People who have no home and nowhere to turn often end up in makeshift camps on public land near city centers. One of the more common ways municipal governments deal with those camps is to raid them and drive the residents away. "Cleaning up" a homeless camp makes the area look better, but it doesn't solve the problem. The evicted individuals are still homeless and even worse off than before, and their numbers are simply shifted to other areas. However, Las Vegas is trying something different: the homeless camp on Foremaster Lane will not only be allowed to continue existing, but the city is fortifying it with essential services.
As part of a broader strategy to address its growing homelessness problem, the city is building an open-air courtyard where homeless people can legally camp. The courtyard would include bathrooms, structures for shade, storage, and sleeping mats, according to reports. Some social services are already operating in the area, but the city plans to bring even more, from essentials like showers to housing, employment, and mental health services.
“It is a service center,” Thomas-Gibson says. “One of the services might be that you need someplace to be overnight, but the intention is that homeless individuals get connected to the services that can help break the barriers to ending their homelessness.”
The Las Vegas scheme follows a similar project in San Antonio that is showing promise. Read about the “Corridor of Hope” at Next City.
(Image credit: Lasvegaslover)
Comments (3)
Personally, I think the areas in the US with the cheapest cost off living should be identified, and any volunteers will get moved out there, with a monthly housing voucher. Seems the cheapest possible option, actually, and one that offers the most dignity and stability, with the best chance of upward mobility.
There are exceptions, but for the most part the tone of the comments reflect the tone of the article. An article that expresses ridicule and hate towards those who disagree with the author will get comments returning the sentiments.
I also think it might have something to do with context. I know that I have inadvertently almost started flame-wars because of a comment I have made, which was not understood in the way I meant it to be. Trying to explain my point of view without the other people understanding (or understanding that the original comment might have been said in jest; again, context) only fanned the flames larger, until I felt it necessary to just drop the whole conversation. Of course, there are people out there who say inflammatory things just to watch the ensuing coniption fits. I don't believe there are more of those types of people now (born troublemakers?), they just have a larger audience.
After thinking about it for a while I have come to the conclusion that the internet is probably the best thing that ever happened to humankind.
It isn't really fair to expect this, because the history of genocide, for instance, isn't taught in schools from brief, cursory mentions of events such as the Holocaust, and they are never put in any real historical context. But read historian Dr. Leon Litwack's work, for instance, if you want to know more about the unimaginable rage and hatred and violence that people are capable of inflicting on each other for no rational reason at all (*Been In the Storm So Long*, *Trouble In Mind*, *The Long Death Of Jim Crow.*)Actually, I would argue that if anything, expressing this kind of idiocy in internet posts might even keep people from the real violence they might otherwise commit.