'Vegas is a gambling town, and like everything else, when you're underground, you're gambling,' homeless outreach director Louis Lacey said.

December 1, 2024 | Subscriber Exclusive Dear reader,    Welcome to the Premium Report! As a subscriber, you have exclusive access to our premium content. Our editorial team digs deep to present you with facts that matter, providing a unique perspective on the issues shaping our world. Meanwhile, our designers format it for you into a beautifully curated layout.   We hope you enjoy it.  PREMIUM REPORTS Hidden Homeless Gamble With Danger in Las Vegas Tunnels 'Vegas is a gambling town, and like everything else, when you're underground, you're gambling,' homeless outreach director Louis Lacey said. A entryway to a sewage tunnel leading to the Las Vegas Strip houses a large number of homeless people in Las Vegas on Nov. 14, 2024. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) By Brad Jones | November 29, 2024 Updated:November 29, 2024   LAS VEGAS—Beneath the glitz and glamour of the Las Vegas Strip, hundreds of hidden homeless people live in the filth and squalor of a 500-mile network of tunnels.   Often referred to as "mole people" or "tunnel people," they remain underground, out of sight, to avoid—among other dangers—the deadly desert sun. They represent only a fraction of the thousands of homeless individuals in Southern Nevada.   Summertime temperatures can soar above 120 degrees Fahrenheit, while winter temperatures often dip below freezing. The tunnels offer shade and shelter from the wind, but they are dark and dangerous, prone to flooding, and rife with illicit drugs, violent crime, and disease.   On a sunny mid-November morning, Louis Lacey, the homeless response team director for HELP of Southern Nevada, prepares teams of outreach workers to engage with homeless individuals at several known encampments in the city.   That morning more than 800 people—half of them youth—woke up in a HELP program bed, all of them assigned to caseworkers. The nonprofit organization, founded more than 50 years ago, is one of the largest social service agencies in the state.   Lacey, a former struggling musician-turned-meth-addict, experienced homelessness in both Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He eventually overcame his decades-long drug addiction through a peer-to-peer recovery rehab facility, where he renewed the faith in God he had known as a child, he said.   He has been clean and sober since New Year's Day 1997 after completing a 12-step recovery program at the facility, where he later worked. He pursued education and eventually became a director before joining HELP.   "I've been in this line of work for over 25 years," he said.   Lacey joined HELP 17 years ago. He spent more than a decade on an outreach team and remembers trekking through a tunnel during his first day on the job.   Today, between 1,000 and 1,500 homeless—the highest concentration in the city—live in the tunnels, he says, although some reports have estimated there may be twice that many.   This year marked a 13-year year high in the number of homeless with an increase in the percentage of black people, families with children, and cases of chronic homelessness, according to Clark County's annual homeless census. Southern Nevada's 2024 point-in-time count, an annual snapshot of homelessness, identified 7,906 homeless people on Jan. 25, a 20 percent increase from the previous year's 6,566. Louis Lacey Jr., director of HELP of Southern Nevada, takes a phone call while working in the field in Las Vegas on Nov. 14, 2024. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) Tunnel Threats   At a tunnel entrance near the corner of Albert and Palos Verdes streets on Nov. 14, a large tarp covered the opening where the storm sewer empties into Flamingo Wash, part of the drainage system that leads to Lake Mead.   Lacey has walked this three-mile tunnel which reaches the Strip beneath Caesars Palace.   An Epoch Times photojournalist steps over a welcome mat on the way down the embankment to get a closer look. He approaches a corner of the tarp where it was slightly pushed aside from the tunnel, but his curiosity is promptly met with several flashlight beams from inside.   Two men walk out of the tunnel where a large crowbar is strategically placed. They warn the journalists and outreach teams to back off.   Outreach teams have been exposed to violence in the past, and HELP doesn't take chances with their lives or safety. "There are tunnels that we do not go in because we've been threatened," he said. "All they had to do was ask, and we left the tunnel," Lacey said.   About a month ago, a machete-wielding man attacked several homeless people living in one of the tunnels, Lacey said. Police arrested a suspect and took him into custody.   "We had to close our response to that tunnel system down," he said. "We had to work with the detectives until they found him, and then we were able to go back in there." An entryway to a sewage tunnel leading to the Las Vegas Strip houses a large number of homeless people in Las Vegas on Nov. 14, 2024. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) One of the machete attack victims and his brother were rescued from the tunnel and are now going through the process to get housing, Lacey said.   Some of the tunnels are more treacherous than others, depending on who dwells inside.   "We go to tunnels all the time, and we work with the folks in the tunnels so it's not like ... all those people are bad," he said.   Generally, tunnel dwellers are more hardcore than those in above-ground encampments and just want to be left alone, he said. "They're underground, and they're deep in there," he said. "We've gone as far as a mile or two in the tunnels. They're in there living [with] furniture, household stuff, all of that."   HELP outreach teams also work with Shine A Light, another non-profit group dedicated to helping tunnel dwellers, and a unit of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department called the HOT (Homeless Outreach Team).   "It's a special metro team of officers that will go out with us and other outreach teams," Lacey said. "Us and Shine A Light, we're the tunnel people. Nobody else goes."   Even though the tunnel crews have flashlights and wear hard hats and gloves, venturing inside is always risky, he said.   The tunnels are wet and slippery with low-hanging pipes and the air quality can be questionable. Rats, dogs, cats, and other animals are running around among furniture, bicycles, and other obstacles. And, some rescue workers have slipped, fallen, and been stuck with discarded dirty needles, which means going to a hospital for post-exposure treatment, he said. A crowbar used for defense sits at an entryway to a sewage tunnel leading to the Las Vegas Strip houses a large number of homeless people in Las Vegas on Nov. 14, 2024. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) Flash Floods   HELP puts up posters warning people to stay clear of the washes and storm drains because homeless people can drown in the tunnels during flash floods.   "Vegas is a gambling town, and like everything else, when you're underground, you're gambling," he said.   The stakes are much higher than money.   Flash floods often occur in the Mojave Desert, quickly transforming dry tunnels into torrents. Even if there is no rain in the immediate area, runoff from the mountains or water released from storm detention basins can strike suddenly without warning. Debris carried down the tunnels can be deadly, he said.   "The water is not what initially kills you. What gets you is ... the bike parts, the couches, the shopping carts, the beds, the bed frames," he said. "All of that will knock you down, and once you go down, there's no coming back. You will drown."   Construction of the storm drains began in the 1980s and it has been an ongoing project ever since to prevent massive street floods.   "In the late 70s, there were several huge storms where vehicles were washed right down the Strip, and there was water just running right through the middle of casinos," Lacey said...   Continue reading the full story here>> Subscribe to The Epoch Times to read the rest. Become a paying subscriber of The Epoch Times to get access to this article and other subscriber-only content. Upgrade to paid >> Only $10 for one whole year! 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