After outrage over homeless sleeping in parking lot, Vegas now touts tented Covid-19 center

In early March, Las Vegas, a city with more than 147,000 hotel rooms, had homeless people sleep on the ground in a parking lot after a local shelter temporarily closed because of coronavirus. Photographs of homeless people lying on the concrete in marked-off squares, with the empty hotels behind them, prompted public condemnation around the world.

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This week, Vegas touted a new “isolation and quarantine complex” for homeless people, erected in the same city-owned parking lot where homeless people slept on the ground. The complex consists out of a series of tents for homeless people who are sick with coronavirus, but are not sick enough to go to the hospital.

The city’s official Twitter account sends links about the complex to social media users who share the photographs of homeless people sleeping on the ground and officials are touting the parking lot tents as “a first of its kind facility in the nation”.

The opening of Las Vegas’s “isolation complex” came as Nevada health officials reported the number of diagnosed Covid-19 patients statewide approached 3,000, with at least 114 deaths. And it follows a controversial city council decision last year to crack down on people living outdoors by making sitting, resting or “lodging” on sidewalks a misdemeanor punishable with up to six months in jail or fines of up to $1,000 in most neighborhoods.

Photographs from inside Las Vegas’s tent complex show rows of beds, in 10 by 10 squares, with short, cloth partitions between them. People who have been diagnosed with coronavirus, and those who only need to quarantine, are put in separate parts of the complex, according to the city.

The “isolation complex” is only accessible to those with a medical referral, either for being diagnosed with coronavirus, for having symptoms, or for having been exposed to someone with coronavirus. Homeless people cannot just walk up and get a bed: they are being transported to the complex in an ambulance, a city spokesperson said, as coronavirus testing is done at local homeless shelters.

The city has told reporters that lighting, fence screens and security guards at entrances to the “ISO-Q” facility are designed to provide privacy and confidentiality for residents, and that visitors will not be allowed.

Erecting tents for sick homeless people in a parking lot cost taxpayers $6m, a city official said.

A Las Vegas spokesman told the Guardian that renting empty hotel rooms to house homeless people rather than having them sleep on the ground “wasn’t an option”.

“None of those hotels are open. There’s no staffing at any of those hotels. The city doesn’t own any hotels,” Jace Radke, a senior public information officer for Las Vegas, said.

On Twitter, the city said that Clark county, where Las Vegas is based, “did attempt to work with hotel partners but deals were not able to be ironed out”.

Radke did not answer questions about ongoing attempts to come to an agreement with city hotels, and referred all questions to Clark county, which he said was in charge of the negotiations. A spokesperson for Clark county did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Asked if it would not be safer for homeless people with coronavirus or in quarantine to be sheltered inside real buildings, Radke said, “The city management made a decision to build this ISO-Q facility,” and said it best meets the city’s specific needs.

As of Thursday, the “ISO-Q”, which was built to hold 500 people, only has eight people there, Radke said.

He added that the reason why Las Vegas’s account is “tweeting the things it’s tweeted” is because “We like to keep the community informed about what the city is doing.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting.