Word: nevadas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...recession is hitting Las Vegas on all fronts. Nevada legislators have struggled to close a deficit of more than $1 billion in the 2009 budget. Budget projections for 2010 and 2011 also look grim. Construction on Boyd Gaming's $4.8 billion Echelon resort was stopped last August just as three of its towers reached the 12th floor (the tallest would have risen to 55 stories). Construction won't resume until 2010, though the cranes will remain towering above the site (it's cheaper to leave them in place - and these days no one else in town needs them...
...same month a year earlier. In November the county issued 80 new home permits, down from an average of almost 500 permits a month in 2007. Housing prices have deflated with a deafening groan. Keith Schwer, who runs the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, estimates that 50% of homeowners owe more than what their home is worth. Perhaps the only positive note is that housing prices have returned to more reasonable levels. "We're getting back into the affordability range," Schwer says. "The only problem is we don't have credit...
...Nevada's unemployment rate jumped from 0.4% to 8% in November, the highest rate since 1984, and Schwer says it could rise to 10% next year. The figure translates to more than 111,700 unemployed Nevadans, according to the state's Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation. (The national rate is 6.7%.) Meanwhile, the city's largest food bank, Three Square, which supplies food to nonprofits throughout the city, budgeted $250,000 for purchasing food in 2008. The total food need for destitute families throughout the Las Vegas Valley is closer to $1.3 million...
...domino fashion, revenue shortfalls are leading to cuts in services around the nation and across the board. At least 10 states, including Nevada, New York, Ohio and North Carolina, have reduced budgets by as much as 7%, with 10 more states considering such action. The pain is being felt from community colleges to prisons, from fire departments to courthouses, with major state responsibilities like Medicaid and elementary-school education taking hits...
...rain a year, residents in the sprawling housing developments where much of the Las Vegas population lives use an average of 165 gal. of water a day--and 90% of that comes from Lake Mead, the reservoir created by Hoover Dam in 1935. Lake Mead holds Nevada's 130 billion gal. share of the Colorado River's flow, split with six other states in the West--and for decades, says Pat Mulroy, head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, "we'd assumed it was virtually drought-proof...