Decatur Native Helping Out Those Living in Tunnels Under Las Vegas

Decatur Metro | January 9, 2011 | 10:46 am

There’s a great piece by Bill Banks in the AJC this morning about Decatur native and once-DHS point guard Matt O’Brien, who’s lived in Las Vegas the past 13 years working as writer/journalist and doing good work “Beneath the Neon”.

According to the article, up to 1,000 people are living in the underground flood channels under Las Vegas at any given time.  As Banks states, after O’Brien did a series for the Las Vegas alt-weekly paper eight years ago about this hidden population, it became his “obsession”.  He documented their lives, culminating in a book, “Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas“.  He also started a partnership with a group that assists the homeless to help get these folks out of the tunnels.

Good stuff.

h/t: Next Stop…Decatur

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One Response to “Decatur Native Helping Out Those Living in Tunnels Under Las Vegas”

  1. chira says:
    January 9, 2011 at 11:38 am

    So few people REALIZE how many homeless people there are, and how few alternatives there are for shelter and food. With the big storm coming in tonight and Monday in the Atlanta area, you can be sure that thousands of people will be waiting out the storm under any shelter they can find: cold, wet, hungry, and perhaps ill. Think on this quotation from Kafka:
    “Deeply lost in the night. Just as one sometimes lowers one’s head to reflect, thus to be utterly lost in the night. All around people are asleep. It’s just play acting, an innocent self-deception, that they sleep in houses, in safe beds, under a safe roof, stretched out or curled up on mattresses, in sheets, under blankets; in reality they have flocked together as they had once upon a time and again later in a deserted region, a camp in the open, a countless number of men, an army, a people, under a cold sky on cold earth, collapsed where once they had stood, forehead pressed on the arm, face to the ground, breathing quietly. And you are watching, are one of the watchmen, you find the next one by brandishing a burning stick from the brushwood pile beside you. Why are you watching? Someone must watch, it is said. Someone must be there.”
    God bless Matt O’Brien for his work and care on behalf of the homeless of Last Vegas.