Could Blight and Vacancy Taxes on Stalling Property Owners Benefit Downtown Reno?

As you walk throughout the downtown area of Reno, you can see that there are buildings that are vacant due to owners that do not want to deal with financial constraints or legal issues when it comes to demolition.  These property owners might also be sitting on properties for future value, playing long waiting games, whatever the fines, scorn or wrath they may incur.  

Some property owners keep abandoned buildings for strategic planning of future developments.  Some developers take years and years to build anything for their projects, leaving large pieces of land in limbo. Meanwhile, others build multiple parking lots which are mostly empty all the time.

This affects Reno negatively because it decreases property values, increases crime within these areas, has public health hazards, and gives a general sense of neglect, emptiness and decline that can harm community morale and an entire neighborhood’s potential. 

Reno’s diverse landscapes such as the surrounding mountains and the Truckee River give the city uniqueness and charm. However, in downtown, this then gets overshadowed by a large number of vacant and unused or underutilized properties.

To fix this, the city could look into what other areas have done with blighted, vacant and untapped property.

A “blight tax” could be part of the tool box. Last year, Atlanta passed an ordinance which allows municipal court judges to increase property taxes on blighted properties up to 25 times.  

In terms of vacancy, currently there’s a California proposal to tax properties that are vacant for more than six months, with a $5-per-square-foot annual tax.  

Washington D.C. tackles both issues with varying levels of taxation, with blighted properties taxed at $10 per $100 of assessed value, while vacant properties are taxed at $5 per $100 of assessed value. 

In these scenarios, it’s been important to limit exemptions and loopholes to prevent property owners from stalling further or pretending their buildings aren’t vacant or in constant renovation. 

Speculators hate these initiatives for good reason, since they are all about future profit, rather than the sustainable, communal present.  

It’s also important not to target buildings that are being used but with owners who don’t always have the means to maintain their properties at certain levels.  

By getting the affluent property owners to take action on long delayed projects or on buildings they own but aren’t renting out, vacancy and blight taxes help support urban renewal, boost property values, and contribute to creating safer, more vibrant communities. Additional tax revenue can then be used for community improvements further revitalizing neighborhoods.  

Ten years ago, the City of Reno said it was approving a plan to fight blight.  It said it would pursue criminal charges against property owners, while increasing motel inspections and boosting surveillance against graffiti. City officials encouraged locals to contact Reno Direct to report everything from debris to parking on front yards.

Ten years later, what about focusing more on taxing property owners holding onto decaying and unused buildings, while ending the facilitation of developers who end up building mostly parking lots? 

If there was a will, could officials push the legislature to make this happen instead of trying to reduce the independence of planning commissioners?

Our Town Reno Ideas for Progress with reporting and writing provided by Gina Zevallos in a COM 210 class with Amy Pason

Should Reno Follow Growing Number of Cities Banning Rent Algorithms?

A recurring line at the Reno City Council is often that they are mostly powerless to lower rent prices.

Five high-cost cities, though, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, San Diego and Berkeley recently voted to ban the use of prevalent rent algorithms, in an effort to push prices lower.

If our council wanted to do this as well, does anything prevent them from following suit?

Last year, the federal government sued the Texas-based RealPage real estate company, alleging its algorithm enables landlords to collude in raising prices. 

Two of the landlords in that “rent pricing scheme” lawsuit Greystar and Cushman & Wakefield operate in Reno, with some of their properties the Ballpark Apartments, Fifteen51, Nova, the Highlands, Whittell Pointe, Zephyr Pointe and The Kaplan at Verdi Village. 

The software allows property owners to share data and operate like a “cartel” setting illegal price-fixing, according to its many pro-renter detractors.    

RealPage is fighting back and already suing Berkeley for passing its ban, which took effect today, saying it’s the housing supply and not price suggestions which are to blame, and that the bans violate its free speech.  

An analysis in San Diego, however, found that renters in buildings where landlord relied on the software paid an extra $99 per month.  

Meanwhile, legislators are also trying to ban these algorithms at the state level, with current efforts in California, Colorado and Washington, but this can be a more difficult and slower process in those bodies. 

What say you Reno City Council members?

Our Town Reno, Ideas for Progress, April 24, 2025

Could Reno Build a Free Food Farm?

The other day, while we were editing our homegrown “Seasons of Growth” film for its evening debut April 15th at the Holland Project, where everyone is invited for free, one of the sheroes of the film, Lily Baran, posted a story about the Browns Mill food forest in Atlanta, very much in line, albeit at a bigger scale, than what our documentary portrays here in the Biggest Little City.

While the ATL has become a thriving center for urban farms, Reno has several worthy initiatives we showcase in the film, with more support needed for that type of expansion.

A recent Eater Atlanta article indicated “from eliminating food deserts to supplying fresh produce to local restaurants, these urban farms are strengthening communities with work opportunities and farming education — like teaching residents how to foster apartment rooftop plots to growing plants in plastic yogurt containers.”

There’s what’s called a Community Supported Agriculture program, parking lots being converted into sprawling gardens, produce planted anywhere there’s dirt in city areas, growers cooperatives and rooftop irrigation gardens.

Here, outside of a few amazing mutual aid endeavors, we have massive empty Jacobs Entertainment parking lots and politicians who tap themselves on the back when they plant a few trees.

In Atlanta, the jewel is the Urban Food Forest at Browns Mill, which, in what used to be a food desert, provides “seven acres of seasonal nuts, fruits, vegetables, herbs, and mushrooms for community members.” It has 30 garden beds, more than 100 fruit trees, 2,500 edible and medicinal plants, all free for the pickings for anyone in need, as well as trails for birdwatching, plenty of volunteer gardening opportunities and programs to teach about healthy cooking and eating.

While grants for such initiatives are obviously going in the wrong direction right now — the Nevada Department of Agriculture recently announced the USDA has terminated over $8 million for programs supporting local food purchases for schools and food banks — it doesn’t mean we can’t work locally to grow even more healthy food, whatever the climate, political headwinds and financial challenges. If there’s a will there’s a way as our film Seasons of Growth premiering on Tax Day at the Holland Project will show, with four local women building that path locally, day by day, season by season.

Join us on April 15th 6:30 p.m. at the Holland Project to watch our film and discuss what is already being done and what we could do here in the 775.

Our Town Reno, Ideas for Progress, March 2025

Wouldn't a Large Scale Local Basic Income Project Be More Helpful than the Cares Campus?

According to numbers provided by Washoe County, it costs about $64 a day to help an unhoused person staying at the Cares Campus.

That’s $1920 per month per person on average, while the average rent in Reno is estimated at about $1,430 per month.

This makes us and others wonder if this money is being misspent, given that many people we interview on the streets prefer to hide in tents or in vehicles at night, not wanting a crowded prison and warehouse like environment. Meanwhile, as indicated below, the transition of people staying at the Cares Campus who then move into secure housing seems very low.

So what about establishing a bigger scale pilot basic income program?

From Denver, to the Bay Area, to LA to a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign funded program in Champaign County, unhoused residents have been receiving monthly stipends, with huge improvements in their own lives.

The Denver Basic Income Project takes a sliding scale approach offering from $50 a month up to $1,000, with other benefits such as free cell phones.

It also gives upfront sums. One woman living in a city-sanctioned campsite who had been in a car wreck and had lost her job won a DBIP lottery, receiving an initial payment of $6,000 plus $500 per month. This allowed her to go back to school where she now studies construction management. Thanks to the DBIP funds, she’s securely housed, has been able to plan surgery for her accident injury and also takes care of a niece in need.

Publicly funded and privately run it has distributed more than $10 million of no strings attached cash benefits to more than 800 unhoused people since late 2022.

According to a study, 45 percent of its participants secured housing within 10 months.

At the Cares Campus, those numbers are much lower. Cares Campus unique clients per month have gone from a low of 741 to a high of 1,323 in the past year, while its charts of “total number of exits to permanent housing” had a high of 39 in August to a low of 18 in November.

It’s also estimated that DBIP contributed to nearly $600,000 in cost savings in emergency services, hospital visits and jail time during its first year of operation.

Remember the 2006 New Yorker story about unhoused Reno-based Million Dollar Murray [Barr] who had, over the course of 10 years of expensive “non-solutions” such as multiple jail and hospital visits, cost taxpayers one million dollars?

Are we still on that road of wasting money without really helping?

In Stockton, where the SEED program gave 125 residents $500 of unrestricted cash per month for two years, 40 percent of participants landed a full time job.

In the Bay Area, the Miracle Money program provided $500 a month to unhoused individuals for six months, with 66% of them securing stable housing.

This led to Los Angeles County, San Francisco and Oakland initiating the Miracle Messages program, through which $750 per month is distributed to individuals who are paired with a trained volunteer for weekly phone and text support.

In Illinois, over 50 families are currently receiving $500 a month to spend as they see fit, via a privately funded non profit coordinated one-year pilot program.

Isn’t it time for Reno or Washoe County to try one of these bigger types of basic income programs to see what its outcomes would be locally?

Our Town Reno Ideas for Progress, February 14, 2025

A Call for Easily Accessible Downtown Lockers and a Charging Station for the Unhoused

An unhoused neighbor Cody, 39, recently divorced, who attends mutual aid food distributions believes a subsidized program of easily accessible outdoor lockers for those without stable shelter would be a great idea going forward.

“If they would give us lockers so we could all go to work and store our stuff somewhere where we know it’s not going to be stolen. So I can go to work peacefully and realize, ‘hey, my stuff is still going to be there when I get off work,’” he said.

“That’s comforting. You know how hard it is to go to work, come back, and your blankets stolen, and it’s cold. It’s hard, and then you got to find another blanket,” he added.

He says a public charging station would also be helpful for those in his predicament.

“You need a phone to go to work and better your life and do these things,” he said.

These types of programs exist elsewhere in the county, organized by churches, local governments or non profits, and can be set up at very low costs.

Why not use an empty plot of Jacobs land sitting idle for years which could be a designated base for non profits wanting to help, as a go to spot for healthy food, drop-offs and pickups for laundry, coffee and conversations, a locker area, a charging center, a free clothes market and a non uniformed rotating social worker on hand? There could be occasional free haircut days, and why not add a few bathrooms and showers?

With a minimal budget, it could do worlds of good, and help people get back on a path toward being housed.

We could have used the former Record Street shelter for these purposes, as a low-cost city alternative to the county’s intimidating and not very welcoming Cares Campus, as a hub for volunteers to help, but elected council members have decided to sell it instead to developers.

Interview and photo by Stephanie Navarro Rocha 

Ideas for Progress: Solitary Gardens Heal Inmates and Create New Connections

If you’ve never heard of this, an ingenious, brilliantly humane program started in New Orleans, which has been developing small volunteer run gardens in the size of solitary confinement cells in connection with inmates there and elsewhere, merits serious consideration.

The concept is simple, therapeutic and cyclical: plants are chosen by an inmate in solitary confinement, then planted by a volunteer gardener nearby on the outside (often with bars on one or two sides) and once grown redistributed through a prisoner’s apothecary.

The late Herman Wallace, one of the “Angola Three” former Black Panthers and artist activist jackie summell (who doesn’t capitalize her name) conceived of this initially years ago, and their vision is being fulfilled with funding from the New York-based Creative Capital and Art for Justice.

When paired up, a volunteer gardener and inmate, called a solitary gardener, correspond on what to plant, sometimes in great detail.  Some people who visit the gardens then write the inmate as well, creating even more connections.  

One of the inmates participating Tim Young, serving time at San Quentin State Prison, chose mugwort and stinging nettles, and told a reporter for the Next City website that “it’s a crime to encase people in concrete cages and deprive them of nature. What the garden has done is give me a greater appreciation of all the things that I am no longer able to feel, touch, or enjoy. I haven’t touched the earth or leaned upon a tree in over 22 years.”

Future plans are for formerly incarcerated to be able to get jobs at the gardens.  When released, some inmates who have taken part in the program, keep their garden going such as trans woman Arya Serenity who worked with Side Walk Ends Farm in Providence.  

On its about page Solitary Gardens describes itself as “ a social sculpture and collaborative project that cultivates conversations around alternatives to incarceration by catalyzing compassion. This project directly and metaphorically asks us to imagine a landscape without prisons.”

Does anyone know of an existing program like this in Washoe County and if not, should we start one? 

Our Town Reno, Ideas for Progress, Fall 2024

Should We Rethink How We Manage our Mountain Forests?

While extensive forest clearing operations were previously conducted in the forested areas up to Sky Tavern and Mount Rose to make them less fire prone, not all forest experts agree with this strategy, with some of them saying it could make the situation worse. 

In the wake of the Davis fire, several of them spoke to Our Town Reno, anonymously for fear of retribution since they work in forestry related industries.

A tax-funded practice they disagree with, which is practiced locally and in other regions of the U.S., is called forest mastication.

It’s basically a mechanical process involving cutting, grinding, or shredding forest vegetation to reduce its size. It's also known as forestry mulching, slash-busting or brush-cutting.

Different types of machines grind and shred vegetation into mulch, as a cost-effective way to clear land. Most trees are left standing while lots of the natural vegetation is removed. 

But substantial research indicates that these strategies often lead to the replacement of vegetation by invasive species, such as cheatgrass. 

Cheatgrass can group to a million sprouts per cubic meter as opposed to native grasses which are in the thousands.  

This cheatgrass takes up a lot of the water, and creates potentially more flammability than what it replaced.

Goats which are brought into our forested areas can also eat the natural vegetation, rather than just the cheatgrass, also adding to the problem.  

There was a recent wildfire conference in Reno with utility companies, fire department representatives and local officials heralding the use of goats to remove vegetation and to create fuel breaks for fires, but what if they were wrong in their intended assumptions? 

Just several months after a celebrated visit, one ecology expert said it was “a sea of cheatgrass,” which they said can smolder for longer periods than what was previously there.  They said this short-term type of forestry management can have opposite effects of the desired intent.

Cheatgrass, which was native to Eurasia, and first appeared in North America in the 19th century has been spreading ever since.  Medusahead which also grows in our region as an invasive species is another danger.  

The climate in Nevada is conducive to both, as these species start growing early in the Spring, sucking nutrients out of the soil to the detriment of less flammable flowers, native grasses, sagebrush, rabbitbrush and bluebunch wheatgrass.

“Once you have it, it’s very, very hard for anything else to grow. So you get this monoculture,” Elizabeth Leger, a professor and plant biologist at the University of Nevada, Reno was quoted as saying in a Nevada Current article about cheatgrass. “It just becomes this unbelievably flammable, super-connected, fine fuel,” she said of the late summer period we are in.  

After a wildfire like the one we are enduring, it’s also cheatgrass that grows back faster, making it more and more difficult every time there’s a major fire for native species to regrow. 

It seems like it’s the cheatgrass that should be selectively taken out when managing our local mountain forests rather than wholesale forest mastication.  

Our Town Reno, Ideas for Progress, September 2024

Where Should We Build Our Own Sustainable Square Mile?

One disadvantaged area of Chicago is pursuing what it calls a “sustainable square mile,” complete with plans for a future solar and geothermal electric grid, community gardens to feed neighbors, an urban arboretum, affordable housing options, so-called climate resilience hubs for extreme weather occurrences, and a job training center in the clean energy and manufacturing industries.

The main grant to pursue this is being funded through the federal government’s Justice40 Initiative, which is meant to ensure that disadvantaged communities receive at least 40% of the benefits of its climate change and environmental investments.

The White House Environmental Justice Scorecard says more than 500 projects, such as the one run by Blacks in Green in Chicago, are being funded.

Theirs is a square mile block where former First Lady Michelle Obama and music producer Chief Keef were born, and where Emmett Till grew up.  Till’s childhood home is being converted into a playhouse and the Emmett & Mamie Till-Mobley House Museum. One of the gardens is called the Emmett and Mamie Till-Mobley Forgiveness Garden.

In terms of new funding, Blacks in Green recently received a $747,000 grant to design a geothermal program in the community.  

With other funding, including a five-year $10 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, they plan to convert a dozen parcels of neighborhood land into more gardens, a walking trail and affordable housing where tenants will be encouraged to produce their own energy, grow food gardens and recycle their own waste.

On their website, Blacks in Green write: “we are building the gold standard for Black community economic development,” or what they detail as “designed to increase our communities’ wealth and wellbeing in the context of a changing climate.”

Already, they’ve removed lead pipes, installed new climate-friendly heat pumps and hold community conversations on limiting energy use.

An abandoned church has been converted into a space for emergency heating in the winter, cooling in the summer and a sanctuary for youth year round. 

In her mind, its founder Naomi Davis has as a future model of communities a throwback to how it used to be: “a walk-to-work, walk-to-shop, walk-to learn, walk-to-play community where African Americans own the land, own the businesses and live the conservation lifestyle,” according to wording from a Belt magazine feature.  

Which square mile in northern Nevada could best use some of this large scaled federally supported TLC to recreate a healthy neighborhood?

Our Town Reno, Ideas for Progress, August 2024

Where's Our Washoe County Farm to School Movement?

While many schools will no longer have free lunches for all students this school year, isn’t it time to think of a reset and have a major locally subsidized farm to school movement with real plates and utensils for our kids, instead of what we currently have?  

Even with the free lunches some school kids will still get in Washoe County, the problem is these are of dubious quality nutritionally, with lots of the food ending up in the trash along with all the plastic and styrofoam.

The Washoe County School District released a message earlier this week indicating it’s “committed to providing a world-class education to its 60,000 students, and an important part of that mission is ensuring that every student is well-nourished. Good nutrition is essential to the learning process, and the District’s Nutrition Services school meal program is dedicated to providing healthy, balanced meals to children during the school day. Children who are eligible under federal guidelines may receive breakfast and lunch at no cost.”

Rather than contracting with Aramark, though, which makes billions off of schools and prisons with food which includes nine different meat patties indistinguishable from each other in rubbery taste,  shouldn’t we emulate other locations such as Colorado’s Front Range where most of the food comes from the Greeley-based family Hoffman Farms?

The National Farm to School Network calls such partnerships a triple win, for kids, for farmers and for schools.

As part of this movement, some schools take the school garden idea to the farm level.  

“We can go into our lunch every day knowing that some of the food that we are eating is from somewhere that is right in our back yard, if it’s not from the surrounding farms. I think it’s a great way to learn about what we are eating,” said Nora Cullen, a high school junior in Vermont, whose school Champlain Valley Union High School holds a farm stand as well for the community during the summer, when school is out.  

“Food comes from somewhere, right, and so I think they’re getting an understanding of where it comes from and kind of all the hardships that go with that,” said her sustainability teacher Dave Trevithick.   Two years ago they produced 350 pounds of food which went directly to their own cafeteria.  

As part of policy work towards such goals. the state of New York is requiring schools and other institutions to serve 30% locally produced food in their meals by 2027, which is a step in the right direction. 

Time and time again, extensive studies have proved that kids who eat healthier, behave better throughout the day and do much better in their schooling.

There are several schools around the area with school gardens and related programs, but what about working with existing farms or creating new ones, and then getting kids to spend class time learning about how to grow food, growing it, and then eating the food they helped grow?

It would be so much better than having no school lunch or one that’s dismally empty in nutritional value and extremely polluting. 

Our Town Reno, Ideas for Progress, August 2024

Will More ADUs Finally Be Coming to Our Neighborhoods?

You can buy the above 19x20 feet portable tiny home on Amazon for $16,000, at your own risk though.

This non-verified one star rating is part of the Amazon tragic hall of shame: When I brought my dog to where it was placed, he ran inside and started playing around. My sister called me outside to do something and before I knew it, the whole house came crashing down and crushed my poor dog inside. Fly high Trixie.. We'll always love you. Trixie 2018-2024.

While Washoe County celebrated the opening of a new welcome center at the Nevada Cares Campus shelter earlier today, their own stats indicate the lack of cheaply priced accessible housing remains a huge obstacle to getting more people with a roof over their heads.

One “toolkit in the toolbox” which has been underestimated for years despite pleas by many advocates for the unhoused is having small structures legally built onto existing lots to be lived in.

Notwithstanding the above model, perhaps, after rejecting the idea of allowing accessory dwelling units everywhere in Reno half a dozen years ago, with a majority of council members and public speakers saying it would have little impact on easing access to housing and too much on the character of neighborhoods, the Reno City Council is finally working on the idea seriously.

If all goes accordingly to new timelines, so-called granny flats could become a possibility across much of Reno towards the end of 2025.

Homeowners associations and different covenants and restrictions may still not allow these types of units in certain areas, but City of Reno staff are currently recommending a measure to allow single-family homeowners to be allowed to add one ADU per lot if they have an additional off-street parking space.

The new unit would have to be shorter than the primary home.  

More details are being worked on with ADUs not currently permitted in most areas of Reno due to zoning regulations. 

The tide started shifting with ongoing housing accessibility challenges and a survey presented to the City Council earlier this year which found that a large majority of local respondents supported ADUs.  

A draft ordinance is now being worked on after council members gave their unanimous approval to move forward on the plan at a meeting in July. The draft proposal will initially be presented to Neighborhood Advisory Boards early next year, before going to the Planning Commission and then Council for passage.  

As in the rest of the United States, affordable housing policy has rarely been known for “rapid innovation,” as stated by the Brookings Institute recently. 

“Nearly all interviewees said that a key advantage of ADUs is the potential to build them in low-density residential neighborhoods where larger subsidized buildings are not allowed because of zoning or resident opposition. From a purely practical standpoint, ADUs require less land, so can fit virtually anywhere (literally in people’s backyards),” the April 2024 report noted.  

“To make ADUs a larger segment of the affordable housing market over the coming years will require both more financial support as well as substantially higher take-up rates among homeowners. Local and state lawmakers should bear these concerns in mind as they move forward with policies to encourage other forms of “missing middle” housing, such as duplexes and lot splits,” it concluded.  

Our Town Reno has long advocated for allowing ADUs, despite the initial opposition from elected officials and developers.

Our Town Reno, Ideas for Progress August 2024

Should we depave parts of Reno to reduce our heat islands of pavement?

A new movement across the world, which includes the Oregon-based Depave non-profit, consists of taking out concrete slabs and asphalt on residential properties, around schools, churches and in public city spaces, to allow renaturing and the cooling of urban areas, of which Reno was recently called the fastest warming in the United States.

Activists call it the liberation of soil.  They also say urban re-greening increases biodiversity and decreases flood risks by having more locations where water can be absorbed into the ground.  

More greenery across a city, such as investing in pocket parks, cut-outs for tree wells in parking lots, bioswales and nature play spaces, leads to higher air quality, lower stress and fewer traffic injuries. 

Depave says it’s repaved over 360-thousand square feet in the past 15 years.  Its vision statement indicates it “imagines a sustainable city as a place where people and wildlife coexist and prosper amidst clean air, clean water, robust urban forests, thriving local agriculture, and healthy communities.”

It offers a How to Depave guide to “freeing your soil,” writing as a preamble that “paved surfaces contribute to stormwater pollution, whereby rainwater carries toxic urban pollutants to local streams and rivers, greatly degrading water quality and riparian habitats. Pavement also disconnects us from our natural world.”

There are now other Depave branches around the country but none in Nevada.  

Another group the Canada-based Green Venture has been placing miniature gardens with native trees in run-down areas, replacing gritty asphalt with relaxing greenery and stones to sit on.  

One of its programs is called NATURhoods (Naturally Adapting To Urban Runoff) “to help residents slow water down and soak it up on their property, while providing beautification, home to pollinators, places to gather, flood protection and so much more,” by encouraging wild gardens across their properties.

An empty Jacobs Entertainment parking lot in May 2024.

This renaturing can also extend to installing green walls and roofs, as well as developing green streets, with more permeable pavement, so-called rain gardens and solar-powered street lights.

Instead, here in Reno we have the hyped up downtown concrete Locomotion Plaza and we see Jacobs Entertainment doing the opposite, adding an energy sucking giant digital screen and more concrete parking lots.

Our Town Reno, Ideas for Progress, May 2024

What Could Happen if Pro-Renter Candidates Surprise the Reno Establishment in 2024?

With several progressives currently running for different Reno city council seats — such as Lily Baran in Ward 1, Tara Webster in Ward 5 and William Mantle in Ward 6 — renters who make up a majority in the Biggest Little City could help turn the tide of local policy making by electing them into office.

If the polls rendered that verdict, what could happen then?

A good example of this is Los Angeles where several elected progressives have turned the big California city into one of the most renter friendly places in the United States. 

They’ve all campaigned on promoting renter protections, workers’ rights, campaign finance reform and affordable housing, and scored upsets in recent electoral cycles. 

The moneyed political and business elite is fighting back with lavish spending on their own favorite candidates, centrist, pro establishment Democrats or moderate Republicans, as they do here, but 2024 is both a decisive electoral test for Los Angeles and here in Reno: in LA to see if gains can be expanded upon, and in Reno for a new political energy to take hold.

Corporate Democrats and moderate Republicans tend to call themselves reasonable and pragmatic, pro law and order, and their records indicate very much of a status quo orientation. Their campaigns are flooded with money from developers, landlords and business leaders who have succeeded, casinos and their influential lawyers, police and firefighters’ unions, lobbyists, wealthy landowners, political consultants, ad agencies, and unspent funds from other election cycles from other current and former city council members, making them hard to defeat.

As the Nation magazine recently detailed in an excellent article, one LA candidate who surmounted this type of coalesced opposition was an advocate for the unhoused, Nithya Raman.

She appealed to renters, people who don’t usually vote, immigrants, carpenters, teamsters and low paid workers, among others, and with the help of enthusiastic volunteers and first-time donors, in 2020 defeated an establishment candidate, sounding the alarm for a new wave of progressives. 

Not surprisingly, following her win, there was vociferous pushback from homeowner groups and landlords trying to mount a recall effort, and then her district was redrawn, bringing in conservative and home owning areas into her current re-election challenges.

Her political opponents were put in a frenzy in 2022, when a union organizer, a progressive activist and a community organizer critical of the police, were all elected to the same L.A. council Raman had started making moves in, on the strength of renters voting for them, while left leaning former US representative Karen Bass was elected mayor, even though she had been outspent by her main opponent ten to one.

Together, as a progressive force on the LA council, despite opposition from the landlord lobby, they helped expand local protection for renters, including just cause eviction protections, and according to the Nation, “a debt threshold for nonpayment evictions, and relocation assistance for rent-gouged tenants.”

They have also expanded funding for mental health services while opposing salary increases for police officers and pushed through ordinances to make all new construction carbon free.

Two years ago, emboldened by these campaigns, LA voters passed “a mansion tax” called Measure ULA on properties selling for over $5 million to help pay for new affordable housing, lawyers to defend renters being evicted unfairly, and rent subsidies for the extremely vulnerable, creating an extremely efficient municipal housing fund.  

The 58 percent victory for the measure came even as its proponents were outspent two to one during the campaign.

In this current cycle, in LA the challenge is for progressives to maintain or even expand their base on city council, while in Reno it is to create a new movement, which started with the outgoing Jenny Brekhus not saying yes to every developer request, and being followed by Meghan Ebert who has asked pointed questions and not voting yes on every proposal either, since her election in 2022 for the Ward 4 seat. 

Efforts have been made to ease unaffordability crisis here, but these are usually on the fringes and not wholesale like a progressive wave could cause.

Our Town Reno, Ideas for Progress, March 2024

Should We End the Era of Abusive Kitchens?

What do you think of the continued idolization and brand expansion of Gordon Ramsay, including at the El Dorado here above in Reno, with a big sign pictured today, indicating a “Ramsay’s Kitchen” will be coming there soon?

Eric Ripert, a French born chef, who is also an international author and television personality, today was heard on the Here and Now radio show saying every time he can he now criticizes Ramsay for perpetuating a kitchen culture where food is made out of fear, with those in charge screaming at other staff and berating them, rather than cultivating a food making climate of love and support.

Ripert says he believes the food tastes better if it’s made with constructive empathy rather than in an environment of bullying, insults, punishments, swearing, confrontations and bad temper, which has been elevated as part of Ramsay’s media brand, and which was a prevalent style in recent decades.

For those who work in northern Nevada kitchens what’s the culture like here where the food is being made these days? Are there celebrated local chefs who have better reputations than others in how they treat those helping them prepare the food?

Our Town Reno, Ideas for Progress, March 2024

The Case for Re-energized Revolutionary Optimism

Amid understandable doom and gloom over eco-anxiety, smoky skies, rampant homelessness, unaffordability, neighbors dying of cold and criminalized for sleeping in their vehicles, mass incarceration, and unjust wars, often worsened by “digital capitalism” making people with smartphones and social media hyperaware, a concept being revived in books and magazines currently is revolutionary optimism.

It’s demonstrated and seen in multiple mutual aid endeavors around northern Nevada, from the Reno Burrito Project to Soil Solidarity.

Revolutionary optimism is rooted in the belief that a better world is possible through action and empathy, and that participating in the struggle itself is transformational.

The revolutionary optimist keeps faith but not blindly; but rather by doing and knowing that movements often can have indirect consequences, even if progress can seem slow at times, and challenging mountains of the moneyed status quo insurmountable.

A recent must read book rooted in this philosophy is by Rebecca Solnit, called Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. “In the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act,” one passage reads.  

Other books in this realm include Care Work, Dreaming Disability Justice, by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

The Centre of Optimism writes on its home page: "The most immediate antidote to nihilism is revolutionary optimism. Revolutionary optimism isn’t rooted in a blind hope that change will come at some unknown point in the future. It is cultivated by the acknowledgement that only through participation in the struggle to liberate the people can the lives of the people be transformed. Revolutionary optimism is bolstered by a deep curiosity in and knowledge of the history of class struggle."

Widely respected organizer Mariame Kaba says “hope is a discipline.”

On the Power Shift Network website, Jasmine Butler explains: “participating in mutual aid and building power with your fellow community members, is a dangerously powerful decision. Now more than ever, we must choose hope and community.

 Hope is a muscle that must be flexed, strengthened, and cultivated. Getting involved in a local mutual aid group, getting to know your neighbors and learning to rely on each other, committing to political education and learning about how we got to the current moment, and other acts of defiance and resilience are excellent methods for combatting doom and cultivating sincere hope.”

In June last year, in the Convergence Magazine, Jennifer Disla and Laura Misumi, co-wrote an essay titled “Creating Inter-generational Revolutionary Optimism,” exploring the necessary dialogue between youthful energy and movement elders.  

“When we create organizations with a core ethos of moving at the speed of trust, outside the non-profit industrial complex, the inter-generational relationships we build will bring clarity, and be a guiding force to move our collective vision forward,” they concluded.

What is your own view of so-called revolutionary optimism and how would you define it? 

Our Town Reno reporting, February 2024

Should we have more Scarf Bombing in Reno?

We have our Narcan boxes, our free libraries and good Karma boxes, but what about large scale scarf bombing?

In cities across the U.S. and Canada, people are donating scarves, some of them handmade by crochet enthusiasts, and placing these along easily accessed areas, on railings, benches, utility poles, traffic lights and fences.  An extra twist is attaching friendly notes for those who could use positive energy as well as warmth during colder stretches of weather.

Ten years ago, anonymous yarn bombers in Canada’s capital Ottawa got attention for this trend, which has since been imitated elsewhere.

Some cities like Jacksonville even have Facebook groups devoted to the cause. In their case it’s called Scarf Bomb Jax.  Their main photo has a scarf with a note saying: “I am not Lost! If you’re stuck out in the cold, take this scarf to keep warm.”

In the Pittsburgh area, the group is called Scarf Bombardiers.  

Groups such as The Wrap Up Project also in Pennsylvania have gatherings for scarf bombing, tagging and making scarves.  

In the Twin Cities, the local group behind scarf bombing is called One Good Deed, and even has a board of directors. 

“One Good Deed volunteers go out to two Twin Cities parks and leave items out in the open for anyone in need. This event grows in numbers and reach every year and has become the signature event of One Good Deed,” its website indicates. 

With the trend picking up, gloves and other warm clothes are now also added to scarves being wrapped around public fences and railings.  

What say you Reno? 

Ideas for Progress, February 2024

The Elevating Families Program at Catholic Charities

In a new partnership with Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities, Catholic Charities of Northern Nevada has started the “Elevating Families” program.

According to the Catholic Charities website, through a special process called EMPath “parents will gain the confidence and skills to overcome challenges, achieve economic independence and create a brighter future.”

According to media reports, it is open to 300 English and Spanish-speaking families who live in Washoe County, with parents under the age of 50 who have at least one child who is in the 5th grade or younger.

Mentors will work with the families on stability, well-being, employment and finances. Financial literary classes, a nurturing parenting program, as well as rent or utility subsidies are all included.

“Do bills continue to pile
up, leaving you on the
brink of eviction and
with utilities on the
verge of being shut off?” the Elevating Nevada Families website asks.

The application to enroll can be found here: https://elevatingnevadafamilies.org/

“Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities helps service providers apply scientific evaluation methods to better understand and share effective poverty interventions,” according to its own website.

“An end to injustice. An end to dependence. An end to poverty. And a new beginning for … families who are ready to thrive,” it promises.

It would be interesting to get more results and particularities on this program once families have gone through the process.

Our Town Reno reporting, January 2024

What Would MLK Dream of for Reno in 2024?

We asked ChatGPT what MLK's dream would be for Reno in 2024. Here's ChatGPT's answer ...

"Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream, as outlined in his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, was centered around equality, justice, and a society where individuals are judged by their character rather than the color of their skin. Applying this vision to Reno, Nevada in 2024, it would likely involve fostering a community where racial and social justice prevail, where there is equal access to opportunities for all residents regardless of their background.
This could include initiatives to address systemic inequalities, promote education and job opportunities, and build a community that values diversity and inclusion. Dr. King's dream aimed at creating a society where people of all races could live together harmoniously, and this vision could be translated into efforts to strengthen unity and understanding among the diverse population of Reno.
It's important to note that interpreting historical figures' perspectives for the present day is subjective, but based on Dr. King's principles, his dream for Reno in 2024 would likely align with the pursuit of a just and inclusive society."

We would add more of a push for more accessible housing, protection of tenants, better conditions inside the Washoe County jail and more compassion for our unhoused neighbors with more easy access emergency warming / cool down centers.

What would you add to the list?

Ideas for Progress, Our Town Reno, January 2024

Should Reno's City Council Call for a Gaza Ceasefire?

While major U.S. cities such as Denver, San Francisco and Minneapolis are currently considering resolutions to support a Middle East Gaza ceasefire, and other municipalities have already done so, should local residents here pressure the Reno City Council to do the same?

The US campaign for Palestinian Rights has a calculator which indicates how much city residents contribute to the nearly $4 billion in American taxpayer funds for Israeli weapons.

For Reno’s population our part amounts to nearly $4 million, which according to the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights could instead fund over 400 households with public housing, over 40 elementary school teachers, 11-thousand households with solar electricity, cancel student debt for 100 students, three million respirator masks and over one thousand children receiving free or low-cost healthcare.

For those who say faraway non binding resolutions, protests and social media activism are performative, activists point to precedents in years of world pressure and then sanctions in helping topple apartheid in South Africa.

Speaking of South Africa, their officials have now charged Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice.  It’s become a conflict at the forefront of concerns for people especially in the 18-30 age range around the world. 

The United Nations is taking it up in meetings on a daily basis, and its agencies are making continuously worsening statements.

“Everyone in Gaza is hungry! Skipping meals is the norm, and each day is a desperate search for sustenance,” the World Food Program said in a post on X  on Tuesday. “People often go the entire day and night without eating. Adults go hungry so children can eat.”

There is also renewed interest in the Land for All initiative, previously known as the Two States, One Homeland movement, proposing a two-state confederation with freedom of movement and equal rights for all Palestinians and Israelis under two separate governments but in a shared space. 

Currently, divisions within the Democratic Party are worrying party officials ahead of the 2024 elections, which with an aging Joe Biden at the helm remain a tossup at all levers of power.   Recent polling indicates 80% of Democratic voters are calling for a ceasefire, which if it doesn’t happen, could dampen Democrat turnout come November.  

Outside of party politics, many posts in Reno from local activists indicate being increasingly frustrated that there is not more of a protest movement both here and nationwide. Should our City Council step up to the plate? 

Ideas for Progress, January 2024

How Will We Absorb 100,000 New People in the Next 20 Years?

Washoe County forecasts indicate a net plus of 100,000 people living in the area over the next 20 years, bringing Northern Nevada to the half a million mark before the halfway point of the 21st century. 

The County Commission recently approved a new master plan which tries to combine keeping access to our beautiful surroundings while having infrastructure and sufficient, adequate housing to match our ongoing population growth.  

With accessible housing already in short supply, and income gains not matching the rise of rent costs and home values, that need will only escalate to tens of thousands more units. 

Not surprisingly, real estate figures to be a booming industry in the coming years, along with finance and services.

But what about the people already currently here? How can they enjoy all that Northern Nevada has to offer without feeling they are being priced out, as was repeated at the start of public comments at a City Council meeting today?

The priority should be to create the conditions for a range of housing opportunities and choices, but especially for the working class, students and seniors now struggling on their fixed income.

This means an aggressive combination of incentivizing affordable housing, and not luxury units, exploring partnerships with non-profits to build new accessible housing, implementing rent stabilization and other measures to protect tenants, boosting protection laws to prevent discrimination and unfair eviction practices, pursuing more community land trust models, having policies to prevent the loss of existing affordable units, by providing assistance for maintenance and renovations, revising zoning to allow for higher density developments, developing more supportive housing for seniors, establishing more programs to assist seniors on fixed income with home repairs, having more down payment assistance programs and rental subsidies for low income individuals and families, and expanding housing voucher programs. 

Those should be our absolute budget priorities.

Until our elected officials walk that walk instead of just talking it occasionally, and then spending hours meeting with developers and listening to their demands, rather than to what is being said during public comment, our housing crisis and gentrification will only sharpen, while the Biggest Little City loses its edge and soul.  The walk also needs to involve the community every step of the way, so that it’s a collective effort. 

At Our Town Reno, we would also like to see more walkable and vibrant downtown and midtown type spaces, more public transport, even free, as other cities are trying out, while allowing residents to foster distinctive neighborhoods, homegrown and quaint, with thriving, small locally owned businesses, rather than being marketed into artificial, gaudy, money grubbing, shallow districts. 

Our Town Reno, Ideas for Progress, November 2024

In Addition to Bike Lanes, Can't We Close off Downtown Reno Every Weekend?

Some of the existing “micro mobility network” in Reno is elaborate and forces wide turns, such as in the 5th street and Arlington area, but overall seems to give safer options for cyclists, e-bikes and scooters, while slowing down cars.

Last week, the Reno City Council approved a $20 million expansion of this network, to encompass more of Virginia Street, Vine Street and Fifth Street, as well areas between Ninth Street and Holcomb Avenue.

This followed an abrupt u-turn by the Truckee Meadows Bicycle Alliance, which had long advocated and pushed for a Center Street "cycle track," happy instead now that more areas will become bike-friendly in downtown areas.

In addition to these bike lane expansions, we’ve long advocated for more public festivals in central downtown Reno when traffic is entirely closed off. We believe Reno has the population and interest to have every weekend of the year craft fair open market type events, where the whole downtown Virginia street section would be closed off to cars.

What are your own thoughts on the future of downtown Reno and how to make it more attractive to those living here?

Our Town Reno, Ideas for Progress, October 2023