Housing Boom Has Left Them Out in the Heat

PHOENIX — Even though he was indoors, escaping the killer heat that has claimed as many as 19 lives in five days, beads of sweat glistened on William Butler’s forehead. He leaned heavily against his walker.

“This is the toughest time of year for me,” the 43-year-old homeless man said. “If hell’s anything like this, Arizona’s the first stop.”

Butler was talking about more than the weather. A heat wave that has roasted Phoenix and shattered record temperatures across the western U.S. this week has also cast a light on a dark side of this boomtown -- its rapidly growing homeless population.

At least 15 of the people who died during the hot spell here were homeless.

The numbers in this fast-growing metropolis prompted action. Local businesses and residents donated 50,000 bottles of water for homeless shelters and the city dispatched teams to toss bottles of Gatorade to street people. The mayor, who earlier in the week asked Congress for emergency aid to help people pay air-conditioning bills, passed out water bottles Thursday near one of the city’s largest shelters.

But advocates for the homeless warned that the need for services in Phoenix far outstripped what was available in a state ranked near the bottom in per capita spending on homeless services. It is seen as part of Arizona’s traditional emphasis on individualism and limited government.

“This is a very self-reliant sort of a state,” said Mark Holleran, chief executive officer of Central Arizona Shelter Services. “You pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

It’s difficult to quantify the number of homeless people in Phoenix, but city officials estimate that it is 10,000 to 12,000 and growing.

“While a certain segment of us have benefited throughout the country, a certain segment hasn’t, and they’re turning more and more to the streets,” Mayor Phil Gordon said.

Many also blame Phoenix’s real estate boom, which has transformed its downtown.

Flophouses and cheap hotels have been replaced by gleaming office towers and ballparks. Residential prices have risen so fast that teachers and firefighters cannot afford to live in the city anymore, let alone janitors or those on disability. Some commute from distant suburbs; others wander the streets.

Few developers are willing to sell land to nonprofits or government agencies that construct transitional housing for homeless people and their families. “There’s no shortage of people who want expensive housing, and that leaves low-income people in the dust,” said Riann Henkin, homeless programs coordinator for the city.

Henkin pointed out another potentially lethal side effect of the boom -- more pavement to collect and radiate the sun.

“The larger the city grows,” she said, “the more concrete there is, and the hotter it is on the streets.”

That may account for why so many people have died this week, compared with prior years when temperatures sometimes reached 120 but a small number of homeless victims was reported.

Statewide, 34 heat-related deaths were reported through all of last year.

Henkin was part of a small army of volunteers and city workers cruising the streets Thursday, handing out water and urging the homeless to get out of the sun. Results were mixed. Many sought shelter. But some refused to go inside.

“They’re extremely overheated; they’re burnt from head to toe,” Henkin said, “and they’re unwilling to come in.”

Across the West, the high temperatures were taking their toll. The National Weather Service reported that 200 heat records had been broken in the last 10 days. The high in Las Vegas, where six people have died, stayed below 115 Wednesday for the first time all week. In Phoenix, the mercury reached 111.

Forecasters say temperatures are receding as the summer monsoon season begins, fueled by moist, tropical air. Homeless advocates in Phoenix fear that the anticipated dip in temperatures will come with higher humidity, still a potentially deadly mix.

William Berry, 62, never leaves the Central Arizona Shelter Services building without a water bottle in his hand. He has been on the verge of passing out in the heat, he said.

A onetime trucker with arthritis, Berry lived in a downtown hotel catering to poor, long-term residents. Now it is being converted into a parking lot, he said..

The military veteran moved into the shelter where he awaits transitional housing. He said his $824 monthly disability payments were not adequate to rent an apartment in the sizzling Phoenix market.

“They usually want a $200 deposit and cleaning deposit,” plus first month’s rent, he said. “You’re talking about $750 before you get in.”

Homeless advocates said social workers in cold northern cities often encouraged their homeless to go west to Phoenix’s desert climate. Butler, leaning on his walker, was one of those.

A counselor in his hometown of Rochester, N.Y., recommended four years ago that Butler move. According to his account, he relapsed into alcoholism and ended up in a halfway house. Now suffering from a rare degenerative disease, he has waited months for a transitional housing bed.

Sometimes he takes a bus to social service appointments, a hazardous journey recently because he lacks pocket change for bottled water and must depend on the kindness of passersby.

“Water’s a big commodity out here,” he said.

Holleran, the chief executive of the shelter, said homelessness used to be thought of exclusively as a problem in the industrial neighborhood where his operation was located. But in recent years, homeless people have spread to residential neighborhoods, living under bridges and in parks.

The business community has become increasingly involved, helping to pay for construction of a $24-million extension to the shelter. Holleran said executives realized that homelessness is increasingly a community problem.

“A lot of the people who are [in the shelter] work the very low service jobs downtown,” Holleran said. “They’re the ones who clean the tables and the ballpark after games.”

Times researcher Lynn Marshall contributed to this report.