Las Vegas hosts 'hundreds' underground | World News | News.com.au
HUNDREDS of couples are living underneath the US gambling mecca Las Vegas and living off the scraps left behind by its patrons.
UK tabloid The Sun reports an entire community is thriving in the city’s underground flood tunnels, emerging at night to scour the casinos’ pokies for spare change or credit left behind.
And it’s not always the poverty-ridden existence it sounds.
The Sun interviewed one couple – Steven and Kathryn – whose “apartment” had a bedroom, functional kitchen and working shower fashioned from a water dispenser.
Steven told The Sun that a regular night included the couple “working their way down the strip”, and picking up $20 in loose change each was enough for them to get by on.
“The most I've ever found is $997 ($1145) on one machine,” he said.
“I've found about $500 a few times.”
The tunnel system even has it’s own residents’ art gallery.
It’s claimed as many as 700 people live in the 550km network, scratching out their existence directly underneath the millions of dollars passing through pokie machines and over gaming tables above.
Some have been driven underground by the global financial crisis, others – like Steven – are former drug addicts or ex-cons unable to find a way to rejoin normalised society.
Local writer Matthew O’Brien has taken the underground citizens’ cause to heart, launching the Shine A Light foundation to help them get their lives back in shape.
He said while many were “scared of what’s out there” and resisted offers of help, life under Las Vegas’s casinos was anything but romantic.
"We don't want them to get too comfortable because it is really an illusion,” he told The Sun.
“It doesn't rain much in Nevada but when it does the tunnels can fill very quickly.
“There have been 20 drownings in the last 20 years and a lot of those were people who were living in the tunnels.”
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