Suspicion traipses across the well-groomed lawn of Marble Manor, the city's oldest public housing project, in West Las Vegas. Past the small kids playing on the front porches, over the clotheslines draped with blankets and children's jeans and into a group of boxy, institutional-looking rows of houses, where four residents have gathered on a hot August afternoon to discuss some of their troubles. The hot topic of the day is a survey they received in the mail from the Las Vegas Housing Authority asking them to list any problems they have and any repairs they need to their units. To a nonresident, it seems helpful, assertive. But to these four it's a threat.
Jerry Neal, who's secretary of the Marble Manor Residents' Council, isn't exactly helpful in calming the women down. He's convinced this is a way for the housing authority to find out the many problems the complex has, then decide it's not worth the money and condemn it. (The authority didn't return calls seeking comment by deadline.) They've gone from talking about what's wrong with their individual homes to being out on the street. And it's hard to say who's right. It's even harder to differentiate between paranoia and understandable anxiety when talking with people who seem so justified in their suspicions. Their existence hasn't always been easy, much less dignified, here in the projects.
Three years ago, employees of Nevada Power began crawling around their roofs, attaching boxes to their air conditioners that would shut off power during peak hours from June 1 to September 30. Off. Some residents received letters in the mail warning them what to expect. Others say they were surprised to find that their air just wouldn't work at certain times. Fannie Owens, a small woman in a wheelchair, her graying hair pulled tightly into a bun, says she found out when her daughter called her to say the air's been shut off. She contacted a maintenance man in the housing project, who informed her that it's not broken, it's shut off temporarily and purposefully because of a box Nevada Power installed. And it wasn't just her unit.
In 2001, the program was first implemented in all of the public housing in the city and county. "The Cool Credits Program" was just beginning and needed 1,500 residents to sign on, and they didn't have much time to do so. According to Jim Nolan, Nevada Power project manager of load management programs, the city and county housing authorities quickly signed on, deciding for their residents that this was a good move that would save them money. And it did, each receiving $15 a month as incentive from Nevada Power. But only by signing away control of their own air conditioning—for which they pay their own power bill—during the hottest hours of the day.
Nolan denies that there's any socio-economic group targeted now, but admits there was in 2001. "The first two years of the program, [the Public Utilities Commission] ordered us to only target customers that were low-income, seniors or disabled, and we struggled to get a participation," he says. "Once we were able to remove the conditions, we haven't had any problem at all getting customers from all over town." Still, it's likely not a program many Anthem residents have availed themselves of.
Eleven thousand people have signed up so far, and there's a backlog of others waiting to join this program, which can shut off the air conditioning for 10 to 15 minutes each half hour during the "control period," which is 1-7 p.m. daily. Though it's recently become a voluntary program for residents of public housing, and one that Nolan says only 15 percent decline, it doesn't sit well with these residents.
"They're not treating us like children," Fannie Owens. "They're treating us like we're low-class people. If my power bill is $1,000, you're not paying it, I am. It's bad because I'm on a fixed income. But I don't want to be miserable, either."
Like she is when she turns on a faucet and smells the rotten-egg odor that comes out with the water. It started a few months ago, about the same time work crews were doing sewer work around the corner, and it hasn't stopped yet. Her expression turns guilty, embarrassed when asked if she drinks the water. "I can't afford bottled water." And then there's the knocking she's having with her water heater. But it can't be replaced, she's told, until it breaks or bursts. Like it did next door.
Over at Juliet Murray's house, it smells like mildew. There's a giant pile of kids' wrinkled clothes outside her front door, and not much inside. Three weeks ago, Murray's water heater burst. She'd gone to church that morning and returned to find her neighbor, Owens, warning that something was wrong. Water was seeping from Murray's wall into Owens' house. Murray opened the front door and three inches of water rushed out She called maintenance and says she was told they couldn't get there for five hours. So she called the fire department to turn the water off. Then she moved her furniture outside to dry, left it out overnight. "Somebody stole everything," she says, her voice filled with disbelief three weeks later. "I have nothing."
Across the way, Leza Henderson had water leaking through a fire alarm in her ceiling for more than a month. Water mixing with electricity. Scared that a fire could start and put her and her two kids on the streets, she called maintenance seven times, she says. It took four weeks to get it fixed. While maintenance was in her apartment, they told her she had a problem in her air-conditioning, something that could be mold. She and her kids have been feeling sick, and she thinks that could be to blame. So she put in a request for a mold test and was told she'd hear from them in five days. Those five days came and went, and her phone's still not ringing.
Slowly chisel away at the control people have over their lives, and what are they left with? Look along the streets of Marble Manor, at the sprinklers that gush onto the sidewalk. They're calibrated all wrong, laughing in the face of the drought. Though Jerry Neal says he's reported the water waste many times, nothing has been done to change it. And the water bill is one that the residents don't pay, taxpayers do. It's a daily reminder of how one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city doesn't have the political clout to get even their sprinkler system fixed.
So perhaps it's no surprise that something as simple-seeming as a survey can inspire panic. With low incomes and often tenuous jobs, the last thing these residents want to worry about is losing their homes. Often they don't report problems because they don't want to draw attention to themselves. And now they're being asked to list everything at once.
"The tenants here are afraid to come forward and say things like that, because they're afraid they're going to get put out," Owens says. "But you see for yourself. I don't have to try to prove anything to anybody."