The Word On The Street

Homeless Men In Las Vegas

Kurt Borchard

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9780874176377
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Soziologie

Just beyond Las Vegas's neon and fantasy live thousands of homeless people, most of them men. To the millions of visitors who come to Las Vegas each year to enjoy its gambling and entertainment, the city's homeless people are largely invisible, segregated from tourist areas because it's "good business." Now, through candid discussions with homeless men, analysis of news reports, and years of fieldwork, Kurt Borchard reveals the lives and desperation of men without shelter in Las Vegas.

Borchard's account offers a graphic, disturbing, and profoundly moving picture of life on Las Vegas's streets, depicting the strategies that homeless men employ in order to survive, from the search for a safe place to sleep at night to the challenges of finding food, maintaining personal hygiene, and finding an acceptable place to rest during a long day on the street.

That such misery and desperation exist in the midst of Las Vegas's hedonistic tourist economy and booming urban development is a cruel irony, according to the author, and it threatens the city's future as a prime tourist destination. The book will be of interest to social workers, sociologists, anthropologists, politicians, and all those concerned about changing the misery on the street.

CHAPTER 1

Popular Interpretations of Homelessness

Male homelessness is often interpreted as an individual, rather than a social, problem. Particular values and beliefs in the United States stress individualism and promote an individual as the most responsible party for his or her problems. Different regions of the United States come to define a problem like male homelessness as a greater or less important social problem than others. Evaluation of local media coverage is therefore particularly important in order to understand, first, if a particular region considers male homelessness as a social problem, and second, if it does, how such media defines and frames the problem.

First, I consider how people in the United States are generally encouraged to think about male homelessness as an individual problem based on the dominant values and beliefs promoted in this country. Second, through an analysis of media in Las Vegas, I show how at times male homelessness in Las Vegas is presented as an individual problem and at other times as a social problem. Even when male homelessness is presented as a social problem in Las Vegas media reports, one theme runs consistently through these accounts: homeless men are defined as different from tourists and community members, which works to normalize the control and segregation of this population. Presenting homeless men as “others,” or outsiders, also lulls the community into thinking that they themselves are not vulnerable to becoming homeless.

Homelessness Often Considered an “Individual” Problem

Attitudes toward homelessness in the United States have been greatly informed by certain traditional values held by its citizens. In particular, the Protestant work ethic stigmatizes poverty and welfare and strongly promotes the idea that individuals show signs of their salvation through work, leading to material accumulation. This dominant U.S. value has helped structure our nation’s view of work, as well as its view of those individuals perceived as lazy, incapable of, or unwilling to work.

Other traditional U.S. values such as individualism also help structure attitudes toward homelessness. Many early colonists from Britain came to America to escape a rigid social class system, relishing opportunities to own property and gain social advancement through individual effort. Horatio Alger myths, or stories about individuals who succeed materially despite humble beginnings, also define the United States as a meritocracy in which individual achievement can determine one’s social class and material wealth. An emphasis on achieved rather than ascribed characteristics in the United States has allowed many individuals to experience upward class mobility. Furthermore, recent legislation such as the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, protecting individual rights, have continued to promote the notion that if an individual fails to succeed in the United States, it is largely his or her own fault. The United States promotes the belief that protecting rights promotes opportunity—therefore, there is no excuse for failure.

Other core American values include competition and the value of honest hard work as a means to material success. The U.S. economic system promotes and distributes rewards differentially based on a competitive market that differs from socialist systems in which all citizens are provided for by the state. The competition bred by a capitalist market economy is believed to motivate individuals to do their best. Such a system parallels the Protestant work ethic’s definition of spiritual success in material terms and the achievement of this materialism through honest hard work.

Another core American value is the notion of individual freedom. The idea that an individual can determine his or her own fate makes the United States very appealing to people from other countries where the political and economic orders circumscribe individual action and limit an individual’s opportunities. However, individual freedom in such a competitive and material success–oriented culture does not mean that everyone can achieve material success. In the United States large numbers of people live in abject poverty with little hope of escape and experience little compassion from those more fortunate. Our dominant values of individual achievement, competition, and material success through honest hard work also tend to promote a strong negative reaction to the poor as individuals who deserve their fate. While socialist countries such as England, Denmark, and Sweden have developed systems to try and provide all citizens with the basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care, many U.S. citizens remain unconvinced that such socialist systems are truly necessary to help this country’s poor. Many U.S. citizens feel that support of the welfare state might undermine the conditions of competition and promotion based on individual achievement that have allowed the United States to develop one of the richest economies of all industrialized nations (Block et al. 1987).

The United States also has a long history of agencies designed to help the poor, such as the Salvation Army, and state and federal welfare and aid programs for the indigent. Such agencies and programs, however, are not without controversy. Debates over what types of homeless people should be given aid in the United States can be found in discussions concerning the “guilty” versus the “innocent” poor, and particularly in distinctions between the “undeserving” versus the “deserving” poor (Block et al. 1987; Caton 1990, 3–4; Gounis 1993; Katz 1993; Rowe 1999, 74). At issue in such distinctions are questions about the causes of poverty and homelessness, how responsible poor and homeless people are for their problems, and how responsible the government or community is for assisting those people out of their condition.

Perhaps the clearest articulation of a view of homeless persons as “guilty” and “undeserving” came from former president Ronald Reagan, who once said that many homeless people in the United States “make it their own choice” not to seek traditional housing and that a “large percentage” of homeless individuals are “retarded” people who voluntarily left institutional settings (Cannon quoted in Wallace and Wolf 1994, 60). Reagan’s statements present homelessness as an individual’s problem and “fault” but also explain homelessness as a choice: homeless people are guilty of personal failures or bad life decisions. Homeless people, from Reagan’s perspective, frequently reject the very charitable or governmental institutions designed to assist them. Such “retarded” people cannot see that the institution is their best hope for ending homelessness. Because of a strong belief in individual freedom in the United States, however, it is implicit in Reagan’s statements that homeless people have the right to reject such help even if the decision to do so harms them. Such a view justifies a less-than-sympathetic, uncaring, or often downright hostile attitude toward homeless individuals. As our former president saw it, homeless people either “chose” homelessness over better options or were “guilty” of stupidity, laziness, mental illness, or retardation, thereby “deserving” to be without shelter.

In contrast to Reagan’s position, another view presents homeless persons as “innocent” and “deserving” of charity and understands homeless persons as victims who, because of circumstances beyond their control, have been rendered destitute and shelterless. This second view places more emphasis on the individual’s environment rather than on character flaws. One example of people usually considered “innocent” and “deserving” would be a family suddenly made destitute and homeless because of a natural disaster. Most people would probably feel sympathy and perhaps even charitably toward such a family.

When evaluating those in the United States who are embedded in poverty who clearly have not been the victims of unfortunate circumstances, people frequently categorize homeless people as “innocent” and “deserving” of charity or government assistance or “guilty” and “undeserving” based primarily on their gender or status as child or adult. Paralleling the general values held by U.S. citizens regarding achievement, competition, and material accumulation, dominant forms of masculinity are also defined through similar criteria of success, especially since masculinity is traditionally linked to a man’s role as an employed, self-sufficient, breadwinner (Bernard 1992; Pleck 1992). Also, “in the United States more than in other countries, and for men more than for women, what you do defines who you are. A man’s work is an important part of his identity as a man” (Astrachan 1992, 221). Therefore, male homelessness is arguably more shameful for a man because masculinity’s traditional definition includes employment and self-sufficiency. Because homeless men also seem to have either refused or failed at their masculine role in family life (Anderson 1961), outsiders often view them as disengaged (Bahr 1973), dangerous, or untrustworthy (Marin 1987). The provision of charitable or government assistance to homeless women or children is usually far more supported in the United States than similar forms of assistance are for homeless men.

While dominant American values and beliefs inform citizens’ general interpretations of homelessness, these values can be understood as providing only basic guidelines for understanding how Americans generally act toward these individuals. In Las Vegas, my study of media accounts in the late 1990s and from 2000 to 2001 shows that the media there frequently present a more complex picture than simply understanding homeless men as either “innocent” or “guilty,” “deserving” or “undeserving” of charitable assistance.

The local media expressed three dominant themes or popular interpretations: 1) Las Vegans should fear homeless men; 2) Las Vegans should feel sympathy for homeless men; and 3) Las Vegans should feel a mixture of fear of and sympathy for homeless men.¹ Ironically, very different themes regarding male homelessness in Las Vegas, fear and sympathy, have resulted in a similar way of dealing with the problem there. In order to sanitize its public realm (Lofland 1998, 248), Las Vegas engages in the “sympathetic segregation” of homeless persons to an area called the “homeless corridor,” where charitable institutions are concentrated far away from tourists and the community (see map). In Las Vegas, the themes of fear and sympathy appear in texts that also promote a subtext of segregation and social control as the best way to address homelessness.

Local Media Accounts Expressing Fear

In deciding on the “newsworthiness” of a given story, journalists have often been directed by the phrase “if it bleeds, it leads.” Beginning January 4, 1996, the Las Vegas Review-Journal (the city’s largest-circulation newspaper) published several front-page news stories about the fatal stabbing of a Scottish tourist, James Smith, on the Las Vegas Strip that month. The first story called Trent Strader, the man accused of the fatal stabbing, a “panhandler” twice within the first two paragraphs and referred to him as a “vagrant” in the report’s third paragraph (Flanagan 1996b).

Although the initial articles on the murder focused largely on the capture of the assailant, they also emphasized his homeless status. The lead sentences of several Las Vegas Review-Journal articles on the Smith murder focused on Strader’s homeless status relative to the victim’s tourist status. One such article presented Strader as unstable and marginal, describing him as “angrily mumbling” after approaching a group of people for “a handout” just before the stabbing occurred, as well as indicating that he “showed little remorse” after the incident (Flanagan 1996b). In addition, police homicide sergeant Bill Keeton was quoted as saying, “I have no doubt he [Strader] will have a history with us” (Flanagan 1996b).

On January 5, the second front-page article on the Smith murder from the Las Vegas Review-Journal stated that police thought Strader might be connected to another stabbing on the Strip that had occurred in December 1995. Described this time as a “homeless man” and a “transient” in the first two paragraphs of the article, Strader’s name is not used until the second paragraph (Flanagan 1996a). The article also noted that since Smith’s stabbing, the Las Vegas Police Department had been inundated with phone calls from reporters in Scotland, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington inquiring about the incident (Flanagan 1996a).

On the one hand, a series of news articles about the tragic death of a tourist that follow the process of bringing his killer to justice are not in and of themselves surprising news topics. On the other hand, the stories can also be read for the way that they construct a socially marginalized group (homeless men) as a social threat in relation to a dominant group (tourists with disposable income). Significantly, each article repeatedly identifies Strader as a vagrant, a panhandler, a transient, or a homeless man (and sometimes more than one of these within the same story). The frames used in these stories emphasize Strader’s identity as a member of a particular “alien” social group with unique characteristics. Although any number of identifying features could have been chosen in describing Strader (his race, national identity, or age, for example), the articles tell the story of the stabbing by first focusing on Strader’s homeless status. His actions are then related to his status.

James Smith, the victim, is also identified in a particular manner. In the articles Smith is usually first presented as foreign tourist, and occasionally his age and status as a retiree are mentioned. Using these identity markers (Goffman 1963) in relation to a single incident, the Las Vegas Review-Journal articles thematically developed the idea of homeless men as a threat to tourists on the Las Vegas Strip, one of the most surveilled and socially controlled tourist attractions in the world (Taylor 1999)—a threat, moreover, that included murder in broad daylight. Framed in such an alarming manner, the event then becomes one of great concern not only to tourists but also to the Las Vegas community that depends on tourist revenue.

In the third Las Vegas Review-Journal article on the incident, published January 6, authorities in Las Vegas began addressing the negative publicity regarding tourist safety in Las Vegas generated by both national and international media reports. The article reprinted a photograph of the front page of the Glasgow, Scotland, Daily Record published January 5. Its headline read “KNIFE MANIAC KILLS SCOT IN VEGAS.” The lead sentence of the Daily Record article stated, “A Scots tourist has been knifed to death by a crazed beggar in Las Vegas.” The first paragraph of the Las Vegas Review-Journal article, by contrast, stated, “Las Vegas officials say the city is safe for tourists despite the fatal knifing” (Geer 1996), while the article’s second and fourth paragraphs note that a “high bail” of $500,000 dollars had been set for the suspect because “of the seriousness of the crime” and because “Strader has no ties to the community” (Geer 1996). In his discussion of homeless persons as disaffiliated, Howard Bahr said homeless men are those individuals “outside the usual system of sanctions, and hence [the man’s] behavior cannot be predicted with any certainty” (Bahr 1973, 41). The bail, an amount apparently impossible for a homeless man to post, then represented a community response to an outsider who seemed disaffiliated.

A spokesman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors’ Authority (LVCVA) and two Las Vegas Police officers were then quoted to establish the continued safety of Las Vegas as a tourist destination. In contrast to the situation presented in previous newspaper reports, LVCVA spokesman Rob Powers began de-emphasizing Strader as representative of homeless men in general, saying that the stabbing “appears to be a random act by a deranged person.” Hoping to reduce the potential impact the negative press might have on tourism, Powers also noted that the stabbing had received a great deal of publicity because such incidents are so rare in Las Vegas, a city which, he said, “rightfully has a reputation of being the safest resort in the country, if not the world” (Geer 1996). Police lieutenant Dan Mahony reaffirmed this statement, calling Las Vegas “the safest tourist destination in the country” (Geer 1996). To further diminish the impact of earlier stories and their emphasis on Strader’s homelessness, police sergeant Chuck Jones added that most homeless people are “docile” but that because some may have criminal backgrounds or experience mental illness, “it is very, very important not to antagonize somebody” (Geer 1996).

Such statements from officials who were attempting to control the negative impact that stories of the stabbing could have had on the tourist industry might well represent their awareness of the devastating economic effects that high-profile media coverage of other murders have had on similar tourism-based economies. In 1993, after nine international tourists were murdered in Florida within a period of eleven months, a spate of national and international media attention caused a full-blown “moral panic” (Cohen 1980) regarding the safety of tourists visiting Florida (Beck 1993). The negative impact that stories of the murders had on Florida’s $31 billion tourist industry (DeGeorge 1993, 40; Zbar 1993, 6) included Britain’s issuing its first-ever travel advisory for a U.S. destination. After a British newspaper ran the headline “GUNNED DOWN LIKE ANIMALS” to describe the slaying of a Yorkshire man, Florida governor Lawton Chiles pulled $350,000 worth of Florida’s promotional advertising in domestic and international publications for thirty days. One tourist official claimed the advertising blackout was carried out in order to not “draw attention to a negative” (Zbar 1993, 6). Although the governor also ordered an additional 840 police officers to patrol major airports and created a toll-free telephone information line to diminish visitors’ fears, other officials recognized the negative impact such attention would have on one of Florida’s most important industries. As Florida Department of Commerce Secretary Greg Farmer said, news of the most recent murders would “have a very, very negative impact” on Florida tourism (Zbar 1993, 6). After several news stories focusing on a foreign tourist murdered by a homeless man in Las Vegas, LVCVA officials and local police began reframing the event as an “isolated incident” in order to alleviate concerns that might reduce tourism to the city.

Beyond creating tourism publicity concerns for the city, media coverage of the Smith murder also caused Las Vegas residents to become wary of homeless men. Within weeks after the murder, a sign appeared on the sixth floor of the Flora Dungan Humanities building on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), campus warning that “THIS BUILDING HAS BEEN ACCESSED BY HOMELESS INDIVIDUALS DURING EVENINGS AND WEEKENDS” and that these individuals “MAY BE ARMED.” Advice was given on the sign to “REPORT, DON’T CHALLENGE” any homeless individual encountered in the building after hours. Although a homeless man was later arrested in the building, the sensationalized reporting of the Smith murder seemed to have affected one university department’s perception of homeless men in general as threatening and capable of violence. The warning was posted in several areas of the building and was printed on official UNLV Department of English stationery.

Socially marginalized individuals thought to be a threat have long been controlled through the criminalization of their behaviors (Adler 1987; Chambliss 1964; Harring 1977; Monkkonen 1981; Watts 1983). Following local media accounts of the Smith murder and some Las Vegas residents’ increased fear of homeless persons, local officials and casino owners attempted to introduce legislation to prevent similar incidents from occurring on the Strip. In January 1997, one year after the fatal stabbing, a Las Vegas Review-Journal article noted that Clark County Commissioner Lorraine Hunt had begun working with casino and resort owners to develop a measure to outlaw “aggressive panhandling” on the Las Vegas Strip. Echoing the tendency toward characterizations of all homeless men as dangerous, which was apparent in newspaper descriptions of Strader and UNLV English Department signs, Hunt stated that panhandlers should be restricted from the Strip because “we need to make Las Vegas Boulevard a showplace, not a garbage dump. We want to make it an enjoyable experience, free of harassment and intimidation of people” (Greene 1997). In response to the negative publicity surrounding the murder, casino and resort owners began work with government officials to sanitize, control and homogenize public space, a move supporting their private interests (Lofland 1998).

Together, local media accounts of the Smith murder and fear within the community generated enough interest in the (potential) social threat presented by homeless men to develop legislation to restrict their practices (but, oddly, only in tourist...