Thursday, January 29, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Cover story: Senior stretch

Downtown's elderly poor cope with crime, bills and ills

By Andrew Kiraly

Connie Myer has an "active adult lifestyle," all right, but it doesn't involve yoga classes, bridge clubs or lively gossip sessions over tea. Rather, not very long ago, the 56-year-old's activities included pastimes such as shuffling around the streets of downtown Las Vegas, looking for a place to sleep and trying to avoid getting mugged.

"When I was out on the street for six months, I almost got killed, almost got beaten, almost got raped," Myer says. "I had no place to live, no place to lay down, no place to take a shower. And I said, 'Uh-huh. You gotta get yourself together, girl, and get yourself a life,' and I finally got it."

With some help, Myer got her disability pay for her bad liver--about $560 a month--a public guardian and an apartment. Call it a down-and-outers' retirement community, a weekly motel where, while talking to Myer, the keening of a power saw threatens to rattle the door from its hinges. It's the least of Myer's problems.

"People are slamming doors all the time, I can't sleep at night," Myer says. "Slamming, banging and killing. People always getting in trouble and I'm getting tired of it."

Indeed, this week, while Summerlin seniors march down their manicured streets with sweatsuits and toy dogs, Myer's exercise quotient will involve filling a truck with her belongings as she moves to another apartment on Maryland Parkway.

Call it Sun City East Fremont Street, the downtown that thousands of seniors call home, a not-so-retirement community where the golden years are marred by worry. Where hobbies include navigating life from one Social Security disability check to the next. Where dining out means picking up some free bananas at the low-income senior food program--or, if you're flush with cash, a sandwich at the El Cortez coffee shop. Where that knock on the door is a lot less likely to be Ed McMahon with a posterboard check than a thug with a gun.

According to 2000 census figures, there are about 147,000 people age 65 or older in Clark County. About 10,500 of those have an income below the poverty level, earning $8,300 or less per year. And many of those older poor live downtown, eking out an existence in weekly motels, halfway houses and occasional stints of homelessness. While some parts of downtown soften and color under a wave of gentrification, other parts host an underworld community of the aged, where the only senior discount is a free bag of bread at the charity pantry. But there is occasional hope in the form of faith-based charities, social workers and homeless activists, such as Linda Lera-Randle El of Straight from the Streets.

"Downtown is a tough place to survive when you're old," says Lera-Randle El, who helped Myer get off the streets. "I see a lot of seniors there who are eligible for public services, but aren't getting it. And that's a red flag."

Social work supervisor Deanna Taha of the county's Senior Protective Services says the elderly poor downtown often present cases of mental breakdown. "In cases where their income's low and their houses are rundown, you can see some real cases of self-neglect and dementia. Or they might be exploited [by criminals] living in the downtown area."

While Sun City Summerlin residents groan about hikes in association fees, while Sun City Anthem residents fret about yesterday's ugly slice on the fairway, the graying denizens of downtown worry about food, clothing, medicine and safety.

"At night, I lock the top lock and the bottom lock, and I put my nightshirt on and I sit here in my slacks and I turn my light off," says Myer. "And that window of mine is always locked. Nobody can't get in." The window is covered with a bed sheet and an American flag.

'The first place

you can grab'

Two doors down from Myer lives Sue Hale, 54. On 13 different medications a day, the dwarf-like woman subsists on about $1,300 a month, which is the net between her disability check and her husband Jim's job making cold calls. Her latest adventures in retirement involved having to sell a load of personal belongings--including her wedding ring, a computer, CD player, stereo--just to land in this tiny weekly motel room.

The landlord of the former place she was staying had a vendetta against Hale and threw them out, she says. She and her husband came within a hair's breadth of homelessness.

"When you get thrown out, you gotta grab the first place you can grab," Hale says, "no matter if it's a dump or not a dump. It's something to live in." Hale has managed to fashion something of a home out of what might otherwise be a faceless motel room, fixing pictures of her fave performer Elvis to the walls, including an Elvis guitar clock. (It tells the right time, but the King's legs, which are supposed to swivel, don't budge. The batteries are dead.) Hale is preparing for a big move to usher in her sunset years, however--across the parking lot into a one-bedroom unit for $600 a month, up from the $459 they pay now.

"I'd like to make a nice home. Once we get a one-bedroom, then I can visualize having somebody over for dinner. I love to bake and cook, but without a stove I can't do something like that. I do what I can do with what I have. I tried making a cake in the microwave, but that don't work. Cornbread came out, though. It just rolls up real nice, like angel food cake."

And after that? Any of those glossy-pamphlet dreams of chumming around at the clubhouse or enjoying a glass of Chianti with the ladies?

"Ten years from now? I don't think that far ahead," Hale says. "We're both in bad health, I admit that. But if we're here, hopefully by then we'll have somewhere better than this. One more move...that's it until one of us goes."

Waiting list

The good news is the Nevada Division for Aging Services got the same amount of money as last year from the state and federal government--about $30 million. The bad news is the state has more seniors than last year.

"Just about every program we fund has a waiting list," says Bruce McAnnany, deputy administrator for the Nevada Division for Aging Services. "Everything from Meals on Wheels to the Senior Companions program. We get about 70 referrals a month for our CHIP program (Community Home-based Initiatives Program, which provides in-home services for the frail elderly). No matter how many people we take off the program, we always replace those people. Unless some major revenue source increases, I don't see things changing in the near future."

And yet--here's a Catch-22--the Division for Aging Services is always looking for more eligible candidates for its already backlogged senior programs. Why? "People say, 'Well, if you've got a waiting list, you shouldn't tell them about these programs, because then they come out of the woodwork,'" says McAnnany. "But if I can't give accurate numbers [to the state and federal governments], how can I ask for more money? We need to get out there, identify the need and see what we can do."

Meanwhile, the last thing Trish Barrios wants to do is advertise her program, which provides free food for low-income seniors. The executive director of the Jude 22 Senior Nutrition Center has been slammed with a stream of the elderly unfortunate--from downtown and beyond. In 2002 Jude 22 served about 4,200 seniors; in 2003 the number jumped to about 6,400. She agreed to be interviewed only in hopes of drawing the attention of, say, a casino exec in a giving mood.

"We need to be adopted," Barrios says. "We have very little private money coming in, and I'd love to see some of our casinos get involved. If they all just gave $500 a month, do you realize how well we could feed these seniors?"

Between state and city money, the Senior Nutrition Center subsists on about $60,000 a year, which covers Barrios as well as three part-time workers. Food is purchased from and donated by local companies. The two buildings--one a storeroom, one an office--sit in the shadow of Las Vegas Academy at what must be one of the most ironic intersections in town. Behind the Jude 22 buildings, Academy students stream across Ninth Street to and from class, abuzz with youth and promise. In front of the buildings, the parking lot can look like a field of walking wounded. The poor elderly come hobbling up the ramp and the steps with walkers and canes--and dignity.

"This is a place they come when they have some more month at the end of their paycheck," Barrios likes to say. "When that happens, [low-income seniors] go through this thinking process that goes, 'Do I pay rent? Do I buy food or do I buy medication? Do I pay the utilities?' Usually, food is what they skimp on first. But [lack of] nutrition brings health problems, and health problems means you need the best of nutrition and you're not getting it. It's a vicious cycle."

Seventy-six-year-old John Silka--looking like a grizzled seaman with his knit cap and barrel-like build--says the Senior Nutrition Center is a blessing for people like him. He lives in an apartment on Seventh and Carson, and says he gets by on about $100 a month.

"I got this jacket out of the dumpster, these shoes, these jeans, all out of the dumpster," he says. "I'm an expert at digging in dumpsters, got it down to an art form. What else can you do when you're old and poor?" For protection while scavenging, "I've got a steel bar about that long."

Others don't have the heart for a confrontation. Many of the elderly poor downtown suffer from a sort of social malnourishment as well. Afraid of crime, they rarely venture out when the sun goes down on East Fremont.

"I don't go out after 8 at night," says 61-year-old Ella, who declined to give her last name. "I stay on the 10th and Bonanza, and that's like drug and prostitution central. We have gates on our doors and I hear people all the time go by and knock on my windows and my doors. A couple times they've tried to get in that gate." She says she'd gladly move away--if she could afford it. She subsists on $600-700 a month. "It's a little over six, but a lot less than seven," she says.

Poor seniors are more susceptible to some kinds of crime, says Pamela Terry, a crime prevention specialist in Metro's downtown area command. "They're more likely to be the victim of crimes such as purse-snatching and pickpockets," she says. "Low-income seniors are also more likely to use public transportation and more likely to walk, and that obviously makes them more vulnerable as well."

But that's just one more occupational hazard of being old and living downtown--and occupational is the right word for it. While most of these seniors haven't punched a clock in years, they say that avoiding the pitfalls--the downtown hustle, the thin checks, the creep of pain and fatigue--feels like a full-time job.

"Jim and I have been planning to go somewhere really nice on our anniversary [in March]," says Sue Hale. "Somewhere where we can just be alone and enjoy ourselves for a while. It's so stressful sometimes. A nice holiday, a fancy restaurant, maybe Caesars, somewhere in the Forum Shops, or the one with the tower--Paris--or Mandalay Bay. Just stay for the weekend. Or the Bellagio..." In her tiny room with stained bedsheets and pictures of a young Elvis, she talks about fancy hotels for quite a while.