While tourists have abandoned the world’s gambling hub, the population of homeless individuals has surged, including the ‘Mole People’ inhabiting the deteriorating tunnels beneath the Las Vegas Strip.

Among them is a small, blonde woman in a red sundress who emerges from her dwelling beneath the Sahara Hotel and Casino on a scorching day in late September.

Natasha, who prefers to withhold her last name, hails from Anchorage, Alaska, and is one of the roughly 1,500 people grappling with addictions to drugs, alcohol, or gambling. They reside beneath the sparkling Strip in an extensive 600-mile network of storm drain tunnels constructed in the early 1990s.

At first glance she could be mistaken for an average tourist in town to play blackjack or see a show.

Only as she navigates through heaps of debris—abandoned shoes, a broken stroller, used syringes, old pizza boxes, filthy blankets, ripped-open pillows, and leftover snack bags—do you notice her missing front tooth and the sores on her legs, clear indications of fentanyl use.

She confesses she’s under the influence but is coherent enough to recount her story and describe life below ground, explaining that many of her fellow tunnel dwellers are unable to do so.

She has been in the tunnels on and off for two years.

‘When I first came on the Strip— I’ve been here for a year— I was living in a truck,’ she told Daily Mail.

‘Then my boyfriend died (of an overdose) and so I’ve been down here off and on for weeks. I never knew how bad the whole (homeless) situation was here.

‘People are sleeping in alleyways and living by dumpsters or they’re in shelters. The people in the tunnels don’t want to stop using drugs. It makes them happy. 

‘They can’t do that with a normal lifestyle or anyplace where they have to follow rules.’

 Since 2022, homelessness in Las Vegas (and the wider Southern Nevada/Clark County area) has risen sharply, according to federal Point-in-Time counts.

In 2022, there were just over 6,000 people counted as homeless on a single night. By 2023 that number grew to 6,566, and by 2024 it had jumped to about 7,906 — an increase of 20% in one year and about 36% over two years.

By contrast, Vegas has seen a sharp decline in tourism through 2025, with visitor numbers down over 11 % year-over-year in June thanks to rising prices and the decline of foreign vistors.and about 7 % for the first half of the year. International tourism has suffered the steepest drop — more than 13 % in June alone.

Analysts say rising prices – bottled water can cost as much as $12 or $14 in hotels along the Strip and resort fees, parking and food costs have increased exponentially – along with weaker foreign currencies and a slump in international visitors have caused Vegas to be a city currently down on its luck.

Homeless people in Vegas don’t have to live in the tunnels. They have the option of going to what locals call simply ‘The Courtyard,’ the primary hub for unhoused people in the city. 

He said he doesn’t have a substance abuse or gambling problem; he just didn’t have the financial cushion needed to last him through whatever time he needs to find another job.’

The sprawling facility includes access to medical, housing, employment, shower/restroom facilities, a kennel, day services, and more — and it is open 24/7.

When the Daily Mail visited, there were people of all ages and conditions either sitting in chairs or lying on blankets on a vast stretch of concrete that was open-air but with a roof overhead.

Eric Toledo, 47, said he landed here with his dog, Princess, after getting laid off from his job not long ago. 

‘Nobody will take me in. I don’t have a mother. I don’t have a father. My kids are my friends, and I don’t tell my kids what I’m going through,’ he told Daily Mail. 

Toledo said he doesn’t mind the shelter – but is well aware of the tunnel people and say they often live underground because they can’t abide living by shelter regulations.

Natasha, for example, who likes the independence of tunnel living, survives by scavenging above ground by day for food as well as items like jewelry on the Strip.

‘People leave so much stuff around and forget it,’ she said. ‘I find things like silver rings. Or I sell drugs myself.’

Natasha is unusual among what some call ‘mole people’ – a term discouraged by the volunteers who help them and prefer to call them ‘unhoused,’ – in that she is wearing clean clothes and her hair looks freshly washed.

She said she’s been to Alcoholics Anonymous and has had stretches of sobriety and says: ‘I’ve held real jobs so I know both sides.’

She said she’s not scared to live in the tunnels as a woman although there have been many reports – both official and anecdotal – of serious violence including murder and rape in the underground storm drains.

In February 2023, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that an ‘amazing’ man was fatally shot in a drainage tunnel near Arville Street and Harmon Avenue.

A woman was accused of shooting a homeless man over a bike in a storm tunnel in January 2023.

Natasha is unfazed.

‘I like being outside, and I like being in the dark. I don’t mind it,’ she said of life underground.

‘A lot of things happen [at] night… it’s different. It’s fun to see. It’s not boring. 

‘I think a lot of people that use drugs are actually just bored in life. I swear. I swear to God, it’s really what it comes down to.’

Doug Poppa, a former cop from Virginia who ran security for casinos on the Strip for many years before turning to journalistic podcasting, told Daily Mail to be careful when venturing into the tunnels.

‘You need to watch your back at all times,’ he said. ‘First off you can’t just walk in. You need to be invited by someone in there.

‘It’s where people live and they take it very seriously. Second, you never know when something you might say or do will set someone with mental illness off and they can get violent.’

Natasha agreed that territorial rules matter and there is a hierarchy in the tunnels.

Could a stranger just show up and claim a spot?

‘No, no,’ Natasha said. ‘Most people in there aren’t going to talk to you the way I am,’ she said.

When the Daily Mail visited another tunnel under the Virgin Hotel and Casino and walked just past the entrance, the ferocious-sounding bark of a dog suddenly broke the silence — and a man and a woman who looked to be in their late 40s or early 50s limped out.

The man, who said he is known as ‘Preacher’ in the tunnels but his real name is Thomas, was partially bent over, with wild, matted hair, and filthy clothes. 

The woman, who did not give her name, remained mute. She looked equally disheveled.

Unlike Natasha, Preacher and his friend said very little and asked for money. They made it clear the Daily Mail was not welcome to just stroll into the tunnels.

They both agreed to pose briefly for photos. 

Preacher, who said he was originally from Palo Alto, said he’d been living in the Vegas tunnels since 2013. 

He has no plans to leave, he said, before tiring of the questions and slinking back into the tunnel.

There are limits underground, lines even residents do not cross, according to Natasha and others.

‘Everybody knows you only go so far, and you have to know a password,’ she told Daily Mail when asked about deeper stretches of the system.

She said the people who live in the farthest reaches of the tunnels or as she calls it, ‘way back,’ never or almost never come out.

She said she’s willing to talk to anyone in the tunnels but won’t venture too far back.

The tunnel people were first discovered back in 2007 when journalist Matthew O’Brien stumbled into the tunnels chasing a crime story back in 2007 and found a hidden community.

O’Brien eventually authored two books on the homeless tunnel people, 2007’s ‘Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas,’ and 2020’s ‘Dark Days, Bright Nights: Surviving the Las Vegas Storm Drains.’

O’Brien also began an outreach project to help the tunnel denizens and later met Paul Vautrinot, a former heroin addict and Las Vegas native who spent several years in the tunnels. 

Vautrinot eventually got his life together after being arrested and sent to drug court.

He expanded on O’Brien’s earlier grassroots effort and formed Shine A Light Foundation with Jeff Iverson in 2015. Vautrinot is now the foundation’s executive director.

Vautrinot started small, according to Brent Nowak, the engagement liaison for Shine A Light.

‘Every Saturday he went down and took bottled water and dry socks and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and connected with the people living underground,’ Nowak told Daily Mail. 

‘The next Saturday, more friends joined him, the next Saturday, so on and so forth. And here we are today.’

Since 2017, Shine a Light has grown to ‘anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 volunteers yearly,’ Nowak said. 

‘On any given Saturday, there’s probably about 50 to 70 volunteers that go out.’

Nowak speaks from experience.

‘I was homeless for over a decade all across the country,’ he said. ‘I lived in Manhattan myself,’ he says. 

‘I was homeless there. I was homeless in California and Michigan and northern Nevada. I spent some time in prison. 

‘I was released from prison to Las Vegas. Basically, we’re all ex-junkies at Shine a Light helping others.

‘I owe it to the people who are still struggling to go down there and explain my story and let them know that there’s help available if they’re willing to trust us just a little bit.’

‘There’s a strange dichotomy,’ Nowak added. ‘You see multi-billions of dollars being generated on the Las Vegas Strip, and to know that there are people living destitute underneath the tunnels. 

‘But that’s just the human condition. We have billionaires, and we have people who live homeless.’

Shine a Light offers the homeless tunnel residents a two-year continuity case management program to people that accept help.

‘We get them into treatment and pay for sober living and connect them with primary care physicians, obtain all their vital documents and get them from living in the tunnels to independently housed within 18 months to two years.’

The foundation has a 70 percent retention rate.

When asked how it works logistically, Nowak was blunt: ‘Immediate, instant placement with access to housing. Our program is known as iPath. 

‘If you say to me, Brent, I’m ready to go right now, I say, grab your s**t and get in my car—we’ll go.’