Most people associate Las Vegas with gambling, show business, and luxury hotels. But the city's underground storm drainage system is home to some of America's poorest citizens, many of whom also suffer from mental health problems.
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00:00Las Vegas. Known around the world for parties, gambling, show business and luxury hotels.
00:06But underneath in the storm drains that crisscross the city, there's another reality.
00:12Untreated mental illness and drug addiction. Homelessness.
00:16Forget glitz and glamour, the damp and darkness down here is home to around 12,000 people.
00:22So if you're walking in the dark, you keep your hand on the wall. You know where you're at. You're not drifting.
00:28Rob was homeless for five years and spent a large part of that time in the tunnels.
00:33Now he's working with Shine-A-Light. That's an organization that helps people down here with food and batteries
00:40and also guidance on restarting a regular life.
00:45Rob guides us through the tunnels and introduces us to some of those who still live here.
00:51Freedom wants to talk with us outside.
00:54She is 47 and has lived in the tunnels for five years.
00:59Traveling, hitchhiking, train hopping before I came here. Schizophrenia.
01:09So how do you get your meds?
01:11I don't. They don't really make any of the symptoms go away.
01:15They just make it really hard for me to express it in any way that you can understand.
01:21It puts a big cloud around me. I still got the same voices saying the same stuff.
01:25I just can't really get out and do anything.
01:29The first three years I was raped each year.
01:34It's weird to wake up with a stranger in bed with you.
01:41It happens.
01:45We learned to compartmentalize. Put everything in its own little space and leave it there.
01:53There's only so much we can do. Sometimes it's tough being alone.
01:59Sometimes it's just tough.
02:02Freedom takes us back in to show us where she does her laundry.
02:07On our walk to the pipe we pass people's homes.
02:10Some are very orderly with food for the cats which keep the rats away.
02:15Others are more messy and chaotic.
02:18Ten long minutes into the tunnels we meet Jay.
02:22I've been here nine or ten years.
02:24That's the worst part I think. The stuff follows you.
02:27It's not like TV haunted. It's seriously haunted down here.
02:31So what do you mean by haunted?
02:33Ghosts, demons, things from here, things not from here.
02:37It's musty down in the tunnels.
02:40Rubbish food, old clothes and people all add to the smell.
02:44But then we hear running water and there's a new smell.
02:48I've been told that it's from Caesar's Fountains and it often smells fairly highly chlorinated.
02:54I do laundry here. Sometimes I shower here.
02:58So you don't think about what's going on up there?
03:01Oh no, not when I'm down here. It's completely different.
03:05There's no interaction. It's cement and ground. It's like a totally different world.
03:12This could well be the water Freedom washes her clothes in.
03:17And here's just part of the glamorous landscape for people to walk past on their way into the casino.
03:24Less than five minutes away we reach the headquarters of Shine-A-Light.
03:29Robert Bangard, who took us into the tunnels, is the outreach manager.
03:34All the staff here have lived somewhere in the network of tunnels at some point.
03:41When I was homeless I had no hope. I had no hope.
03:44And when you don't have hope you don't plan. You don't think about the future.
03:48You're just living very much in the moment.
03:50We're just trying to build relationships, humanize them, relate to them, talk to them.
03:55All the things we can do to try and bridge the gap.
03:59And usually it's sharing our own experience of what we went through when we were out there,
04:04and how we got out, and what it's going to be like, and just loving on them.