Monday, Nov. 12, 2001 | 10:56 a.m.
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who organized and now chairs a regional task force on homelessness, said Friday he remains unapologetic about his goal to remove homeless people who resist treatment from the Las Vegas Valley.
Not only that, he also wants to prevent more from coming. The only question, he said, is how.
The mayor said he is talking about a relatively small, but highly visible segment of the homeless population, one of alcohol and drug addicts, drifters and others -- mostly men -- who line up for free showers, meals and beds but want no help working toward new jobs.
Religious leaders, sociologists and members of the American Civil Liberties Union say such rhetoric from the chairman of a coalition attempting to address one of civic government's basic duties -- the care of the poor -- is morally reprehensible, naive and can only distract from effective public policy.
More than two-thirds of the homeless population are women and children, homeless advocates say. Another 25 percent are said to be mentally ill. An uncounted portion of the homeless population stays with friends, sometimes three or four families living in single-family apartments or homes. Far fewer of these homeless are seen by the general public on a day-to-day basis.
"Our prosperity exists on the backs of people who live on the margins, making minimum wage, and we're living in a city that's laid off 15,000 people," UNLV sociology professor Barb Brents, said. "To think the homeless population won't increase is simply naive.
"And now the mayor, bless his heart, is trying to get them out. But you can't get rid of homeless in a service economy like Las Vegas, with so many people just barely making ends meet," she said.
Goodman says he knows this. He wants the panhandlers and hustlers "out of his city," he says.
But since forming the task force in February, Goodman has made several public statements that continue to dog him.
Goodman has suggested busing homeless people 30 miles south to a former jail in Jean. With its air-conditioning and ready medical treatment facilities, he said, it could be used to train them for re-entering the workforce.
More recently, Goodman accused the Salt Lake City municipal government of giving as many as 1,000 homeless people bus tickets to Las Vegas. He later apologized publicly after Salt Lake City officials flatly denied the allegation.
Last week, at a City Council meeting where Goodman ultimately voted to approve $200,000 for various homeless service agencies, he made several antagonistic remarks aimed at the homeless.
Goodman called panhandlers "despicable" and said the homeless were coming to Las Vegas "in droves" and "that must stop." He said Las Vegas is gaining a reputation for "having a heart" for the homeless and "that is unacceptable to me."
On Friday in an interview at his office, Goodman reiterated those views.
"My position is very clear. I believe the city has to take care of those people who can't help themselves. I've said that since day one," Goodman said.
That includes those people who are mentally ill and those who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, Goodman said.
"But I have no tolerance for panhandlers and hustlers, able-minded and able-bodied people who refuse to work. I don't want them in my city," he said. "I'm talking about the people urinating and defecating in our streets."
Goodman points out that he is the first person to bring so many of the important players to the same table to discuss homelessness. His task force has heard testimony from social services agencies, religious leaders and local and federal government officials.
"No one had done that before, and yet I don't get credit for that," Goodman said. "I'm the guy who started the dialogue that made this into a regional issue."
It will take more to solve the problem, some say.
"Certainly the mayor deserves credit for bringing people to the table to discuss the problem. But it's one thing to bring people together and another thing to provide the kind of moral and practical leadership that will foster effective solutions," Gary Peck, executive director of the ACLU in Nevada, said.
"The mayor's misleading and inflammatory statements about the poor are not helpful in this regard."
Allen Lichtenstein, an ACLU attorney, said he was particularly concerned by Goodman's continued effort to find a way to export the problem of homelessness.
"One thing that's absolutely clear is that a municipality cannot say one solution to homelessness is to send them someplace else," Lichtenstein said. "It doesn't work that way. It's not a crime to be homeless."
Several religious leaders interviewed said Goodman's comments show a lack of compassion and grasp of the complexity of the issue.
"Mayor Goodman's most disturbing remark was his suggestion that Las Vegas' homeless should be deported to Jean and interned at the former prison," Michael Slater, executive director of the Interfaith Council for Worker Justice, said. "This suggestion seems like a policy idea taken from Slobodan Milosevic's playbook.
"His recent suggestion that Metro should arrest homeless people for trespassing is no less offensive. These two suggestions make a mockery of Scripture's injunction that 'there shall be no poor among you.' "
Felipe Goodman, rabbi of Temple Beth Shalom, the largest conservative congregation in Nevada, defended the mayor, who is a member of his congregation.
"Whether we like his (the mayor's) choice of words, at least we are speaking about it," said the rabbi, who is no relation to the mayor. "No one else has approached it."
Mayor Goodman has renewed the debate, but in large part because of the success city and county officials have had in creating a homeless corridor in the area around the intersection of Main Street and Owens Avenue. The plan was first proposed in the early 1990s by former Mayor Jan Jones.
Since 1995, when Clark County and the city of Las Vegas agreed to split costs of building MASH Village -- a housing facility for families training to re-enter the work force -- the two governments have each invested $11 million in homeless-related shelters and services in the area. Private foundations have invested another $22 million, said Douglas Bell, director of Clark County community services.
When Catholic Charities' renovation of St. Vincent Plaza is completed in June, reopening with 864 beds, the $44 million redevelopment will be finished, providing one of the best array of emergency and transitional social services in the country, Bell said.
That is what has Goodman worried -- that Las Vegas, with all its services, is becoming a magnet for the shiftless.
Most troublesome, all the beds for the homeless are within the Las Vegas city limits, Sharon Segerblom, director of neighborhood services, points out. That places additional financial burdens on the city budget. In the past three years the city has spent $300,000 picking up the trash left in homeless encampments, she said.
For Segerblom, who wants to open a food pantry for low-income seniors, a drop-in clinic for military veterans and low-cost housing for single mothers and their children, it's a question of balance.
Despite some of the mayor's rhetoric, she says, the City Council has been generous, especially considering the city's budget, which is much smaller than the county's.
As the debate moves ahead, Segerblom, like Goodman, wants to see other municipalities volunteer space for future facilities. The homeless corridor is full, she said. And the problem is regional.
Bell agreed that as municipalities move toward the second phase of caring for the homeless by providing more transitional and low-cost housing, officials need to look elsewhere in the Las Vegas Valley.
"How do people move forward to the next level (of self-sufficiency) if there's no ladder -- the rung doesn't exist?" Bell said. "But the first thing, it's almost a prerequisite for any long-term solution, is the economy improving. You have to have the jobs."
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