Shedding light on Pahrump’s ‘zombie lots’

For the thousands of owners of the small parcels in Pahrump known as “zombie lots”, property ownership is not so much a dream as a nightmare.

The size of these lots combined with their lack of connection or access to utility service means they are unbuildable, effectively rendering them dead, but those who own them are not simply letting the matter go to its grave. Many have banded together as the Pahrump Vacant Land Owners and this month, the members took advantage of the holiday season to shed some light on the issue with a day of Resurrecting Pahrump’s Zombie Lots.

Hosted Saturday, October 24, the Resurrecting Pahrump’s Zombie Lots event was spearheaded by Pahrump Vacant Land Owners founder Patricia Robb. She explained that the idea was to do something festive but with a clear message behind it and she worked to organize several properties to be featured that afternoon.

“We wanted to decorate these lots for this one-day event as a reminder that real people who pay taxes are behind these lots that need to come alive,” Robb told the Pahrump Valley Times. “This was a great time of year, with Halloween around the corner, to show people this matters to so many tax-paying property owners who want to use their own land.”

The turnout for the event was relatively small, she detailed, but she felt that was to be expected, given the number of activities going on. Overall, though, she was pleased with the results.

“The few that attended and met up with us had a good time together, creating messages of the season along with attracting the attention we wanted to bring for the owners. We had 20 lots whose owners authorized us to decorate but we weren’t able to get to them all, because we wanted to make sure that we dismantled everything before leaving each lot, so there was nothing left behind,” Robb said.

However, those lots that were included certainly served their purpose, with a variety of designs and signs featuring clever holiday-themed wordplay such as “resurrect our property rights”, “here lies an owner’s dream” and “bring this lot back to life”. Other messages stressed the fact that the lots are taxed but unbuildable and, as the Pahrump Vacant Land Owners have been doing since the beginning, asked the county to find a path forward.

For previous coverage on the problem of Pahrump’s zombie lots, visit pvtimes.com

For more on Robb’s group, visit PahrumpVacantLandOwners.com

Contact reporter Robin Hebrock at rhebrock@pvtimes.com