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.
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