless people living on the site where the project was planned.
He said efforts would be made through the county and Help of Southern Nevada to relocate them to shelters.
Erin Ben-Samochan, corporate manager for Sportsman’s Royal Manor, a nearby budget extended-stay property, also expressed concerns.
“We don’t want more crime, we don’t want more homeless, we don’t want more drug activity,” she said. “We’ve worked very hard to keep it off our property and our corner, and we feel that this type of project would bring the bad actors back to our corner.”
Kyle Brennan, general manager of Sportsman’s Royal Manor, said he feared Tropicana Trails, as proposed, “will make the area worse; lower the values of the properties across the board. It’ll spill over to our property. We’re just not OK with this whole deal.”
Gekakis said the area was already blighted. “Putting this type of development there is just going to increase your property values back,” he said.
Gekakis says opposition to the project comes from what he calls NIMBYs — an acronym for “not in my backyard.”
“You know, they don’t want change, and they don’t want it in their backyard,” he said. “I’m just trying to give back to the community and trying to address the situation of the ongoing homelessness population.”
He said his next step was to begin through the planning and zoning process with Clark County officials.
Clark County, while still not having formally considered the proposal, issued a statement that said “projects like this one fill a clear need and represent a step in the right direction.”
“This project would house those in need and provide them with supportive services. Research has shown that Clark County is in need of more than 80,000 units of affordable housing,” the statement said.
