One person’s effort to clean up Naked City hardly shows

Former Las Vegas television reporter Scott Andrus admits to having an odd fascination with the Naked City neighborhood, dating back to 1983 when he first saw it as a young photographer.

Then and now, this is not a neighborhood you'd want your daughter to frequent, unless your daughter is a crack whore. For decades, it's been a place for easy access to drugs, prostitution and cheap housing.

Officials tried in vain to change the name. For a while it was Meadows Village, then the Northern Strip Gateway District. But the area west of Las Vegas Boulevard and north of Sahara Avenue just behind the Stratosphere has never shaken the Naked City moniker.

Las Vegas Councilman Bob Coffin remembers in the '50s, despite being a nice neighborhood, it was called Whore's Alley, a slight on the showgirls and high-class prostitutes who lived there.

Coffin, who has always lived within a few miles of the Naked City, remembered going there to sell chocolate bars for his Catholic school and says he feels safe going there today. Coffin doesn't see the Naked City with the same despair as Andrus.

Last Monday, Andrus took me on a tour of the neighborhood, a place he has been visiting regularly since August, when he moved back here from Twin Falls, Idaho. He has tried to help people, giving them rides, money, sharing his Catholic faith, renting them rooms at nearby motels, even ones known for prostitution and drug activities. His motivation, he said, is the 1997 death of his sister of acute cocaine intoxication.

Andrus, who operates a video business out of his home in northwest Las Vegas, said he has become known as an oddity by the people who live in the Naked City. They first assumed, quite naturally, he was there to buy drugs or sex.

Instead, he wanted to talk to them and offer spiritual comfort. He told of a drug dealer who sells crack to his mother. "He called me one time and wanted to read Scripture over the phone."

Andrus, 51, said the drug trade is so blatant, "I don't understand why they (police) don't come in and stop it." Even Monday at noontime, we were signaled to stop by a drug peddler.

Recently, Andrus paid $76 for a bus ticket to Flagstaff, Ariz., for a homeless 19-year-old who wanted out of the Naked City.

"I've done one good thing, and I guess that's better than nothing," he said.

He estimates that since August, he has spent about $500 giving people money and renting rooms for them.

At one motel, as soon as he checked in, "someone knocked on the door and a hooker pushed herself into the room." At another, as soon as they were inside, a crack cocaine pipe emerged.

He is well aware his behavior sounds crazy. "I've put myself in stupid situations, someone I picked up showed me a knife once."

Initially, he said he has never been afraid in the Naked City. Later, he admitted since he began going there he has made his funeral arrangements in Idaho, afraid something might happen to him.

Today the Naked City is one of the entry points in town for undocumented and low-income people. But families still live there, some in bungalows dating back to the '50s.

Andrus has come to see the residents as lost people.

"I realize there is really no hope for them," he said.

But Coffin, who represents the Naked City, hasn't given up.

Coffin said people are paying more attention to the area, and more development is planned, including a new park and the Lucky Dragon Casino facing Sahara. There's less graffiti and more murals.

The city, despite its limited budget, is paying an inordinate amount to improve it. And there are community policing events and cleanup efforts.

"Yes, there's cheating, thieves and slumlords, but it's like any other area that survives on its wits," Coffin said.

Drug dealing and prostitution isn't confined to the Naked City, he said. "You can find that all along the Las Vegas Boulevard, all around the Strip. It's going on everywhere."

The reality is that if there is major development there, such as a stadium, the Naked City no longer will be a place for cheap housing. People will need to find another older, decaying neighborhood.

This isn't Andrus' first cause.

Admitting his own previous alcohol problems and a 2007 drunken driving conviction, he sought a ban on state liquor stores with specific liquor signs in 2011. He lost that one.

In his anti-drinking days in Idaho, Andrus received a lot of publicity by asking legislators to take the pledge they wouldn't drink during the 2012 Legislature. Results were mixed.

He was written up for leading opposition to a Twin Falls Business Improvement District which was ultimately dissolved in 2011.

Andrus is about to cease visiting the Naked City. It's time for him to move on to some other cause, perhaps one in a neighborhood where he feels safer.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Email her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/morrison.