New housing tract for sunken North Las Vegas community clears hurdle

A proposed new housing tract for residents of a structurally damaged North Las Vegas neighborhood cleared a hurdle this week.

North Las Vegas’ Planning Commission on Wednesday approved plans for a 93-lot subdivision along Carey Avenue just west of Martin Luther King Boulevard. The publicly funded development would provide new houses for residents of Windsor Park, a historically Black community nearby that for decades has grappled with sunken homes, roads and utilities.

“This is something that is going to change people’s lives,” Commissioner Marissa Guymon said.

The City Council is scheduled to vote on the project plans on July 2, city spokeswoman Liz Abebefe said.

Windsor Park resident Eli Valdez told the Planning Commission that homes in the neighborhood are “falling apart” and that his house is laced with cracks.

He likened the situation to playing Jenga: If the tower of blocks leans too far to one side, it can topple over.

“That’s the fear that we constantly live in, at least myself,” he said.

Project contract

Windsor Park was built in the 1960s over geological faults and started sinking decades ago after groundwater was pumped from an underground aquifer.

State Sen. Dina Neal, D-North Las Vegas, introduced a bill in 2023 that financed a project allowing Windsor Park homeowners to exchange their houses for newly built ones nearby.

The Nevada Housing Division subsequently awarded the $37 million contract to Las Vegas developer Frank Hawkins’ nonprofit affordable-housing firm, Community Development Programs Center of Nevada.

His firm acquired the project site in April for $9.9 million, property records show. The purchase included a nearly 1-acre parcel on Carey that was not part of the proposed subdivision, which spans about 18 acres.

Hawkins grew up in Windsor Park and is a former Las Vegas councilman and Raiders player. He has known Neal’s family for decades, contributed for years to her campaigns and previously employed her at his housing firm, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported last year.

He was one of only two bidders for the Windsor Park project, and his firm scored higher. But multiple officials involved with the process had concerns with both bids and suggested releasing the contract again to see if more developers would apply, according to emails obtained from the Housing Division through a public records request.

Neal was involved with the contracting process as a member of an advisory committee but opted out of reviewing the bids, citing Hawkins’ friendship with her late father, Joe Neal, who died in 2020 at age 85 and was Nevada’s first Black state senator.

Despite this, she told officials about her concerns with the other applicant at least twice, emails show. She also wrote in an email that a “decision to move forward needs to be made” and that she heard Hawkins wanted the job.

“There is only one clear person who is willing to do this work, qualified and will do this,” Neal wrote to Housing Division officials, adding that to “drag this out further is a problem.”

‘I didn’t try to stray anyone anywhere’

Neal and Hawkins both contend there were no improprieties in the bidding process.

“We have always adhered to ethical and transparent practices, and the suggestion that this process was influenced by inappropriate political maneuvering is both inaccurate and disappointing,” Hawkins previously told the Review-Journal.

Neal, who attended the Planning Commission meeting on Wednesday, told the Review-Journal afterward that she wasn’t putting pressure on the process and that she was acting in the best interests of the residents.

“I didn’t try to stray anyone anywhere,” she said, adding the “best person won the bid.”

Pamela Neal, who lives in Windsor Park and has no relation to the senator, said Wednesday that her father bought the house in the 1970s. It has structural damage, including big cracks in the walls that her husband patches up, she said.

She’s looking forward to getting a new home down the street that’s on a solid foundation.

“I’m very happy,” she said of the project.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.