BELOW SIN CITY
Inside dark underbelly of Las Vegas where Pornhub star Jenni Lee battles to survive in deadly flood tunnels with 1,000 homeless ‘mole’ people who eat scraps from casino bins
THE Las Vegas strip is the ultimate in glittering excess, with glaring neon lights, headline shows and millions being gambled in the luxurious casinos.
But just 25ft below the roulette tables of Sin City lurks a hidden world where hundreds of homeless people fight for survival in a network of underground tunnels.
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The grim underbelly of the Nevada gambling mecca was revealed this week, when Dutch documentary workers discovered Pornhub star Jenni Lee living in the dank storm drains.
It’s estimated around 1000 homeless eke out an existence below the strip, living on food rescued from bins and the odd cash handout from jubilant gamblers who struck lucky.
Residents - dubbed 'mole people' - range from full-time workers, unable to afford housing in the cash-rich city, to gambling addicts and drug addicts, who occupy three separate tunnels depending on whether they prefer crack, meth or heroin.
But all risk disease from living alongside rats in unsanitary conditions, bites from venomous spiders and drowning in the flood defence pipes.
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While the City nestles in the Nevada Desert, where rainfall is rare, the 600 miles of flood channels - build in the 1980s - can fill up at a foot per minute during a storm, with currents as fast as 25-30mph.
In 2016, a flash flood killed three residents including Sharon, who had featured in a YouTube documentary the year before.
But one long term resident, Craig, claims there are advantages to living underground.
“I wouldn’t want to be homeless anywhere else,” he says. “We’re out of sight out of mind here in Vegas.”
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Food from bins and fires to keep rats at bay
The wide, high-ceilinged entrance to the Las Vegas flood tunnels runs under a busy highway, with a backdrop of 40-storey casinos and bright, flashing lights.
But a few yards in, the dark, dank space is littered with broken glass, urine-filled bottles and moth-eaten mattresses resting on old plastic McDonald’s crates.
Graffiti and artwork is sprayed all over the walls, with slogans including “God don’t live here. Only me” and “Aghast the Devil stood and felt how awful Goodness is” – a quote from Milton’s Paradise lost.
A local bylaw bans people from donating food to “vagrants”, but shopping trollies full of supermarket sausages, sandwiches, tinned fruit and pasta, rescued from bins around the city, serve as store cupboards.
Some have cooler boxes, which help to keep food from the rats that roam the tunnels at night, and others light fires to ward away the scavengers.
In a , who wrote about the underground community in his film, Beneath The Neon, Craig reveals he uses the dusty dirt floor as a fridge – as it’s the only place cold enough to stop food going off quickly.
He also proudly shows off a clean plastic chair and brand new rucksack found in the dumpsters above ground
“Craig is one of the masters of dumpster diving,” says Matt. “Even when he had an apartment he would furnish it from dumpsters.”
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Roulette table cloths as curtains and casino cups as toilets
Drug addiction is a huge problem below ground, and there are three separate tunnels for different drug users - be their addiction heroin, crack or meth.
But many residents are couples who have fallen on hard times and want to make their space as homely as possible.
Steven and his girlfriend Kathryn, for example, have furnished their 400sq ft ‘house’ with a double bed, a wardrobe, and even a bookshelf.
Now and then there are hints of the high-stakes world in the plush casinos – with one resident using a rack of casino cups as her “bathroom and toilet” and Ricky, who has lived in the tunnels for 20 years, fashioning a curtain out of a fabric roulette table cover.
Buckets of water are used to wash but, without toilets, hygiene levels are dangerously low.
One resident told he moved tunnels because the man with a camp nearby, “p***es and sh**s where he sleeps.”
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Change begged from punters is gambled by homeless addicts
In 2018, over 42 million visitors flocked to the bright lights of Vegas and an average of £4billion is gambled each year.
And with tourist ready to splash the cash, pickings are high for hustlers and beggars.
Some of the tunnel residents work scams in the casinos, emptying cash from machines when drunk punters nod off or picking up forgotten tokens from the tables.
But gambling addiction is rife in the tunnels too.
Former truck driver Nattrour, 54, said depression, brought on by his living arrangements, didn’t help: “I don’t even drink, but I bought a cocktail,” he told the Guardian. “The next thing I know, I’m gambling. I spent $60 of my [social security] check on dope and over $600 playing slot machines.”
Former addict Lori Flores, who now runs the City's Problem Gambling Centre, says: "As a homeless person, someone that has pretty much hit rock bottom, they don’t have anywhere else to turn.
"In their mind probably, what’s the point. What I can do is take this $5 I’ve made getting change from people and turn it into a $100,000 and get my home back, get my wife back, try to get my life back on track. But that’s not the way it works.”
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Living in fear of floods - which claimed three lives in 2016
Surprisingly, not everyone who lives in the tunnels is jobless with some full-time workers, left homeless by a 2012 housing crash and soaring rental prices, choosing to stay in the tunnels.
John Aitcheson, 59, works shifts in a convenience store on the Strip and told The Guardian: “I could get an apartment, but all my money would go to rent, food, electricity, water.
“By the time I was done there’d be no money left over to do anything.”
The Nevada desert only sees an average of 21 days rain a year but heavy rain can mean the tunnel dwellers lose everything – in some cases their lives.
"They rains can be very dangerous," says Matt. "A lot of [the dwellers] are really good about communicating with each other about when it's about to rain, so they can just grab their valuables and get out, and leave everything else behind."
Richard Ethridge, who lives with his wife Cynthia Goodwin - a part time housekeeper – remembers a rush of water that gushed through the tunnel during one storm.
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Their bed, meagre furniture and all their possessions were swept away in the torrent – which almost killed Cynthia.
“I almost lost her,” Richard, 43, told the . “She was in another tunnel holding on to her bike. The water was so strong it ripped the front tire off the bike.”
Not everyone is so lucky. In 2015, Sharon told Matt she had moved to the tunnel’s because partner Jazz wanted to live there.
“I came down here and I expected it to be dirtier, raw sewage or whatever and I thought ‘that’s not too bad,’” she said. “Whatever my man chooses is what I want too.”
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But a year later, in June 2016, Sharon was one of the three victims who drowned in a flash flood.
Ex-con Jazz, who lives in a camp protected by trip wires and booby traps, paid tribute to his lost love by spraying “Rest easy Sharon 6-30-2016” in gold paint on the wall.
He gets by, he says, with “one hustle or another” and seems content with his lot.
“Some days are better than others, and some days are really good.”
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