‘We don’t need it here’: Nye officials block affordable housing project at Blagg and Basin

Planning officials have again denied a proposal to develop affordable housing near the intersection of Blagg Road and Basin Avenue, with some saying they feared the type of tenants it would attract.

Frederick Melms, the chief operating officer for the project told the Pahrump Regional Planning Commission this week that the federal government has identified a need for affordable housing in the area.

While he said the project would not “actively seek” applicants for Section 8 – the federal housing program that provides vouchers to assist low-income families, disabled tenants and older tenants – he added that the law likely wouldn’t allow the project to exclude those applicants.

“It seems like you’re hiding the fact of Section 8,” Nye County Commissioner Bruce Jabbour said.

Commissioner Donna Cox acknowledged the growing problem of homelessness in Pahrump.

“A lot of those people like to live that way,” she said. “I’m sorry, but they do.”

Cox, speaking against the project, told developers that “we don’t need it here.”

“It encourages things we don’t want,” she said. “They have money, and they gamble it away and they drink it away and they use drugs.

“Let them live however they want to live — we have to live with that,” Cox told developers. “You don’t have to live with that.”

It’s the second time planning officials have rejected a proposal to develop affordable housing at Blagg and Basin.

Brett Waggoner, the county’s planning director told the commission that he questioned their initial rejection of the proposal because their reasoning was “vague.”

Editor’s note: This version updates the title of Frederick Melms.