Abstract
“They should have a ‘beware of people’ sign when you enter this city” (p. 171), exclaims a homeless subject in Kurt Borchard’s ethnography set in Las Vegas. The author conducted in-depth interviews with 48 homeless persons in 2005 and 2006 and one gets a sense that such a sign would do little good warding off newcomers. Las Vegas is a powerful magnet, attracting those who seek riches, excitement, opportunity, and a new start. This is a book about those who get much more (and much less) than they bargained for. At times engrossing and too often exasperating, it provides a flawed yet layered look at homelessness in Sin City.
Homeless in Las Vegas is Borchard’s second book about homelessness in Vegas, so he knows the ground well. He takes the reader outside the “homeless corridor” where homeless services are concentrated into niches less visible to tourists and authorities. Unfortunately, the book is sometimes as meandering and disorganized as the lives of its subjects. Too often the author’s substantive discussion of the broader implications of his encounters is characterized by tangential self-revelation, flighty supposition, and jumbled overreach.
For example, he introduces Jessi—a disabled Native American female—to illustrate the array of obstacles faced by racial minorities and the need for childhood educational programs. This seems straightforward, yet a few pages prior to this discussion Jessi has confided that she previously attended college, owned a home, and worked as a medical technician. In other words, her narrative is completely at odds with much of the discussion used to contextualize it. Jessi’s pathway to homelessness appears to stem from the trauma of a car accident resulting in an amputated leg. This would seem an excellent opportunity to discuss the crushing burden of healthcare costs and the special difficulties involved for those who are both homeless and physically disabled. Instead, Borchard shoehorns a puzzling discussion of racial inequality and at-risk youth into his conclusion.
Borchard seems as preoccupied with the emotional well-being of his homeless subjects as their material circumstances. Bruce, camping in an open field near a casino, sums up the numbing effects of homelessness: “The more you are homeless, you feel yourself less” (p. 78). This emotional focus is fully in line with the stated aim to document the “individual lives and voices” of homeless people but in places it approaches the absurd. In one harrowing encounter, Kevin, a muscled ex-con, admitted murderer, and avowed member of the Aryan Brotherhood, threatens to lynch the researcher. It is a terrifying moment and Borchard distinguishes himself by diffusing a dangerous situation. However, his subsequent policy prescription—empathy training in prisons—is baffling.
In other places, this spotlight on psychological states is more grounded but still has a reductionist tendency. Regarding homeless individuals with severe mental health problems, Borchard posits that community mental health centers should provide “esteem-building” for homeless schizophrenics and he professes the need for shelters to foster a “positive self-image.” However, brief glimpses inside the shelters suggest that they are barely able to maintain a modicum of hygiene and safety in the face of a surging homeless population. Space and resources would seem to be the major priorities here.
As for mental health services, Borchard provides the reader with little information about the actual state of affairs in Las Vegas. Are there any community mental health programs in Las Vegas? Well, they are apparently “weak or nonexistent” but the reader is never told which. Are they underfunded? Maybe, probably. Are there systemic failures that account for so many mentally ill homeless persons apparently falling through the cracks? It is unclear. Perhaps it is a bit unfair to expect such a deep analysis of the local social service infrastructure in an ethnographic study. However, given that one of Borchard’s primary stated goals is to reveal the “key failure in many bureaucracies designed to help the homeless” (p. 3) it is incumbent upon him to flesh out the institutional realities rather than simply presuming them to exist.
Borchard is far more effective when depicting the labyrinthine Las Vegas labor market. Nearly all of his homeless subjects mention the struggle to secure proper forms of identification and certification to work in the city. Ricky, who seeks employment in the resort casino industry, circumnavigates the city to obtain a health card, a Sheriff’s card, and an alcohol management card. And, of course, each of these cards requires its own documentation. Kevin takes sporadic cash-only construction jobs as he desperately waits for a social security card and certified birth certificate to be mailed to him. Gary’s gaming card is pulled after nearly two decades of dealing poker and he promptly ends up on the streets. Chuck struggles to get a Nevada state driver’s license for his job. It is little wonder so many of Borchard’s subjects eventually turn to panhandling, petty theft, gambling, and other forms of shadow work to supplement their income.
Despite its scattershot approach, one consistent theme emerging throughout the book is the interplay of forces conspiring to make homelessness invisible in a tourist-based urban economy. This is rooted in part in local siting decisions that concentrate social service agencies miles away from iconic tourist destinations like the Vegas Strip. There is also the selective enforcement of anti-panhandling and camping ordinances which funnels the “visible” homeless into marginalized areas. Finally, there are the actions of the homeless themselves, who often seek to conceal their status from potential employers, law enforcement, the public, and even their own families. Borchard reveals how many of those who have recently become homeless—not yet broken down and visibly tattered by life on the streets—subsist in plain sight by “blending in.” Casinos and coffee shops become “public” resources where they can pass for tourists and access temporary shelter, free wireless, cheap food and drinks, and a sense of normality. Given the housing collapse that rocked Las Vegas and many other cities in the years since Borchard’s fieldwork, it is reasonable to suspect that these newly invisible homeless have multiplied.