Counting the homeless
Everything’s quiet in downtown’s homeless corridor this still-dark Thursday morning.
But that doesn’t mean it’s empty.
Men and women lie side-by-side, tucked in tattered sleeping bags, on a sidewalk near the train tracks. Some curl up against the facades of businesses along Main Street. Still others set up camp just yards from a homeless shelter on Las Vegas Boulevard at Foremaster Lane.
Those who live here are used to sleeping through the cold. Most don’t know they’re being counted, at 3 a.m., by a small army of volunteers.
This happens every two years, in January. Hundreds of volunteers and homeless "guides," working in teams, fan out across the Las Vegas Valley for a nighttime count.