“It's bad,” James said of having to repeatedly move due to police sweeps. “Like moving, everybody hates to move. We are still in America, I think,” he said of having the freedom to just be. Sweeps he says usually take place “every couple months or so.”
He calls Reno with all its casinos and its run down centerpiece downtown Virginia Street strange. “It's designed to take from everybody that comes here anyway. That's the way the city was put together,” he said pensively.
Like many who prefer encampments along railroad tracks and the Truckee River, he avoids local shelters, whatever the weather. “Yeah, it don't work for me,” he said. “I don't get along with other people too well.”
How did he end up homeless in Reno, coming from Birmingham, Alabama? “I came out here visiting my daughter that was in Vegas and wound up here,” he said. He moved with her to the Biggest Little City, but he says they had a falling out.
He doesn’t understand why there can’t be legal camping near city areas. “I'm out here because I want to be, “ he said, adding he’s a Baptist who does everything he can to help others in need, including fixing their bike or making one for them.