The one where the outhouse ends up with two TV antennas--for the [ethnic group deleted] who rented out the basement.
A group moves into a poor black section of town--and the existing inhabitants are concerned that the new group is bringing crime, lowering property values, and ruining their beautiful little community. From the August 10, 2007 Las Vegas CityLife:
Nine group and transitional homes on one street and others scattered about the neighborhood. Recovering addicts, the mentally ill and ex-prisoners living next door to families and senior citizens. Schools in the area.
Loud music, fights and strange men walking the streets, talking to themselves. People passed out on sidewalks and in front and back yards. Burglaries, drug deals and shootings. Regular visits by cops, parole officers and paramedics.
No children playing in the street. It's like a ghost town, say the neighbors.
But the situation is more complicated than it seems.
The residents and owners of the group and transitional homes have their side of the story. We have nowhere else to go, they say. We have rights. We've made mistakes and we've been punished. Don't punish us again. Give us a chance.
We aren't committing the crimes; the neighbors are. We're helping improve the neighborhood. We're bringing it up.
...
No stucco palaces, manicured golf courses and desert walking trails here. Just single-story, cinder-block homes crouched along cracked sidewalks and streets. Burglar bars cover windows, sometimes to no avail. "No Trespassing" and "Beware of Dog" signs are stamped to front doors.
This neighborhood, located near Lake Mead and Martin Luther King boulevards in North Las Vegas, has a sense of sadness and isolation that only dirt lots, broken basketball goals and rusted porch chairs can convey.
But it's home to Flora Mason. Has been for 45 years. She raised four kids -- all of whom graduated from college, she says proudly -- in her home on Lawry Avenue. She has seen the neighborhood come up and go down too many times to count.
Shortly after she and the neighbors chased the gangs away a few years ago, she said, it started to go down again.
"I saw all these strange men walking up and down the street, early in the morning and late in the evening," said Mason, 78. "And they were mainly white. That's unusual in this neighborhood. Then I started asking questions. My next-door neighbor said, 'Those men are from the group homes.' I said, 'What group homes?' Then he told me there were a whole bunch of them up the street. That's how I found out."
Now Mason is surrounded by group and transitional homes. There's one next door. One across the street. And one three houses down.
"One morning I was out watering my lawn and I heard this loud noise," said Mason. "I thought it was a group of people coming down the street, because it was so loud. Then when I looked up, I saw that it was just one man. He was fighting and cussing at himself. I just threw down the hose and ran into the house."
And she has hardly come out since, she said.
"I feel surrounded. These group homes, that's all that's here. I don't have anybody to talk to. In the late afternoon and early evening, I used to go out there and sit in my front yard. That's why those chairs and that table is there. But I don't do that anymore. I stay in the house. I lock my doors and I don't dare come out."
Mason said she wouldn't mind two or three group and transitional homes in the neighborhood, as long as they were properly managed. But 12 or 13 homes is outrageous, she said. And many of them are overcrowded and poorly managed.
But there's a real issue here. Where do people like this live? What are the limits of private property rights, and of zoning authority?
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