The Community Foundation of Western Nevada and Its Push for Affordable Dorms

Still in Need of Final Votes and Money

The money or promised in-kind help isn't all there yet, and the final vote hasn't taken place at City Council, but Pfrommer is confident the Foundation's 200-unit dormitory plan, praised in local media and on national blogs, will go from prefabricated dorms typically used by miners in Wyoming where they would be bought, to the Sage Street site, cornered by salvage junkyards, train tracks and the highway.

"Our timeline is really probably four to five months to really tackle most of this monetarily," Pfrommer said at the Community Foundation's downtown office this morning.  "I think through our connections with the various philanthropic work that the Community Foundation is involved in, unrelated to this project, it will bode well and provide a lot of goodwill and assuredness to the community to step up and participate, given our track record."

Pfrommer says the Foundation still needs to raise an estimated $3.2 million, "but that's before taking into account the current campaign to have essentially donated services and products from various subcontractors on the project. So it's a moving target. We hope it's a lot lower as more and more developers step up to the plate to help out the community," he said. 

He's also looking for big individual donors. "While we certainly would love to have, you know, thousand-dollar donations, most of these are going to be pretty good sized and so we're hoping to engage more and more people in philanthropy," he said.

There have been concerns over environmental issues from past use at the Sage Street site, to which Pfrommer responded:  "There's been a phase one that's been done in our understanding from the engineer who's contributing his services, that it's just the typical underground storage tank, but with no leakage or any of those issues. So it's going to be remediated with very little issues," he said. 

Minimum Income Needed and Other Requirements

The rent for the single bunk bed units is being planned at $390 a month, for those with an income of at least $1,300 a month, who must also pass other requirements.

"There is going to be a criminal background check, and drug testing, that type of thing. So I think that will set the criteria for the type of person that comes in," Pfrommer said. "So it's not somebody who is not working who will qualify for this honestly. And that's a different population. This is a niche, I suppose it's one rung up from the shelter ... but it's not going to be for somebody who's not working at all. This is really meant for the working poor to give them a hand up so they can get stabilized," he said. 

A few small family units are being planned, but Pfrommer said it would be mostly for one person occupancies. He also wanted to make clear this would be different than a tiny home village. 

"Tiny homes, even though they're tiny, they are self contained in the sense they have a bathroom and some limited kitchen facilities. So the dorm really does distinguish itself from the tiny home in the sense that it's like a dorm where the bathrooms are down the hall. It's a communal kitchen across a walkway. So it is different from the tiny homes. And honestly that's what makes this housing affordable is to have something like this set up where it's not like a tiny home. It's not like typical low income housing. But then again, the rent's only $390."

The detailed drawings for the planned dorm can be found here:  https://nevadafund.org/dorms-sage-street-envision-realty/ "The feedback we've received is overwhelmingly positive," Tscheekar said. "People know that this isn't going to solve our housing crisis, but it is going to supply a big inventory of units. We're anticipating 200 units that would truly be affordable. So this is really the only project right now that is developing that if you are making minimum wage, you would be able to afford a safe and dry home."

Volunteers of America in Charge and Support from Other Organizations

Pfrommer said Volunteers of America, which runs the main shelter in downtown Reno and the overflow shelter just a few blocks away from the Community Foundation's headquarters, will be in charge of many operational components, including wraparound services.

"Volunteers of America will be responsible for operating everything above ground, including vetting the potential tenants, taking care of the property, providing the security and also coordinating social services for those people that do need a hand up."

While other organizations are working on their own 24/7 housing solutions for those they help, such as the Eddy House for at-risk youths, Tscheekar said they would be welcome to live at the dorms. 

"Other organizations are supportive of the project," Tscheekar said, "so we do know that for many of the youths at the Eddy House, they may get a job or start pursuing education, but they simply can't afford a place to live. So we do anticipate that as some of the youths stabilize from receiving services at the Eddy House, that then they could move to the dorms on Sage street."

Following Other Models and Bringing Down Prices

A community land trust according to Wikipedia, "is a nonprofit corporation that develops and stewards affordable housing, community gardens, civic buildings, commercial spaces and other community assets on behalf of a community."  For this purpose, the City of Reno is selling the 250 Sage street property to the non-profit philanthropic group for $1.

"We have seen other communities who have done a community land trust and this is actually the first one, at least in northern Nevada," Tscheekar said. "A few months ago, we went to the Bay Area to research some of the work that was being done there, to address gentrification and the housing crisis in San Francisco... And so we started to share this information with the City of Reno and they got very interested in the idea ultimately leading up to the recommendation that they donate the Sage Street property for this. So it's a new concept for our area, but it has been done.... If you can eliminate the cost of land automatically, that reduces the cost of housing," he said.

"We know with affordability that's a relative term,"  Tscheekar added, "but, what the people involved in housing consider affordable is 30 percent of your income. So if you are making $8.25 minimum wage in Nevada, that's about 26 percent of your income. So as long as you're working full-time, it is truly an affordable place to live."

Pfrommer made clear the dorms will also be available for long term rentals not just transitioning. "It's not necessarily transitional," he said. "If somebody wants to stay there for three to five years, 10 years, that's fine. It's not by definition going to be six months and you're on your own," Pfrommer said.

"I think it's fair to say too that for some of the clients at least, that they may live here temporarily until they can save up money to put a deposit or start having their own apartment for example. But then others may stay long term," Tscheekar added.   

A Hoped For Thanksgiving Timeline

According to the Community Foundation's website, the first $1 million is needed no later than July 4. The money will be used to transport the modular structures from (the Afognak Native Corporation making these units typically for mining workers out of Big Piney) Wyoming to Reno, for disassembly then reassembly, utilities and hook-ups, site preparation and improvements.

"The trucking costs will be about half a million, but the disassembly in Wyoming and then the reassembly here and everything is about a million.... I mean our goal is to have these on trucks ... in July and having them set up in August, early September and then we would be up and running to start getting applications in September, October and then fill it up by Thanksgiving," Pfrommer said.  

"Well we do feel confident that we can make it work," Tscheekar added.  "I would say one challenge is that it is moving very rapidly and that there are so many different partners with the project, with various construction companies and other real estate developers as well. So there are a lot of caring people, but it can also be difficult to keep track of all the work that's moving so rapidly," he said. 

"It's obviously great for the 200 or so people that will have (access) to the dorm village," Pfrommer concluded before getting back to work. "What I'm also excited about is the fact that it's encouraging or forcing people to think differently about how to address this (affordable housing crisis). We have always had low-income, Section 8 housing, which the groups that do that do fantastic work, but this is another way to help increase the inventory and make housing affordable for that many more people. So I'm glad it's forcing people to think outside the box."

Interview by Our Town Reno on May 30, 2018

William Mantle, A "People-Focussed, Free-Thinker" Running for Mayor and a More Affordable Reno

Outspent but Undettered

"I really just wanted to take the advocacy that I've always had, and practiced, and bring it to the city," Mantle says explaining his motivation to run, even if he knows he might be a long shot to make it to a second round general election finish when results are counted after June 12th.  "Think people first and absolutely be a voice of reason and scientific, evidence-based rationalization for our development projects and our future here."

Mantle says he feels he's up against the odds in terms of fundraising and name recognition, but that his campaign is still worth a shot.

"This is my first go into local politics ... It's not that I haven't been in the community doing things, I mean being an advocate is certainly, important work, but it's not very visible work because I do it at like 3 AM sometimes or 5 AM or 11 PM, you know, when there's a need for service and that doesn't get you the visibility, nor do I seek it. That's not why you do that stuff. The sheer amount of money that is in contention with some of these candidates .... I looked at all of the filing reports and it's already been $126,000 spent collectively between the candidates. (Three candidates) have spent over $40,000 each. So that's a lot. That's a lot. And I don't have that kind of funding or backing, but there's no reason to not try and put yourself out there because I still believe that we can do better. And I don't think that the other candidates are as people-focused as I think they should be."

"I am a free thinker. I believe that there should always be fiscal responsibility. I believe that we do need programs in place that elevate those most in need to a higher status and well being in life. I believe in redistribution of wealth as appropriate, but not in such a way that it would economically disincentive people's desire to earn in our capitalist economy.  I would consider myself in general a moderate towards all things. Like, I take an issue, I look at whatever evidence and best practices we have and I go with what makes sense. I don't hardcore swing one way or the other. I'm not devoted to any one path.... I can change my mind based off of what's presented to me. You should always take the data that you have available to you and work with that and never off of just impulse or any knee jerk reactions because that's not good policy making, that's just good agendizing and I don't believe in that," Mantle said

A Q and A on Affordable Housing, Anti-Vagrancy Laws, Strip Clubs, Homeless Services and Grading the Current City Council on These Issues

Question: The City Council we have keeps saying affordable housing is the most urgent issue facing Reno. Given this awareness, what kind of grade would you give them on what's actually been accomplished over the last term?

William Mantle: "I would grade them a D. I would grade them a D because when I first started my campaign I went online to all of our various news organizations in the area and I looked for every article I could find on the Fountain district, the tearing down of the weeklies, anything from the City Council saying publicly what we're going to do and what we're planning to do. And what I've found is since an awesome article came out in The Atlantic (in early 2016), that was really like, 'hey, northern Nevada has this amazing issue that it's going to have to deal with.'  And that was affordable housing and people spoke to that. And I don't think anything has happened. I've heard things, I've seen quotes, but from everything I can see, there hasn't been an ordinance put in place to prevent the tearing down of structures that are still usable... There hasn't been an ordinance put in place for a percentage of affordable housing as part of a development project, meaning that either you have to commit a certain number of units to being affordable housing for say individuals or families making under 40,000 or have special statuses like senior citizens or veterans or they have to pay monies into a pot that then, the city would use that money to do its own public housing, maybe in coordination with the Reno Housing Authority, which is federally mandated."

Above a screengrab from Mantle's Facebook campaign page. "I've been mostly pinning my campaign on digital advertising through Facebook. Other than that, I work eight to five, so I go door to door after that when I can and just try to make it work," he says of his campaign style.

Question: What about the idea of rent control or a version of that? Should the City Council be pushing for that? Can we learn from recent initiatives in other cities?

William Mantle: "I haven't seen any ordinance be put in place for any kind of semblance of rent control and I know that's a very complicated issue because rent control has been shown to not work in certain ways in Chicago, in New York, but I think that we could easily put an ordinance in place or ordinances that give a little bit more rights and security to the renters and limit to some degree the landlord's ability to just bump up the rents. When I hear stories of individuals getting up a 25 percent rent increase month to month, that's not a thing most people can just adapt to."

"What I've seen in other cities is absolutely the emphasis on percent affordable housing. What I've seen is that, okay, you want to develop here, great, we love, we love your investment and your desire to be a part of this community and building in this community, but we need you to ensure that if you're going to build this project, you're going to build either another project that can be dedicated to (affordable housing). Or you'll have a part of that project be put towards it, or you can collaborate with other developers who are also building the area to do something together."

"This isn't a Reno-only crisis. The whole nation is facing a rental crisis... Wages are a major part of this. A lot of cities have confronted this by also raising wages because if the rental prices go up, okay, that means the inventory is still the same in the area and that's an ongoing crisis for Reno especially. But if people can afford more, maybe they can live farther out, they can commute more easily... "

"I think every debate is important. I think any opportunity where you can get people to sit down and answer a question, any question truthfully is important," Mantle said of the upcoming debate. 

Question: What do you think of the anti-vagrancy proposals which are slowing making progress towards implementation despite opposition from many quarters?

William Mantle: "Telling somebody that they can't sleep where, where they don't want to sleep anyways. It's not that somebody is like, I would really love to just cut up some cement and lay down on that. That's not where somebody wants to go to bed, but if you're that tired or just that out of sorts, you may need to rest. And if you would be thrown into jail at cost to the public for that just doesn't make sense in terms of an economical impact that we want to be putting our money towards. That's just more costs to jail and to the Washoe County sheriff's office or RPD that we don't need. So I'm not a fan of those vagrancy laws. I think they're very misguided."

"My belief is that no one would prefer to be homeless first and foremost. I know there's a lot of rhetoric out there.... such as, 'Well, these people are choosing this (life) ....' There are some people who I believe aren't in a state of health to know what choice is best for them or what choice could be best for them. So I don't believe anyone goes out there and says, 'I can't wait to have a lack of security, no protection from the environment and no security of food or comfort.' It doesn't make sense to me. So I don't like that rhetoric. What I think we need to do is really take a broad-handed approach," Mantle says of dealing with homelessness.  Our Town Reno photo from this early Spring.

Question: The strip clubs also seem to be taking a lot of the City Council's attention. What do you think about that?

 William Mantle: "I've been a supporter for the strip clubs' rights, to stay where they are. I think that it's actually incredibly silly that this is a discussion that needs to be had.... The city is risking a rather hefty lawsuit of 50 million dollars that's probably going to be brought up again. It got dropped when the city council started making some overtures saying, 'hey, you know, maybe we can work this out, find a compromise.'  Then they reversed direction .... saying, 'no, we're going forward with seeking not only your relocation, but also further enforcement'.... I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think think it's appropriate. I think that we're talking about individuals who are autonomous, have their own agency, they have their own money and they're deciding to go to that establishment and enjoy those services, whatever those are. What I'm more concerned about are the rights of the contractors, aka the dancers. They're being appropriate and proper .... I'm very concerned why we're making it more difficult for people to get jobs that they're seeking. And these clubs pay a lot in taxes, tens of thousands of dollars per month to the city coffers...."

"There just isn't any hard evidence to support that move.... It sounds like this is mostly focused on the Wild Orchid and I don't think that building is in any way beautiful. I don't think it's, you know, some Victorian architecture that we should all love and adore, but I think there's things that can be done. You could put trees in front of that building," Mantle says of other options rather than relocating the Wild Orchid from the Midtown district. "You could ask for the facade to be redone or something with the lights. Definitely remove the digital sign. I don't like it, but I also don't like the Nugget's digital sign or the GSR's digital sign. I don't like those digital signs, period. One thing that I thought was funny was that Harrah's was advertising a rather burlesque show with a huge sign of a woman who was showing all of her midriff and her panty line .... and a very tiny digital sign that says Girls, Girls, Girls is more offensive than an actual full frontage of a woman's bare body.... " 

Question: What about helping the homeless community? What should the City Council be doing better?

William Mantle: "We need better mental health services... We need to make sure we have adequate resources for mental health. We don't... We need to make sure that people get off their substances and can transition off of those without being afraid of being thrown in prison or jail for their addiction. And that's a disease, that's not a choice. People aren't like, 'oh yeah, I chose to be addicted.'If they don't have a place to live, maybe they're going to use substances or maybe you get them a place to live, but they're hooked on a substance. They're not going to be able to control their finances. Oh wait, what if they don't have a job, they can't afford where they're supposed to live and they still have an addiction. So all their money they would have is going to that. It's a hydra of a problem. It has so many heads and I feel like for some reason we're always trying just one approach, one approach, one approach. It takes a collectivist approach to solve these issues and talking with people. I'm for far more social workers and case managers to get out there."

"If they need police escorts to go to those camps, I'm totally fine with that," Mantle says of having more social workers doing outreach in homeless encampments. "Police are there for security and safety and code enforcement. That's what they're there for. They should be used like that. They shouldn't be used as our social workers .... Well, we'll just put you in jail for now until we can figure out how to get you better off. That's not the way I want things to develop. I think we can do better. It does take community investment. It takes empathy. It takes time and it takes money.... I don't have the answers right now. Nobody does. But that's something that I would absolutely look into to find out because we can do it.  Other places are doing it better and .... are trying new things. We can learn from other cities. We can adapt and make it right for us."

Question: There are also concerns about more and more of what's being built is luxury high priced housing, including for students.  What are your thoughts on that front?

William Mantle: "It is worrisome. Last I checked the majority of students aren't affluent....
They may have affluent parents but ... if we don't start creating affordable housing options, there will not be people who will support the economic livelihood of this city and you're just going to not have people who can afford to live here, (to be a student,) to be a grocer, to be a shelf stocker, to be a librarian, to be even an EMT personnel."

"We're going to lose our services because people are like, 'I'm just going to move somewhere I can afford or I can make better wages because Reno is not doing anything to increase that either. And we have extremely high taxes in comparison to the rest of the state. We have super high gas taxes, high property taxes. But we still don't have enough, unfortunately, for all that we need... The solution isn't easy." 

Note: Some of the questions and answers were trimmed for clarity and conciseness.

Interview by Our Town Reno in May 2018 at the downtown library

Joyce Kay Cowdin, Speaking on Behalf of Endangered Motel Residents

An Eviction Taking Place and Misconceptions

It's a sunny, breezy day in the angular, repaved parking lot of the El Tavern motel in late May 2018, and an eviction is slowly taking place. A taxi pulls up, waiting.  Beat up mattresses are strewn on the ground.  Neighbors walk back and forth to each other’s rooms, some of them tripping over and speaking incoherently.  As Joyce Kay Cowdin walks around the complex, though, her dog, Aurora, a two-year-old Shih Tzu, Maltese, Cockapoo and Chihuahua mix, brings many smiles.

“People have misconceptions about people who live in these motels. We're not all drug dealers and drug addicts, we're not all prostitutes. We're not all... whatever. Some of us are just in the position where this is all we can afford and we're good people,” Cowdin, 59, says. 

Cowdin used to work doing phone surveys, in casinos and for the city’s ice rink, but her poor health now keeps her mostly in her room.  She’s been at the El Tavern Motel on W 4th street, scrunched between storage facilities for two years now. She’s angry at some of the comments she sees on social media when she reads stories about the local homeless, motels and the affordable housing crisis. 

“We used to work, and we've been in the workforce,” Cowdin says of residents at the El Tavern and other motels. “Some of us have been working for years. Some work every day and they have to live here. ... Don't make assumptions. You don't know us. You don't know me. They make all these assumptions about the kind of people who live there, and yes there are places that are like that. But not all of them. That really bothers me. Don't assume you know my story. Don't assume I'm a certain way because of where I live. Some of the new people moving to Reno are bringing prejudices with them,” she says of comments she hears and sees on social media.

Sharing What She Can Afford

Cowdin shares a two-bedroom unit of the motel with a friend.  They both collect disability and food stamps, which allows them to get by but just barely, as the room cost is about to go up to $800. They have no car so they use buses to go grocery shopping, and spend wisely, with coupons and special deals.

“We still struggle every month. We still struggle to pay bills. We have phone bills, medication to pay for. We don't have enough to actually get into an apartment, because it's too much,” she says. “You can pay background check, credit check, and the application and still not get in and you never see that money again. Sometimes it's a lot. And then, they want first and last. Even the Courtyard Centre apartments where my friend used to live at, which was really low income housing, really reasonable, they're raising their rents too.” 

There’s problems living here, even if she says it’s better than nothing. “We have had bed bug infestations. We have mice. We have the power that goes off a lot, because there are people who are using too many devices. Electrical circuits need to be upgraded And they're raising our rent again in June. It's been not even six months since they raised it last time.”

A back view of the El Tavern. Cowdin says neighbors also do cause problems, and cops and ambulances to come over at all hours, for fights, drugs, domestic violence issues, overdoses.

Worried about Reno's Direction

Cowdin closely follows what’s going on in Reno, but feels frustrated so far at the worsening situation in terms of affordable housing.

“I am on social media and I worry about things like this. I read and I try and find the information. I call people in government. I love to research and get answers. I will bug the crap out of people to get the answer I want. Hopefully, it's not a lost cause. Hopefully someone is going to step up who actually can see what's going on, who actually listens.”

She’s been homeless before, and fears she could be homeless again.  She’s also lived at the Carriage Inn, which was recently torn down, as part of the still mysterious but ongoing destruction of motels and other properties on 4th street by the Jacobs Entertainment group.

“Some people say ‘oh just another blighted hotel gone’.  But we don't know what Jacobs is planning on doing. I don't think the city knows. It's like well, ‘you are showing us a lot of money and you're going to buy up all these properties we won't have to worry.’ It's going to bring tax revenues so here you go. But this isn't a high priced area. I don't see who they are planning on attracting.”

She's also not impressed with the local Homeless Advisory Board. "They need more people there who have experience with homelessness, who understand how many different layers there are to being homeless, and all these different issues.  Try living on the streets for 24 hours and see how you survive," she says. 

The door to Cowdin's room. "I found that in a dumpster, I fixed it and tied all the feathers to it and hung it to my door. I have to make this home, because this is home," she says.

Losing Charm and Attracting Outsiders

Cowdin is also worried about the destructions of motels and low income housing taking place for plans for high end student housing.

“All the apartments they are building for students seem to be for students who aren't from here, but for students from other places with parents who will pay their way.  Reno has lost its charm. It used to be a really cool, quirky little town. They are trying to turn it into another what Silicon Valley? Or some top tier college town? Sorry it's never going to be that,” she says.

Instead, she would want to see more charities and organizations who build their own complexes or take over other apartments, with a simple application process, and short waiting lists, for low or fixed income residents, as she's seen in Oregon, where she's also lived. 

"In Oregon, they have city and county-sanctioned tiny home villages and tent cities and places for vets and that's how they are handling it. It's housing, it's not transitional, they are there ....  A lot of places will require them to do some work around the place, or grow vegetables and contribute to the community. I wish we had more of that here, because I'm worried, for myself and for others."

Reporting by Our Town Reno in May 2018

Joey Thyne, A Student Documenting Reno's Stripped Down Gentrification

Bursting the Student Bubble

Thyne, 22, a transplant from Green Bay, Wisconsin, and new graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno, says many students live in their own bubble, unaware of some of the rapid transformations their host city is going through, including its traumatic lack of affordable housing.

"Like people who live in the Highlands (luxury student housing) will say 'oh my rent's going up for next year so I have to find somewhere else,' but it's not as dire as 'oh, I'm going to go live in the streets.' I think it really sucks a lot of these lower-income motels are being torn down to build more student housing. I mean I didn't even really understand it was such a big issue until we started talking to people about this," he said, looking back on the past semester during which he produced A Gentleman's Disagreement (watch below) with a team of classmates in a documentary class at the Reynolds School of Journalism.

A Story of Rapid Gentrification

Thyne himself has lived with several roommates as a student, meaning his rent has only been about $500 a month. He says he believes the Ponderosa hotel which goes for over $700 per month is overpriced. He sees no good sides in the ongoing battle between strip clubs and City Council, with vulnerable residents as "pawns."

"I think people always talk abstractly about gentrification, and I think that this is one of the most concrete storylines I've seen of that actually happening. It's sort of happens gradually over time and like suddenly Brooklyn is full of hipsters, but I feel like this City Council is trying to fast track Reno's gentrification," he said. 

The Wild Orchid / Ponderosa Hotel Keshmiri-owned combo sit on prime real estate at the entrance to Reno's much promoted eclectic Midtown district.

Changed Perceptions

Working on the film changed Thyne's own perceptions of Midtown Reno, the entrance of which is now occupied by the threatened Wild Orchid and the many residents clinging onto sheltered life at the Ponderosa Hotel.

"I used to think that the Midtown district was so cool," Thyne said. "I mean it is like hip, and they have all the nice shops and they have Junkee's (Clothing Exchange), and Sup and the place where you can get ice cream sandwiches (Simple Ice Cream Sandwiches). But I think through all this I've learned that there's something sinister underlying it, where a lot of stuff's getting torn down. A lot of people are being displaced in order to ... I think the City Council wants Reno to be like hip, like a Californian town, but it's at the expense of a lot of people and their well-being."

Thyne's film played with other films from a class taught by documentary filmmaker Kari Barber. "People are really excited about the issue and a girl came up to us after the film festival and said she wanted to take the documentary class next semester and said she wanted to do a follow up or something similar," he said of some of the reaction he received. 

What Does the Future Hold?

While the film itself goes into detail of the see-saw multi-front battle between Reno's strip clubs and members of the City Council, with the future of the Wild Orchid's location hanging in the balance, and residents of the Ponderosa Hotel seemingly caught in the gentrification winds, Thyne believes the outcome is inevitable.

"I think that a lot of people want downtown Reno to just turn into one big UNR campus and I think it's sort of heading that way," he said. "I mean as it stands now, I guess they are still seemingly going to kick the strip clubs out.  I guess the Ponderosa residents will probably all have to leave because they can't afford their rent and I'm sure the Ponderosa will get torn down and turned into like Whole Foods or something," he concluded.

 Interview with Our Town Reno in May 2018

Legendary Baby Bleu, A Homeless Prostitute Striving for Better Days

Legendary Baby Bleu, 24, has an active Go Fund Me page, Instagram, Twitter, and a couple of polished websites offering her services. She is trying to rebrand herself as "Reno's Little Princess". She also has a backpack full of drawings and books with life plans.  What she doesn't have is a home.

"So I'm homeless right now," she said during a recent interview on the UNR campus, where she spends hours inside quietly working on her websites and journals.  "But I'm dressed well. I do my best to shower and still do my makeup so I can walk around and smile. But it's hot outside, and my legs hurt. I've been walking from north to south Reno, maybe just because I'm killing time."

Growing Up into Prostitution and Brothels

She spent part of her teenage years in shelters with her mom in California, a time she became a cutter. (Listen to her poem above).  Her aunts gave her tips on how to be a prostitute, as they were, and when she came to Reno, she followed in their footsteps while still a young teenager going to Hug High.

"I started working when I was 16," she says. "I just basically walked from school to downtown. A couple of guys would pick me up here and there and then eventually I was making like $1,200 a week.  With this one guy, we would do these crazy threesomes."

After going back to California and being arrested a dozen times there and doing community service, she was advised by a judge and social worker to work legally in a brothel, which she did for a couple of years in Elko. She was making about $50,000 a year, she says, but eventually she was back to being a prostitute for herself, finding the brothel work stifling. 

"It's hard, because it's like an institution," she says. "You work when you work, and then when you're off of work, you can do whatever you want, but it's still locked down. You're not going to your friend's house around the corner, and I'll be right back.... You're at work and you're not allowed to leave the brothel even if you're not working."

Her journal is full of sketches and detailed to do lists for all her entrepreneurial ideas.

Sober but Struggling

She says she was living in an apartment with a boyfriend last year, but that when things got nasty between them in the fall, she says she had no choice but to be homeless again.

When we met her, she said she had been off alcohol and cocaine for six weeks, drinking lots of Red Bull and doing arts and crafts to stay sober. She now avoids shelters, where she doesn't get along with other homeless, so she hops around between motel rooms, whether she is working or not as a prostitute, and a few secret spots, "on the concrete or in somebody's grass", where she tries to avoid police.

"The birds chirping will wake me up and that's right when the sun is coming up. I try and go somewhere with a public restroom and that way I can wash my face up real quick, and do a little makeup or something with my hair," she says of her early morning routine. "And then I wait until I can get into the Eddy House. Luckily I can still go to the Eddy House (a drop-in center on 6th street for street adult youths), as I'm still under 25.  They have a shower there and they also have food and groups."

She said she had recently gotten her ID stolen, so she was trying to figure how to get that back.  She also said she had applied for several regular jobs, but repeatedly got turned down, and was giving up on that. Now, she spends a lot of time in libraries across town, working on her own ideas and web presence. 

Legendary Baby Bleu (right) has been seeking help from different organizations as well as reaching out to help with their own programs, such as with Alejandra Hernandez Chavez (left) who works with ACTIONN, a faith-based organization working on social justice issues including affordable housing.

'No Sex Trafficking' or Pimps in Reno

Despite what others say, including activists, politicians and organizations, Legendary Baby Bleu doesn't believe there is sex trafficking going on in Reno.

She says there is widespread "guerrilla pimping" in southern Nevada and California but not in the Reno area. She says she believes some who make these claims have something to gain by saying there is lots of sex trafficking. She says 4th street is now mostly "trannies" working on their own trying to get some money.

"Guerrilla pimps are people who forcibly take women. In SoCal and southern Nevada, they just sell girls back and forth.... There's a ton of girls like me who started prostituting at 16 and then you meet the girls from Oakland who started prostituting at like 12 because they're guerilla pimped and then that's kind of the only skills that they know.... But there's no sex trafficking going on in this area. It's all the girls' choice here. You don't even need a pimp anymore.... I mean, usually when you meet guys in this industry, they're your age and they're trying to figure it out, the same stuff you are. So it's not like working for, it's more like working with. But I've never had a pimp. I've always had boyfriends. They would like to be pimps, but they're like emotional."

She has the marks to prove she was a cutter, but she says she is resilient, and will also survive her current ordeals. 

Trying to Reverse a Downward Slope

"Just because I present myself a certain way, doesn't mean it's not horrible," she says.  She tried going back to live with some of her family in California, but that didn't work out either.

"By the time you get to the end of the day, you're just exhausted. My legs hurt, my feet are constantly swollen. My makeup has become more raggedy," she says.

She didn't show up for a third meeting for a planned interview.  A recent Instagram post from a few days ago partly said: "I did everything on my own until October 2017 when I fell off ..... I hate that they hate me and ruined me for no reason. But I will get everything back by myself like I always do." 

Interviews by Our Town Reno in Spring 2017

Amy, Kicked out of the Ponderosa

Amy, a struggling sketchbook portrait artist who moves back and forth between Arizona and Reno, is sitting outside the Ponderosa, hoping a previous acquaintance will invite her in for the night, but the receptionist keeps pushing her away.  "This isn't a flophouse," the receptionist says.  "I'm tired of this place," she adds. "The music is too loud everywhere ... and people don't have their IDs like they're supposed to." 

Amy used to live here and says it's better now, with more rules and fewer drugs, but that when she lived at the Ponderosa she wasn't "a good person." She says she got in trouble and that now for some reason she's banned. She doesn't give too many specifics.

"It's a good place to be short term," she says, "but long term, it's best to make other plans." Still for one night here and there, she says "it's good enough, if I was welcome."

Some amenities have been cut down at the Ponderosa, as indicated by the above sign. 

Life at the Ponderosa

The lobby entrance is filled with fifty and sixty somethings, many of them in wheelchairs, many of them with tiny dogs.

If they can afford it and aren't kicked out, Amy says, "it's ok. They just need a place where they can lock their door and try to be happy and well inside." Amy says ambulances often come by for people who are sick or also for those who overdose or have bad reactions.  "There's drugs," she says, "heroin and meth.  But people are pretty discrete about it."

She said when she lived here, she was in a bad relationship and also had a drinking and gambling problem.

"I messed it up for myself by gambling," she says of her life. "Gambling is not a good thing. I have also been conned, scammed, railroaded for money …..  I borrowed money to gamble more," she said. "You make mistakes and there are repercussions. There is balance in the universe."

She says she now gets a monthly Social Security Disability Insurance benefit of $740, and tries to make money by salvaging, and reselling what she finds for people who hold regular yard sales. 

Despite what she says are frequent cockroaches, she sometimes misses sleeping inside. "I got pneumonia from too much freezing and thawing outside.  But other motels, where I don't know all the seedy people, I don't want that," she says.  Monthly rent at the Ponderosa can still be had for below $800 and Amy says she'd be happy to come back.

A few minutes after our interview, Amy had left into the night, looking for a camping spot. 

Back on the Streets

Amy says she usually finds spots to camp in alleys in Sparks or Reno. She doesn't like the main shelter or where homeless like her congregate.

"Oh yeah I want to listen to old guys bickering, whining and screaming and bugs," she says. "No! I’m a camper. "

She says she's also been kicked out of a local RV camp, but stays despite all the challenges because she has two kids who live here.

But she says she does want to go back to Arizona where she also has family and used to help people she knows there with furniture refurnishing. She also used to make and sell walking sticks.  

"Maybe one day, I could write a book about homelessness in Reno," she says. "It’s a sad place. It needs a lot of help. Lots of people are sad here," she says before packing her bags, and thanking us for a cigarette.

 

Stevi Goletto, Finding the Time and the Courage to be Kind

Food Not Bombs Reno and Hairstylists Along the River

As she helped organize hairdressers parking alongside the river and another Monday evening food distribution, Goletto said "not good", when asked about the number of tents currently propped up along the very high Truckee River.

"Gentrification is happening," she said. "We are dealing with that and we have 25-40 over in this area, and 15-20 over there, just in this tiny part. It says a lot about how rent these days is theft essentially and how we're falling into that trap and we're just excluding people."

She said the idea of adding free haircuts was important in combating some of that exclusion.

"Our friends by the river can't always get a haircut so we just asked people if they would like to help and we got a really good response," she said of hairdressers from Maxwell's Barbershop and Tabu who showed up. "People did want to help. Good haircuts, they make us feel so much better and cleaner, and it makes us feel included. A big part of the lives of our friends by the river is exclusion and feeling lesser of a person, and so we are all about solidarity and we are here to show them that we are all equal. Having a haircut, feeling like you're just like everyone else is important," she said.

"I do believe camping should be legal. I don't understand why there's a problem with that," Golleto said. "We have a lot of old motels and housing that we can really make into affordable housing or even free housing for our homeless. Other cities have done this. We need to give and not be greedy." 

Relying on Help Previously and Now Helping Others

Goletto works as a photographer, photo editor, artist and as an assistant gallery manager in Carson City at Western Nevada College. She says it's important even with her busy schedule to find time to help others, as she once was helped.

"I think it's important to show people how much we need solidarity, how much we need equality," she said. "This is the way that I can show it. This is the way I can be a part of it. Being busy is not an excuse."

She also knows first hand the difference these types of events can make in a person's life.

"When I was in high school, I actually couch hopped a lot, so I didn't really have a stable home life," she said. "I grew up very poor in the Bay Area and in central California. It was actually through programs like Food Not Bombs and the Salvation Army that some days I wouldn't have eaten without these people. I've come through a few precarious situations but things like this, and the love of strangers, who had faith in me and they didn't even know who I was, was the most beautiful thing I've probably ever experienced."

"Food Not Bombs Reno ... we are an anarchist collective. We are all about that food is not a privilege it's a right. We believe in solidarity for everyone and we are all about hands on action. We're not a charity at all," Golleto said. "We are just friends helping friends as equals and that's our purpose and that's what we do. We see a problem and we do our best to fight it." 

Joining In

Dozens of people lined up for the food and many of them also walked away with new haircuts. Volunteers for Food Not Bombs includes teenagers, college students, young professionals and retirees. Goletto says anyone tempted to join on a Monday around 5:30 pm is more than welcome. Businesses can also reach out she said if they want to offer food.

"Come on by. We would love to have you," she said. "We all make food from our own kitchens. We also have local places donate. Every single one of us it comes from pure love and from our heart. We don't ask for anything. We just want to be here. A lot of us know what it's like to need someone. It's every Monday without fail at 5:30 pm. You can bring something that you make. We usually feed between 30 and 50 people. When it's a nice beautiful warm day, we've gotten 50 plus. If you feel like you can't bring anything, or you're not sure, just bring yourself and you're always welcome. Just say 'hey I'm here and I want to help'. That's all you need to do."

Other Food Not Bombs volunteers prepared the food.  Goletto said she would like our culture to be less judgmental of those in need. "We say 'oh I worked hard, I deserve this. And they didn't just work hard, they did drugs and that's why they are there, so they don't deserve my help. I'm going to just do nothing,'" she said. "But I don't think any person has the right to judge another person. Or what they need, or what help they deserve.  And if we can just have empathy and have the courage to be kind, that is important. Just open your heart. Just maybe look outside money and look outside greed."

"We all Need Somebody"

"Time I personally don't really have it, but I do it anyways, because I'm no better than these people and I've been in tough places in my life, and we all need somebody to be there for us and sometimes strangers are the best people with the kindest hearts, and so to see people, it feels good to know there are others out there who have love for you, who are helping you, so that is what inspires me," Goletto concluded before getting back to coordinating the event, as those helped ate their meals and went back along the river. "My inspiration comes from I feel good. It makes me feel good knowing that I am doing more for others and not just for myself. "

Interviews and Reporting by Our Town Reno on a recent Monday Evening along the Truckee River

Lisa Lee, Pushing Back Against the Tsunami of Opioid Addiction

Despite recent improvements in combating the epidemic, more than one Nevadan a day still dies from an opioid-related overdose. On the third floor of the Northern Nevada HOPES building on 5th street, members of the Reno community recently gathered together to address this very serious issue. A panel of experts in different fields including a judge, police officers, and community leaders gave their viewpoints on how to help addicts.

The event was officially titled The Northern Nevada Opioid Awareness Summit, and according to organizer Lisa Lee of the Life Change Center, a recovering addict herself, the goal of the event was to “bring the community together and to get us talking about these things.”

Talking to Addicts Directly

If we want to help an addict, we asked Lee, how should we start? 

"I would like you to tell them that someone gives a shit about you, that even when you feel like no one cares about you there's somebody out there that still thinks you're worthwhile and that there's a way out of this. You know there is a way out of this and there's people that will gladly help you. All you have to do is say, 'hey you know I I don't want to do this anymore'. I think everyday ordinary citizens should stop judging other people and start connecting with other people. And the thing that I think we tend to do as human beings, if we see somebody struggling, we push away. We're like 'oh man, you're messed up ...' You know we push away and that further isolates somebody and can really spiral that behavior by pushing away. And I think what we need to do more of is lean in and be like 'I see you struggling. How can I best support you and let that person answer for his or herself? Not with all of your ideas and judgments about how you can fix them and your solutions to how to fix them. But hear from them like how can I best support you? What do you need from me?"

Picking up a pamphlet can be the beginning of seeking out help, and getting on the road to recovery. Photo by Jordan Gearey for Our Town Reno. 

Compassion over Judgment or Not Talking About It

"Sometimes it's a hug," Lee said of what an addict might need to start helping themselves.  "Sometimes it's just to have somebody notice you. You noticed me right. You see me. You didn't judge me. Lean in. That's what I think we can do. We need to talk about Grandma taking her opiates. We need to talk about your son, your daughter. Like stop hiding that stuff from other people ...  talk about it. It can't get better if we don't talk about it. And that's where the judgment comes in. And you know, it's like nobody wants to talk about their uncle that just overdosed last week. You know nobody wants to talk about Grandma who fell in the living room because she forgot she took her oxi and then she forgot and she took another oxi. Oh my gosh, like we don't want anybody to know this. We need to talk about this."

The conference room was filled. Microphones were passed among the crowd where people could voice their concerns about substance abuse, or asked questions about what is being done. 

Requests for More Funding

Sgt. Wade Clark of the Reno Police Department stated that “we cannot enforce our way out of this.” 

John Firestone, the Executive Director of the Life Change Center, asked for the city's help in terms of additional funding.

The Northern Nevada Awareness Summit plans to have two more similar community meetings in the near few future in both Carson City and Fallon. For those wishing to attend a future meeting they can visit http://www.tlccreno.org/ for more information.

Story by Jordan Gearey and Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno

Jordan Hughes, Worried about Reno's Growing Divide Between Rich and Poor

"It's also about the divide between the rich and the poor that is increasing that also brings me here. There is a crisis on our hands and people are losing their homes and we are not seeing wages increasing. The fact of the matter is it will bring more homeless people to the streets," Hughes who is a student at the School of Social Work at UNR, said of Reno's current development.

"A lot of times, we see people building all these nice gates and nice big homes keeping themselves away from impoverished areas and the distancing drives the separation. People should remember that the people on the streets are still people and no matter how they appear or the actions that they make, it could happen to a lot of people, so they should just remember to have a human heart inside of them."

Photo and Interview by Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno

A View from City Council and David Bobzien: "We're Going to Have Growing Pains"

In this Q and A with Our Town Reno reporter Robyn Feinberg, Bobzien weighs in on the council's challenges with economic change, making downtown more attractive to local residents, more inspections in motels, losing local history amid development, impacts on affordable housing and the rise in homelessness among other hot button growth related topics.

Robyn Feinberg: Why did you decide to run for City Council and what does the job entail?

David Bobzien: Before I served on the council, I represented pretty much the urban core of Reno in Assembly District 24. The last issue that I was involved with in the legislature was the Tesla Special Session; so following that session and securing the Gigafactory, it was very apparent to me that our community was going to face some tremendous opportunity as a result of that, but also some tremendous challenges when it comes to growth in particular. And what it would mean for our quality of life, and what it would mean for our community, our community character going forward. So, as it happened, a couple of months later, the 2014 election happened and Hillary Schieve was elected mayor, thus creating a vacancy on the council in the at-large position, and I was encouraged to run, and it lined up really well for me because I sort of realized ...'You know what, I feel a certain responsibility to be there, to help with the situation, having played a part in the Tesla Special Session.' The opportunity to work on these very local issues was something that was very appealing to me, so that’s why I applied and was selected by the council to serve out the rest of her [Schieve’s] term, and then I stood for election in 2016, and to this day, all of the concerns I had about what is this going to mean for our growth, what’s it going to mean for our population, and what’s it going to mean for all these pressures of this rebounding economy - a lot of that is coming true and so I feel grateful and lucky that I am able to be there to work on this stuff and try to make things a little bit better.

"We get tons of emails, tons of phone calls, we get tons of public comment all the time, but that’s our job and it is our job to get stopped in the community, and stopped in the grocery store, and hear people's perspectives and opinions on different issues," Bobzien said of the City Council's role. Photo by Robyn Feinberg

Robyn Feinberg: Going off of that, how do you see the future of Reno, especially in light of all of the development with companies such as Tesla coming in, and the effects it’s having on the city’s economy?

David Bobzien: I am cautiously optimistic. I don’t want to say that everything is going to be great, and everyone is going to have jobs and all of these problems are going to sort themselves out. We have real challenges, we have real issues that we have to deal with. But I still would rather have this reality than the reality I had of my constituents during the downturn/great recession, where I’ll never forget, knocking on doors during campaign season in say 2010, and where every fourth house was foreclosed, and every third or fourth conversation I would have at the door was somebody with a spouse who had been out of work for eight months. It was bad. This new energy and economic resurgence, I would much rather have this than those previous conditions. Now that said, I think we have a lot of challenges in making sure that those opportunities are available for everyone, and that as we go through this period of growth and resurgence, we’re creating long-lasting prosperity for everybody, and in such a way that we don’t lose what it means to live in a really cool city. Things are going to change, things are going to be different, we’re going to have growing pains and not everyone is going to be happy with some of the things they see, but I want this to be a community that twenty years from now, I can feel like we didn’t get everything right, but we got a lot of it right, and my children are now starting families here and they’re proud to call Reno their hometown and they’re still here.

"There was a variety of things that were done, clean-ups, graffiti abatement, and one of the bigger picture items was a loan to knock down one of the boarded up hotels that had been vacant and that got turned into the Playa Art Project that we have on Virginia street," Bobzien said of the so-called fight on blight, criticized by some as further reducing affordable housing options.

Robyn Feinberg: I read that $1 million dollars has been spent fighting blight in Reno and cleaning it up, can you talk about that and who or what were the targets with the money spent?

David Bobzien: Yeah, it’s not complete. The theory was that we needed to allocate some money to make blight a priority and deal with vacant properties, and to deal with some of the problem properties that we had. There was a variety of things that were done, clean-ups, graffiti abatement, and one of the bigger picture items was a loan to knock down one of the boarded up hotels that had been vacant and that got turned into the Playa Art Project that we have on Virginia street. But more so, I think, the council’s activities have been more around how do we, the blight fund was one part of it for downtown, but how do we incentivize, and how do we get business investment and residents to be downtown, thereby creating more vibrancy all around for downtown. And so certainly the business improvement district that we unanimously voted to go forward with at the last council meeting is a big step in that direction. In a lot of ways we are catching up to what many other cities around the country already do, big and small, we’ll [Reno] be the first one in Nevada, which will be good, but the hope there is a new partnership for downtown residents, business owners, certainly gaming and the casinos, for everyone to kind of come together and realize that if they’re not talking to each other and not working together, people will always complain about downtown being a place that they don’t want to be. So, this is the way to get us to a downtown that more people want to be in.

Robyn Feinberg: Would you say that this is the end-goal for the council, getting people to want to be in downtown and live there and Reno in general?

David Bobzien: Absolutely. And to be proud of downtown. I think that for a long time, I’ve lived, it will be 21 years in May, but I’ve been in Reno, and when I got here the joke was 'Oh, nobody goes downtown, that’s for tourists and people who want to gamble, but the rest of us don’t go downtown.' In that period of time there’s been a slow, steady progress of moving our downtown to more of a livable environment for everybody. And we have restaurants and people that have residents, we’ve got markets now, maybe we’ll have a grocery store sometime soon. So, our downtown is a place that people will no longer turn their backs on. I think for the longest time, this community kind of turned its back on downtown.

"We’ll have to see what they do. On the one hand, I think we’re very grateful that there’s investment that’s going to be made .... (but) what the actual vision is for downtown, for their [Jacobs] downtown development, I think the jury is still out to what it is they want to do. I mean, as I understand it, entertainment amenities, not just gaming but entertainment restaurants, more of a place where people are going to want to shop and eat and be in, I think is good, but we’ll have to see what their [Jacobs] true vision is for that whole area just west of downtown," Bobzien said of the Jacobs Entertainment project and ongoing demolition of motels.

Robyn Feinberg: Moving into a very recent conversation, can you talk about the Motel Inspection Program that city council is involved in. What are your thoughts on it, and motels in Reno in general?

David Bobzien: Well it’s been a very robust and hopefully very productive conversation between our city staff and code enforcement, and the motel owners themselves. I have met with motel owners and heard their concerns about the program, and they make a very important argument that you may not like them, but the fact of the matter is, these are living options for people, and I have some sympathy for that perspective. They [the motel owners] realize that they have been under the microscope, so they understand they have to engage in this conversation and try to find some ways to make their rooms and their offerings better. They’re nervous about being mandated to make major investments in cleaning up their offerings, just because they would argue that they would then have to pass that on to their tenants who may not be able to afford them. So, it’s a tricky balance, but I think it’s a good conversation and hopefully we’ll see a good sort of middle-ground there so that we can have a better sense that the conditions by which some of these motels offer their residents. It’s seniors, it’s veterans, it’s children, I mean the number of kids enrolled at say, Mt. Rose Elementary School, that live in weekly motels would probably shock most people. These are transient living conditions for a lot of families, hopefully we can find ways to improve those situations without automatically pricing people out and getting them out on the streets. Now, aside from that, there are other development efforts underway, different people looking for different strategies, about repurposing, for instance, previously used temporary camps from say industrial projects, bringing like almost dorm quality living options and placing them someplace downtown so that there are alternatives to those weekly motels. (Note: There were developments on this front after our interview took place .... https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2018/04/25/reno-council-approves-community-land-trust-create-affordable-housing-complex-reno/548224002/)

"I think also more and more people are realizing that this is a way of life for people, they have no other options. So, there may be business opportunities for others to say 'We’re going to try to find ways to provide these other housing products as a viable business option and take care of some of these housing issues that people have,'” Bobzien said of the need to provide housing for those now relying on motels.

Robyn Feinberg: So would you say that this [the housing crisis] is a difficult question for the council to answer?

David Bobzien: Well it’s a difficult one, but it’s an important one. I think that across the council, and the mayor included, we may all have our different opinions when it comes down to what it is we are actually going to do with this program, but the fact that everybody on the council understands that this is a super important conversation to have I think is good. I mean housing affordability across the spectrum, whether we’re talking about workforce housing, whether we’re talking about truly low income affordability, it’s the number one thing that we’re focused on. We know we don’t have all the answers, we know it’s a complex set of issues to work through, but everybody knows that you can’t just throw your hands up and say 'oh it’s too complex we’re not going to touch it.' We’re all trying to find ways to address this.

Robyn Feinberg: What’s the effort like on the council’s part in re-locating motel tenants whose homes were demolished, or in general for those looking for affordable housing or shelter?

David Bobzien: The efforts are somewhat ad-hoc, which is not a bad thing. I mean people are out there looking for different solutions and investigating different ideas and possibilities, but as for the council, we just had a meeting about community development block grants. I’m on the subcommittee for how we allocate those federal funds, as a for instance, right off the top, $500,00 of our allocation every year goes right to the community assistance center, so we’re up to [about] $800,000 that is the city’s portion on the community assistance center. But then we have other money, there’s almost $400,000 out there right now for trying to find some housing assistance program solutions. So, you know, there’s assistance options for people, whether it’s rent assistance, whether it’s placement, whether it’s assistance to seniors, it’s out there, it’s just difficult to scale it really, to meet the need, and we [the council] would acknowledge that. There’s a whole variety of things we’re trying to do, but there’s never enough money to deal with all of the problems.

"I think, generally, it’s becoming more acute, there’s no doubt about that... It is a west-wide problem for sure, we are not unique in the region. And I think what is different this time, in this period of our history, is that we, homelessness has always been an issue, and the city of Reno has taken a number of great steps over the years, even before I was on the council, the city took the lead to build the Community Assistance Center, before that we didn’t have anything. But now where we’re at, clearly there’s people just kind of on the knife-edge of slipping into homelessness because of one rent increase or say an injury on the job, or some other life circumstance that happens, then boom, they plunge into homelessness. That’s probably the most heartbreaking thing about this right now, feeling like we’re [the council] trying to do as much as we can, and we are doing more, but knowing that those tragedies, those problems, are going to keep coming," Bobzien said when asked about homelessness in Reno.

Robyn Feinberg: Is there this worry on the council that homelessness in Reno is correlated to development and prices going up, with companies coming in and wanting to “revamp” downtown?

David Bobzien: Yes, absolutely. There’s no doubt about it that the numbers and the statistics, the data is pretty stark, that housing affordability, generally across the spectrum, is an issue for our region. Rents are going up, housing prices are going up, it just stands to reason that those pressures are real and will result in more and more people having to make difficult choices about their budget and what they’re going to do, and how their day-to-day lives are going to go.

"Certainly the motels are a big part of our twentieth-century history and a number of them are going to be purchased and are not going to be there anymore, but hopefully there’s a few developers out there that have the wherewithal and the capital and the interest to reuse some of those and repurpose those," Bobzien said of disappearing motels.  These motel structures and signs still standing earlier this year are now gone.

Robyn Feinberg: Are you worried that Reno will be losing some of its history with all of this development, such as the vintage motel signs and old buildings that are now gone? I know that this particular topic is important for historians in the area.

David Bobzien: No, I mean we are clearly shifting into a new chapter of Reno and I think that’s certainly a worry, that, you know, the past is, if we’re not careful, will slip away pretty quickly. But, I’m confident, based on how I’ve watched other cities over the years go through these sorts of changes. Boise, Idaho, is a good one that comes to mind, you know there are plenty of models out there of cities that have transitioned into new economic chapters that have done a good job of rehabilitating historic properties and not losing all vestiges of what came before...  I had some friends come in from out-of-town (recently), and so we went out to dinner to The Depot, and that was a perfect example of a building that sat vacant and empty with no sort of economic use for so long, and thankfully somebody had a vision, came in, made the investment, and they have a thriving business downtown with a historic building. Again, can you scale that to what degree is that going to apply to your entire cityscape, it’s as of yet unknown, but there’s certainly hope off of that happening that’s encouraging.

Robyn Feinberg: A particular focus of mine for this project is that Reno is facing a “moral dilemma.” On one hand you have the revitalization of beautiful, old buildings for casual dining such as The Depot, but does that come at the price of people who are already living here and are now being priced out through these gentrification efforts. Do you feel that dilemma, is there that moral dilemma?

David Bobzien: Absolutely, and I, again, for me it returns to ... I would rather have these problems than the problems we had during the Great Recession with high unemployment rates, across all the neighborhoods, people were in difficult times. With this economic resurgence, people are generally doing better, there’s more prosperity in our community, but that is not a reason to turn and look away, and understand that it’s putting a really acute pressure on a select segment of our community that are definitely feeling the pinch. You’re right, there’s people that have been living in some of these situations for a long, long time under the previous chapter of Reno and now that’s changing, and where does that go. I think that weighs on everybody on the council, the mayor as well.

Bobzien welcomes new development and more businesses coming in, but does not deny these changes come with pressure points which need to be worked on, such as higher rents in new places and an affordable housing crisis for residents on fixed or lower incomes.

Robyn Feinberg: To wrap things up, from your perspective, what can you say about the council’s efforts and the part you are playing in this overall conversation? I know there’s a lot of conversation going on with different points of view on where Reno is headed and the council’s part in it.

David Bobzien: I think in this political time in particular, it’s disappointing that where we are as a society is that folks are super quick to label and judge, assign roles and simple perspectives and opinions on someone they may have a disagreement with. That ultimately doesn’t help the real conversation that we need to have as a community about what the future looks like. I’ve always said this, that in Nevada, compared to many other places, California being a perfect example, our elected officials are amazingly accessible. Sometimes it takes a little bit to get on their calendars, but for the most part, you can stop your city council member, or your state legislator, in the grocery store. Last night I was out, my two nine year-old sons were at a Cub Scout event at a trampoline place, and I had a mom come sit down next to me because her kid was also jumping around, and we had this 30 minutes conversation about housing options for people on fixed income. Those opportunities abound and so I always encourage people to not go into anything with a preconceived perception of what someone else believes or feels or values. And if you just have those conversations with people, you’ll be amazed at how much ground you can cover and the impact you can have. We get tons of emails, tons of phone calls, we get tons of public comment all the time, but that’s our job and it is our job to get stopped in the community, and stopped in the grocery store, and hear people's perspectives and opinions on different issues.

Note: Parts of the interview were trimmed and some questions and comments were edited for clarity with no change to the original content or meaning.

Reporting by Robyn Feinberg for Our Town Reno

Why not Repurpose rather than Demolish? A Local Historian and a Realtor Speak Up

Too Late to Save?

Taking a walk along fourth street in downtown Reno can be a quiet journey these days. Where many motels once stood, there are now vacant lots with chain-link fences around them. Other, soon-to-be demolished motels are also fenced off, while those that are still standing are being offered money to shut down as well. The famed Chapel of the Bells, which closed its doors in February and sold to Jacobs Entertainment, is also set for demolition later this year.  The two buildings that used to surround it have already been taken down. The flow of foot traffic around these areas has steadily declined, as many people now stick to the more crowded, less vacant areas of the Biggest Little City.

Alicia Barber, a writer, historian and consultant worries about old significant structures being caught up in the sudden sell off.

“A lot of historic properties seem to be threatened in a way that they weren’t before due to all sorts of different types of development...from local developers, out-of-state developers, like Jacobs Entertainment, who’s been demolishing the motels lately, but then also the growth of the university, which was in a kind of pause mode for a while with the recession,” she said.

With so many recent demolitions in Reno, bulldozing away mid-century architecture with a distinct aesthetic form, social media activists and volunteers have begun to appeal to the city in favor of saving the structures that have yet to meet the same fate.

A recent screengrab from the Facebook group Mid-Century Modern Reno which has been looking closely at some of the historic properties caught up in the Jacobs Entertainment buy off along 4th street.

Erasing History?

“What makes cities different, what attracts people to different cities, are the unique qualities that city has. If you erase your history you just become like any [American] town, where there aren’t any really defining characteristics,” said Barrie Lynn, a realtor and chair of the advocacy council for the Historic Reno Preservation Society. “And so I think that a lot of people really don’t understand the connection between sense of place and historic preservation, the stories that make the city unique...just from my perspective as a realtor, people really do care about that.”

Both Barber and Lynn are advocating for what is called adaptive reuse of older structures in Reno when they aren't at the point of what they call necessary demolition. The two actively voice their concern about the rapid demolitions taking place, as they feel there is a worrisome lack of public discussion or input, both from historical and social perspectives.

The building of the Eldorado and parts of I80 in the early 1970s had a huge impact on Reno's core. Photo from http://www.onlinenevada.org/about-4th-street-prater-way-history-project 

Nothing New? 

Barber said that she feels Reno has been losing its historic and communal character since 1973, when the Eldorado casino was built, wiping out an entire city block. Adding to that, in 1974, the completion of Interstate 80 through Reno and Sparks significantly impacted residential portions of both cities, including nineteenth-century Victorian houses that Barber is petitioning to save from university construction and relocation.

“Reno didn’t really retain a vision of how to keep a sense of its own historic character and identity and continuity as it moved forward, and there’s always been this strong influence of business and economics in determining what the physical landscape would look like,” Barber said. “And the big transformations that happened with the hotel casinos in the 1970s just fundamentally changed downtown forever, I mean not just in its appearance, but in its whole function.”

With the long-time, continuous development of Reno, as well as massive structures of hotel casinos, such as the Eldorado and Silver Legacy taking up numerous blocks, downtown has become varied in its uses, including for lower-income housing in the numerous motels dotted around town.

The motels that make up the unique signage of Reno played an important role during the past century, and still do, housing weekly tenants during the lows of tourism, and the highs of more expensive hotels and housing in a growing economy.

“These motels have been a part of this gradual, decades long process where a lot of the different components of downtown have become places for lower-income residents to live, and there really aren’t a lot of options for them,” Barber said.

The Displacement that Ensues

“These motels have been a part of this gradual, decades long process where a lot of the different components of downtown have become places for lower-income residents to live, and there really aren’t a lot of options for them,” Barber said.

Barber said that one of the most discouraging aspects of demolitions, especially of motels, is the displacement that follows.

“It’s terrible, I think one of the most difficult aspects, and one of the most frustrating aspects of seeing this recent wave of demolitions of motels is that there’s no plan even for what will replace them, there doesn’t seem to be a plan to replace them with anything anytime soon,” Barber said.

“So, you can’t even evaluate the loss of that structure and the housing that it represents, and the loss to the people, not only current residents, but potential future residents, I mean these are very fluid populations who live in these motels and the remaining motels downtown.”

While it has been reported that Jacobs Entertainment helped some of those who were displaced by motel demolitions, Barber said she was worried about the loss of those motels  for others going forward, especially since the landscape they once sat on is not being used for anything at the moment.

“You can’t just like re-house the residents who happen to be in a motel at any given moment and then say 'Well, you solved the problem,' because those people now have a place to live, other future people who might have needed that place now don’t have that as an option,” Barber said. “So, to see these structures that at the very least are shelter for people who need a roof over their heads, to see them being demolished without anything in their place that benefits anyone, is really, I think, a huge slap in the face.”

While Reno has changed in recent decades, casinos, even if not as profitable as they once were, remain a major force downtown.

Reinventing Reno and Reuse

“It’s hard to understand, but I think what you see there, that is part of this great desire to reinvent Reno and reinvent its image, is that those motels, despite the fact that they’ve been important residences for disadvantaged populations, are seen as a problem,” Barber said. “They’ve been defined as blight, and they’ve basically been defined as something ugly and makes Reno look bad...that’s just an obsession with image instead of a recognition of what’s really needed at this time.”

Barber and Lynn both agreed on the idea of adaptive reuse of structures in Reno, meaning that the city would instead maintain the original structures of buildings set for demolition and redevelop what is already there.

“People think, 'Oh, it’s out of code let’s just tear it down, it’s unsafe,' but there’s a difference between a building that needs code upgrades and a building that is structurally unsound, and one that is in danger of falling down,” Lynn said. “Buildings that need code upgrades you can do seismic retrofitting to protect it from earthquakes, you could enlarge window openings...there’s things that you can do to make a building safer. If a building is not in imminent danger of falling down, there’s not really a good reason to demolish it unless you have plans to redevelop that exact parcel.”

Lynn is worried that not only is misinformation being spread regarding these demolitions, but that it also hinders investment and future development.

“A vacant lot really sends a message of desertion and disinvestment, and it can deter other investment. And so once you demolish a building, you take away any future potential for that building to be reused, you take all of those options off the table, so, if there’s not an immediate need to redevelop a lot, and as long as a building isn’t in danger of falling down, I think that there are a number of reasons to not demolish that building,” Lynn said. “It’s far more expensive to build from the ground up then it is to renovate an existing building, and I just think there’s a lot of misinformation about blighted buildings, the cost of bringing buildings up to code, and when is a building actually structurally unsound, I think there’s just a lot of misinformation about that.”

Lynn’s biggest concern is that Jacobs Entertainment will take years to complete their proposed Fountain District, and in that time, could decide to pull out, leaving vacant, undeveloped lots behind.

“I think that not having any assurance that this project is going to come to completion is troubling, and I think that it sets us up to be in a position where basically we’ve allowed someone to become too big to fail, where we would have to subsidize them if things went downhill," Lynn said on fears Jacobs Entertainment might leave empty lots for years.

A Closer Look at What Blight Means

Lynn and Barber also agreed that there needs to be a community-wide discussion about blight, as they see it as completely fixable.

“I think it’s [blight] being totally misused in Reno...I think it’s being used to mean unattractive, ugly, deteriorating. But, when I think of blight in terms of how its defined in urban studies in planning, a blighted area is one that’s been basically abandoned. We look at a blighted area as a place where property ownership is probably so fragmented or unknown that there really isn’t even a sense that someone has a responsibility to this area, and that person could actually improve it if they wanted to,” Barber said. “So, that word is being used today for structures and areas where we know who owns the area, we know who owns that structure, we know that they’re actually a affluent person, or they’re a group of people, or property investors, who are just allowing structures to become dilapidated or unused, or deteriorating because they’re holding onto that property because they want to sell it at a later date, and they want to make some money.”

Barber said that using the term blight so loosely lets a lot of property owners off the hook who should assume responsibility of the property.

“We’re hearing a lot of high ranking officials just kind of citing their friends who say 'Oh, it’s beyond repair, it’s beyond hope.' Well, there are experts who can say whether things are beyond repair or hope,” Barber said of how blight is discussed in Reno.

Renovating Rather than Demolishing

Lynn held similar sentiments, giving examples of adaptive reuse that have happened in Reno.

“Far too many times I’ve seen something demolished and we’re still looking at the vacant lot. I can give you dozens of examples, and sometimes what you’ve got is a structure that sits there that everyone thinks is so ugly, and it should be demolished, then all of a sudden someone comes along and they beautify it and then you’re like, wow,” Lynn said. “Thankfully, they had that to work with, to start with, the Kings Inn is a prime example, which is now the Third Street Flats. That sat vacant for 40 years, and it was considered a nuisance, it was considered blighted, but I tell you what, if that had been demolished, I don’t think we would be looking at anything on that site right now, we’d still be looking at a vacant lot. I don’t think it would have happened.”

“I think that, yes, blight is an actual thing, but a vacant lot can be blight, and I think that we need to be looking at a lot more ways to actually cure blight that involve building up a property rather than breaking it down. Renovating rather than demolishing.”

Reporting by Robyn Feinberg for Our Town Reno

Abbi Whitaker, Leading a PR Agency Amid Reno’s “Revolution”

Working for the Mayor and Jacobs Entertainment

On her bio for the abbi agency, co-founder and president, Abbi Whitaker, says she thinks “Reno is the most underestimated place in the United States” and that she’s “proud to be part of the revolution.”

The Stratford-upon-Avon native, from England’s West Midlands, who moved to Fallon when she was 12, and graduated from the Journalism Department at UNR in 2003, opened the downtown pr agency with her sister in 2008.   Right now, she is in the middle of development and politics, working both for Mayor Hillary Schieve's re-election campaign and for the Jacobs Entertainment group, which has been buying up property, and bulldozing away motels, leaving empty lots behind and plenty of concerns as to exact plans.

In the interview, Whitaker referred to Jeffrey Jacobs, the CEO of Colorado-based Jacobs Entertainment as Jeff, and admitted she was also in the dark for what the future holds.

“I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know what all of Jeff’s plans are right now. He is a person that is not going to come out with a big splash and talk about ‘I’m going to do all of this, this, this, and this.’ He’s going to make sure that he has his plans in place and that that he knows what he’s doing, and then he’s going to talk about it," she said.

"So, I know a lot of people are like ‘We want to know what’s happening with Jeff Jacobs.’ I can tell you that Jeff Jacobs is doing all of his due diligence, and doing all of his homework so that he’s not going to over promise and under deliver. I can tell you he is a super compassionate man that came into this town and the first thing he asked is, ‘how can I help? What can I give to? How can we make sure that these people are not put on the streets?’ I wouldn’t work for someone that wasn’t like that. I’m a very progressive person in my political beliefs, and in who I am, but I’m also very pragmatic, and I believe that you need to bring all different sides together to solve a problem. And I look at the people I work with as being like that. So, I can’t tell you what Jeff is going to do because I don’t know yet,” she said when asked about why new plans for the downtown area haven’t been unveiled yet.

The Keno and El Ray motels are now long gone, replaced by an empty lot as part of Jacobs Entertainment plans. Photo by Robyn Feinberg for Our Town Reno.

A Lost Reno?

We also asked her if she was worried that the Reno we know would now be lost amid what some people might call the “glitziness” of Jacobs Entertainment, primarily a gaming casino company, which has also purchased horse tracks and aquariums in other states.

“I don’t think Reno would let that happen,” Whitaker said. “I think Reno has a really loud voice, and I think that Reno is a small community where every voice is heard. And I think that every person that comes in to invest in our neighborhoods knows that, and they pay a lot of attention and a lot of time to make sure they’re listening and hearing that. I think …. Fourth Street needs to be cleaned up. I drive down there every single day and it breaks my heart sometimes, some of the stuff I see, some of the women that I know are being trafficked, some of the people I know need transitional housing, or have mental health issues, we have to clean up those areas of our city, we can’t just pretend that it’s fine the way it is. So, we have someone that’s willing to come in and help us do that and I think that’s a great thing,” she said. 

Unlike others, she says she is not a defender of motels.

“Have you ever been inside of them? So, I have to, and the conditions were deplorable, there was no kitchen, there’s asbestos. I mean they were just falling apart. And that’s not the kind of place where we need people living. So, I know that people were like ‘Save the motels, we need to reconstruct them. If you’ve come inside and looked at them, that’s not viable, that’s not going to happen. I work for Jeff Jacobs, who is doing a lot of the development on Fourth Street, and when I look at Jeff and see someone that is giving a million dollars to the Reno Housing Authority, that is building senior housing, that is focused on coming in and putting a lot of money into redeveloping an area, but also really hyper-focused on making sure that those people that were living there are okay, every person, they did not kick any people out of motels, they gave people bridge money to go in to other living situations, they helped helped them transition, that’s how it should be. " (Note: This information was not independently verified by Our Town Reno)

"Is everybody going to be happy? Are people going to be upset about x, y, and z? Of course, but Reno’s evolving, Reno is gentrifying, Reno is cleaning up areas where there (is) a lot of crime, and a lot of poverty, and a lot of drugs, and a lot of sex trafficking. The sex trafficking that goes on in those motels is absolutely disgusting. We need to clean it all out,” she said.

"I employ thirty people, I want these thirty people to be able to buy homes, that is super important to me. I own a company where the brain trust is the value that is here, like I don’t have equipment, I have really smart people. I want those really smart people to be able to live here and be able to afford to live here. So, I think as soon as we get more inventory online, we have a real lack of inventory, it’s a supply and demand issue right now, as soon as we get more inventory online then we’re going to see the housing prices and the rents equal out," Whitaker said of concerns for her own staff amid a local affordable housing crisis. Photo by Robyn Feinberg for Our Town Reno.

Developers Have a Bad Rap

Whitaker says she feels people often give developers a bad rap. 

“They think of developers and think, 'Oh,' and I’m like, well, you should sit down and have a conversation with some of them sometime, and you should see what they give back to this community, and where their hearts are at and everything. It’s interesting how people get painted sometimes without taking the time to get to know them.” 

Our Town Reno once spent time with the so-called relocation manager for Jacobs Entertainment, but he spoke to us off the record.

Whitaker acknowledges that there is pressure in what she does, as Reno is currently a “hot ticket” of development, due to its proximity to California and its extremely different tax structure.

“I think it is a big, big job. With growth comes a lot of responsibility - infrastructure, education, and healthcare...a lot of responsibility,” she said.

Reporting by Robyn Feinberg for Our Town Reno

Emily Montan, A Retiree Doing the Good She Believes In

Coordinating the Shelter's Overflow Tent this Past Winter

Emily Montan, 60, a former school teacher, East Coast native, Oakland retired transplant and volunteer with the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Northern Nevada, coordinated the recent parking lot overflow heated tent outside the downtown Record Street homeless shelter, a volunteer through the night service which began in January and ended at the end of March. She was happy the program was allowed to proceed, but still feels the city isn’t doing nearly enough to address homelessness, rampant mental illness in the Biggest Little City and the lack of affordable housing. 

“I mean putting up the tent was just a band aid onto a huge deep wound,” she said. “And so, the city needs to do a lot more to provide affordable housing to people, provide better services, mental health services, affordable mental health services. And there are so many people that came through (the tent) like there were pregnant women… People that didn't have teeth. You know we also help feed our neighbors and some of them have to eat soft food because they can't chew.”

The above Our Town Reno video includes footage from inside the overflow tent.

A Volunteer Operation

Montan says she had mixed feelings about the tent being volunteer driven but felt it was a necessary endeavor.

“Our taxes should be paying for that. But they aren't. So, we stand up… That's one thing about my church. We are all part of each other and we all help to help each other. And so, when I was asked to help, I said ‘absolutely’.”

Sadly, she says the extra tent was very much needed. “Some nights, they were so full they had double bunked them. So they had mats on this floor. They were horrible mats and then they got better mattresses and then they got bunk beds so they double bunked them. And then they had to open up the resource center (at the homeless shelter) which is really not a sleeping place … it's a place that people go who don't have homes can get mail, they can get resources to help them you know find jobs or get sober and give them training and stuff so they ended up even opening up the resource center and using the classrooms for the people who did not have homes to sleep in because everything was full.”

Two to three volunteers helped each night at the tent. Reno also uses a warehouse as another emergency overflow area on 265 Washington Street, but that is manned by employees from Volunteers of America, which also runs the main shelter on Record Street. 

Montana says she’s very proud of the other volunteers who also stepped up.

“We should help each other because we're all human and we all deserve respect,” she said.  

A screengrab of the church Montan belongs to, which does community work with ACTIONN, a faith-based advocacy group.

Challenges and Hopes for More Affordable Housing

There were many challenges including safety, rainy nights with leaks, inadequate mattresses, dealing with interactions inside the tent, and being required to keep a light on inside at all times. 

“We had to keep one light on which really disturbed me, because these people need to sleep just like everybody else. And I know some people don't like to sleep in the light. It also disturbed me that initially the mattresses they provided were like a quarter inch thick before they got the thicker mattresses and come on you know if we're going to provide sleeping shelter and beds to sleep then we should provide halfway decent ones. So of course, they were on the floor and the floor of the tent was the parking lot. So, it was kind of gross and of course a lot of these people don't have access to showers and things like that. “ 

They were also forced to get everyone out of the tent by 5:30 every morning. Montan is hoping the tent won’t be needed next winter, but she’s afraid the need might be even greater. 

She wants Nevada to imitate other states, such as California, by requiring municipalities to have a certain number of affordable units.  The California Supreme Court has also ruled for cities and counties to require developers to sell some housing at below-market rates.

“It needs to happen in Reno and in Las Vegas,” she said. “I think that we need to insist that housing a certain percentage should be affordable and that we need to help each other because we are on this planet together. And I don't just don't mean locally. But I come from a background where you act locally and you affect things globally.”

Montan's mother used to work on affordable housing in New Jersey, and she says she has it in her blood to fight the fight. “The cost of housing is increasing exponentially. But the wages have not and neither has Social Security or any other benefits. So, there's an alarming amount of homeless people in Reno,” she said.

More Home Ownership and Getting Developers to Help

Montan believes developers have a duty to help, including with tiny homes and other solutions.  She thinks having more help and more pipelines for more home ownership would also be crucial. 

“The developers who are making plenty of money in Reno and building housing ... They should help pay for it too by providing some affordable units whether it's a tiny house or it's a condo or a small apartment. We ought to have programs that help people who want to own a house, who want to care about their neighborhood but can't get the initial down payment and to provide them loans to do that so they can buy small houses. My mom used to do that in the poor areas of New Jersey and it works very well. People get help, can buy houses for their families and provide decent shelter and then they can pay for it  and they can be homeowners because there's a different sense of ownership, when you do own it. So, you say if you own the house or the unit you're more wanting to take care of that and your neighborhood because you want a safe neighborhood for you and your family. So, I think any kind of ownership helps people to be part of the neighborhood which I think is really important.”

Montana suffers from depression as well and feels special sympathy for others with mental illnesses living in harsh conditions.

“I come from a place where I've always had support. What if you're mentally ill and you come from a very poor family where mental illness has always been pervasive and nobody's been treated properly because of health insurance problems?  It took a long time for me to figure out what medication would work for me. A lot of people don't have that luxury of time and money to do that,” she said.

Montan says when she sees people struggling, it's her duty and her calling to help.

The Importance of Giving Back and Fighting Bad Proposals

Montan has healthy habits to help such as yoga, singing in her church’s choir, and giving back, cooking for the hungry, helping her husband, and volunteering at the Casa Latina, where she assists abused people who are undocumented who feel doubly trapped.

Montana says she feels some of the new anti vagrancy efforts in Reno will especially target those living on the margins and with mental issues, and will be costly to execute with little gain.

“It's so much cheaper in the long run to provide housing and to provide mental health services. And these laws don't do anything to fix the problem, all they do is make people feel like ‘oh I'm safer’. No, you're not safe. Because you're one paycheck away from homelessness. My husband is disabled and we were living in Oakland, we were one paycheck away from being homeless. I thank God, we had families that have money and if we ever ran into a problem we could you know ask for help but most people don't have that. So, you know this is a problem for all of us and we all need to dig deep and think about real solutions and not band aids,” she concluded. 

Reporting by Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno, April 2018

Willy Vlautin, Author of The Motel Life Torn on Reno's Disappearing Motels

Missing Motel Signs

“When I was a teenager, I dreamed of running away and the motel seemed like the easiest way to run away if you had the money,” he told Our Town Reno during a phone conversation as he toured with his new band The Delines. “The signs are beautiful. I can never get over how beautiful motel signs are. Some of the looks of those are just unreal and iconic.”

As many motels are being bulldozed away for promised developments, many of those signs are now gone, with an uncertain fate, between developers who might put them back up or a future museum.

Vlautin is proud his book stands as a testament to a certain time in this place.

“I’ve always loved Reno. I left Reno kicking and screaming. I just left because I was kind of a bum and a failure there. I was in love with Reno when I wrote The Motel Life. I counted over 110 motels in a mile radius downtown when I was working on the book.”

Many of the motels listed in The Motel Life have recently been bulldozed away.

Writing about Drifters Rather than Celebrities

Vlautin says it used to be mostly drifters and those on the fringes who lived in the motels.

“I’ve always been drawn to the darker side of things. That side of Reno always made sense to me. I always felt comfortable in it….My favorite stories are always the down and out stories they always have been. In The Motel Life I was interested in that side of life because I was living like that. So it made sense I would write about it. I had a friend who was living hard and I would follow him around all the motels. It’s a different way of living that Reno had. All these motels were generally a safe place for people who often had bad credit and couldn’t get an apartment or didn’t have the money, or legal problems, and they couldn’t get a legitimate place. I was writing about that lost society that lived inside the motels, which is just a reflection of America, and a reflection of a certain underclass which just falls into the cracks.  At least in Reno, in the motels they had a safe place to stay.”

He said when Motel Life got critical acclaim, some Reno residents tried to have him write a different style of book. 

“Some people understand that book, but I’ve had old ladies come up to me and say you know 'It’s not like that in Reno' and I’d say … 'Well, when’s the last time you’ve been on 4th street or downtown?' And they would say ‘Oh I don’t go down there, I would never drive down 4th street.’ So people sometimes don’t like to look at what’s right in their backyard, they don’t want to know. There’s some of that going on in America in general, with homelessness. Why are there so many homeless people in Portland, in Seattle, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, all over the West in big cities. With The Motel Life some of the older people would take me aside and say ‘Why can’t you write about Chris Ault, the [UNR] football coach and athletic director?’ “

The Motel Life was also made into a 2012 movie (trailer above) .  "I begged them to film the movie version of The Motel Life in Reno …. And it was filmed in Reno," Vlautin said.  "They just didn’t shoot in Elko. They made Virginia City Elko. They shot the Cal Neva. They shot the Halfway Club. They shot at the Elbow Room, right before they painted the Elbow Room and kind of screwed it up in my opinion. That was my favorite old man bar. It’s a cool movie as a document of a way that Reno looked."

Mixed Feelings about the End of the Motel Era

Vlautin who left Reno for good in the mid 1990s when he was in his late 20s, lived at times at the Star Dust Loge when he would visit.  He has mixed feeling about the motel lifestyle fading away from Reno.   

“I had a friend who lived in the motels and it wasn’t that pretty, his lifestyle. He was living rough. I spent time trying to find him in all these motels. They’re rough places. I’ve seen both sides of it. The motel signs are probably the only thing I would miss, the iconic 50s, 60s style motel signs and the designs I think are beautiful,” he said.

Vlautin understands preservationists, but also has sympathy for those who would rather forget about the downtown motel district. The answer though he says is even more complicated because destroying the motels can also worsen homelessness.

A Murky Question to Ponder

“For a city like Reno they can be a rough thing too, for people who live in them who are sometimes on the edge of society,” he said. “I can see how regular citizens and the town would be skeptical of them. Homelessness is a problem also, throughout America, and in the West in particular right now.  It’s a hard question. A lot of these people, when you close the motel, they are going to become homeless. There's more families and older people in the motels now. But it’s rough being in those motels and being in that lifestyle too.  It’s a tricky, murky question to ask.”

Vlautin who now lives one hour outside of Portland, and continues to write, tour and play music, warns of the dangers of becoming too hip. “The city Is transforming into something different and the motels might have to go,” he said. “Hipsters are hipsters and all I know is they kill old man bars. If Reno can hang on to any old man bar it has then that would be great.”

Original Interview and Photos by Our Town Reno, April 2018

Grant Denton, a Spartan Helping Recovering Addicts Help Themselves

Recent studies indicate Nevada's death rate from meth and other stimulants is the highest in the country. But Grant Denton, 39, a survivor of childhood abuse who become a deadbeat Dad junkie trapped in homelessness and repeated incarceration, is ensuring the situation isn't even worse.

Through his work, he now leads many other recovering addicts on a path he himself has taken, with discipline, exercise, meditation and a resolve to survive, to make the world a better place, to be ferocious, relentless and optimistic.

"You want to be someone that's remembered for change to help change, on a larger scale. Change as many people as you can. Create that positive way. So, I guess I want to be remembered as someone who changes as many people as possible on a larger scale... This is bigger than drugs," he explained during a recent interview with Our Town Reno.

"I want to create recovery programs for people outside treatment centers. I want recovering addicts to come and do things for the community," Denton said of his overall vision, which he already carries out by getting recovering addicts to help others as part of their own recovery. Photo by Jordan Gearey for Our Town Reno.

Denton's Own Turnaround

He said his own grandmother who always helped him, at one point refused to send him any money as he had asked for.

"She sent me a letter saying that she wouldn't send me any more money. Now she's done with me. When you burn a granny bridge, you fucked up... But she did say she'd send me books. So after about two weeks of being upset with her, I asked for some books and she started sending me some. I asked for a book about the Prison Yoga Project. I learned how to breathe. I learned how to meditate. I learned how to be grounded. I read a book about .... Paramahansa Yogananda, a yogi... And then when I started reading, I started to educate myself and I started exercising. She also sent me a book called You Are Your Own Gym. That's when things started shifting...."

He now wakes up at four a.m., and drinks a lot of coffee. He starts many days with part of an inspirational audio book.  When we interviewed him, he was listening to the Virgin Way by entrepreneur Richard Branson. One of the quotes: 'If only we had the power to see ourselves in the same way that others see us.' is a reality Denton had to wake up to when he was an addict. 

Denton goes to the gym very early, both for himself and then on different days leading free sessions for different groups, including one for women in recovery called "Rise and Grind". To recovering addicts he says: "More people care than you think. Don’t fear stigmatization. People want to help, come out and seek help."

John Firestone, the executive director at The Life Change Center says of Denton: "Grant is very charismatic and has helped us achieve a lot." The center has over 700 self-referred patients, but Firestone says it's very important they are greeted with smiles.  "I’ve had cases where someone tells me that they have been outside in the parking lot afraid to come in for a month," he said.  Those who do self-refer go through assessments and then get counseling and/or medication, as part of their assisted recovery process.

From the Depths of a Troubled Childhood and Adulthood

Born and raised in Las Vegas, Denton grew up in a Mormon family of eight, with an abusive father. He was molested by a man at his church when he was 11. He says the downward spiral soon began.

"When things like that happen to you as a kid, and these people who are supposed to protect you, your teachers, your church should maybe protect you a little bit... your parents should probably protect you. And then, when this doesn't happen, then you stop trusting everybody... And so, when you stop trusting people ... my lack of trust moved me in the direction of going downhill," he remembers.

He got into fights in school and got kicked out as a senior and ended up in juvenile detention. He worked in nightclubs as a performer, while also selling drugs there, and after becoming a young father, tried to "make an honest living,", but he says it didn't work out.

"To go from being paid to party to making an honest living is a very difficult transition. You go from zero consequences. Right. You do whatever you want and then you've got to follow some rules. So it doesn't make any sense. So I ended up doing a lot of pills, doing meth and then I worked my way down to being homeless for three years in Vegas to about eight years of getting high and spiraling down and in the last three years, I was shooting heroin and meth and homeless in Vegas," he remembers.

Denton now has a polished web presence, and inspirational videos via Facebook, one of which can be seen here: https://www.facebook.com/riseandgrindreno/videos/1764443406912388/

Being A Loser, at the Lowest, to Now Inspiring Others to Follow His Flight

Denton's candor is astounding as he recounts one of his lowest points in a life now trending very high. 

"With my ex-wife, I had two sons. And one of them was at the time, he was six and my younger one was about four, three, and I went over to the house. She would let me come because they would be like 'I want to see Dad, I want to see Dad....' She let me come over and I was homeless within a seven-mile stretch of a border highway. So, I came there one time and I got sick right. Any time I’d come over she'd have to hide her purse and I sent my son upstairs to take money. He wants to help his dad right? And he brought out 60 bucks. I get to the bus stop and I get a text on my phone that says 'GRANT YOU'RE A LOSER' in all caps. I texted back, 'Who are you whore?' I googled loser and it said .... in the act of losing ... I'm like 'holy shit'.... I'm like 'wow. I am a loser.' That was probably the lowest point. I turned my kid into a conspirator. Right. And I was I was by definition a loser," he said.

After recently moving to Reno, he says, he realized his passion was in developing programs for people in recovery.  "I met John Firestone, our executive director, and he told me to come up with something and so I came up with the volunteer program called the Spartans," he said. 

Denton's Spartans initiative has its own Facebook page and records the good deeds they do in the community.

Spartans of Reno

Denton leads his so-called Spartans to help with other local social assistance and recovery programs, by doing paint jobs and cleaning.  "The purpose ... is to get them out in the community giving back and that’s a good way to integrate them back into the community where they feel like they're a part of something," he said.

Recent mottos on the Facebook page range from: 'Life isn’t about finding yourself, it’s about CREATING yourself. DO THE WORK!!" to "Leaders create leaders." 

"Absolutely nothing," Denton says when asked if he has any regrets. "If you look at it like this. Everything that I did I can't regret it. I needed it." A Spartan is a person of great courage and self-discipline, exactly what Denton now is.

Interview and Reporting for Our Town Reno by Prince Nesta with Photography by Jordan Gearey

Carlton, Dreaming of the Marines and Finding Serenity at the Eddy House

Peace at the Eddy House

Carlton, 23,  who came to Reno from Sacramento last year, trying to escape what he calls a very complicated family dynamic and his native state with just 200 dollars, is hoping to enlist in the Marines. He was hoping to find a job in Reno, but that didn’t happen fast enough, trapping him into homelessness. 

“I ran out of money and ran out of food and options and then I happened to hear about this place,” he said of the Eddy House where we met him during the recent homeless youth count. Carlton says when the drop-in center is open during weekdays, he can work on getting some of his life back on track, rather than feeling constantly chased around.

He’s been homeless previously in Sacramento, where he lived off of top ramen noodles and fountain water, but he says he prefers being homeless in Reno because of the services provided by the Eddy House.

Avoiding Shelters

Carlton says he now avoids regular homeless shelters, so he sleeps outside at a location he prefers to keep secret.  “After the sun comes out that's where like security usually comes around and after that I go and look for food,” he said.

“I can't sleep in a room full of strangers. I can't do it and there have been numerous times when people have their stuff taken and when you are in there people would just scream and scream and no one would stop,” he explained as to why he avoid shelters.  

"This is just some drawing, a picture drawing, semi symmetrical looking like thing and I’m just filling in the color between the lines. This is what I do when I don't have any cigarettes to smoke. It's just a nice way to get my mind off things and relax," he said.  Interview and photo by Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno

Harder when the Eddy House is Closed

When the Eddy House closes every night and on weekends, he says life for him becomes much harder. 

“I walk around and people see my backpack and I just get profiled. The don't make eye contact with me, I’m not asking for anything I just want to be treated like a human being. It's like I’m not even a human being anymore. Also getting food is pretty slow, like sometimes you got to eat questionable food.”

He also says he avoids panhandling, but that without a job right now it’s difficult.  “I like to live life without regrets. After all this it’s just going to be a memory one day, a learning experience …. I might be homeless but I’m not a bum….”

Photos and Reporting by Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno

Bret Stephenson, Advocating for Better Help for Troubled Boys

No Prevention in America

Stephenson started working in California with so-called incorrigible kids in the late 1980s, where he says his eyes were opened wide and clear about some of the inadequacies of the American youth social system, and the subsequent rampant homelessness it creates.

“In America, we don't do much of the prevention and then we end up spending more money, incarcerating and locking people up… I learned that we were never going to solve the homeless problem until we learned what caused it… Prevention has always been better than treatment so most of my life I’ve been trying to convince people to prevent,” he explained during a recent meeting at a local coffee shop.

“I'm not a fan of the system. The government is good at keeping the roads clear but is completely inept when it comes to people and I think you've seen in Reno it’s just ridiculous how bad we are as far as dealing with the homeless. When you go to Europe and see some of the social systems there, they are embarrassed when somebody is homeless because it means that they've failed. There is just a totally different mindset here.”

His first book can be found here on Amazon. "From Boys to Men is about the loss of initiation and rites of passage for modern boys," Stephenson said. "Men are just forms of uninitiated boys and the problem we are having right now such as the increase of deadbeat dads is that none of us has been initiated. America turns you from a boy into an adult with a birthday at 21. And you get all the rights and privileges of a society." 

Focussing on Young Males

Stephenson's own work, research and books have focused specifically on males.

“Statistically boys are in more trouble than girls. Boys play harder and make riskier decisions. The social services field is also filled with women. My most common denominator in 30 years has been fatherless boys with single mothers,” he said. “That’s really my specialty. In my first book (From Boys to Men), it’s all about the loss of initiation in rites of passage. I've worked with teenagers from more than 100 countries. The model we see in America is not the mode of adolescence that we see in various places around the world. We have the most lockups, violence, drugs, gangs, we have a damaged sense of the adolescent which has been my goal to fix.”

Stephenson has worked over a decade with the Minden-based Rite of Passage organization. Their website can be found here.

Heartbreak, Loss and Turnarounds

Stephenson's own interactions have been filled with heartbreak and loss.  

“I've known too many kids that got killed in the streets and I can't keep track of how many kids went to prison and jail. Mostly I tried to keep them from destroying what’s left in their lives. The thing with boys ... they are kind of mythologically driven to be the hero. So mostly it was behavior management to keep them from getting into trouble. Trying to convince anybody to change is tricky and I think I’m pretty tricky and manipulative and that helped me…”

Fatherless boys, he says, they can lack a lot of what he calls ‘guy skills’. “Like how to use a hammer and a tape measure. It’s really common for them to have a skewed view about manhood because when a father is a jerk then the deductive logic sometimes is the boy becomes a jerk too.”

Each situation is different but there are many common traits to the most dangerous journeys for troubled boys and young men. He says success is hard to define, but turnarounds do happen.

“Some had issues with their parents and the rebelliousness and the gang culture took them to the streets. Some kids were on the streets trying to avoid juvenile detention or probation…. Success is hard to tell. I run into children who are like 27 and right now they have a family. (They are) totally changed from who they used to be. So, it’s kind of nice sometimes ... we just have to grow up.”

Above a screengrab from his own website. For a while, Stephenson, a father of one daughter now in her 20s, himself lived out of his truck, which has given him extra empathy for his work. “I was camping at the back of my truck and that was because I was in debt. I had some medical bills that I hadn't paid and so my wife and I decided I was going to put everything in storage and we lived in the back of a truck”

Fatherless Boys

Fatherless boys, he says, can lack a lot of what he calls ‘guy skills’. “Like how to use a hammer and a tape measure. It’s really common for them to have a skewed view about manhood because when a father is a jerk then the deductive logic sometimes is the boy becomes a jerk too.”

Each situation is different but there are many common traits to the most dangerous journeys for troubled boys and young men. He says success is hard to define, but turnarounds do happen.

“Some had issues with their parents and the rebelliousness and the gang culture took them to the streets. Some kids were on the streets trying to avoid juvenile detention or probation…. Success is hard to tell. I run into children who are like 27 and right now they have a family. (They are) totally changed from who they used to be. So, it’s kind of nice sometimes ... we just have to grow up.”

"The second book I wrote is called The Undercurrents of Adolescence and I was trying to figure out how we got so much delinquency. So, I was figuring out how did we go from no teen problems to leading the world in five generations. So, I broke it down by decades societally what’s going on and then to make it fun, every decade I used a movie to explain the changes in society and technology in the U.S."

Advice for Parents and Organizations

He says parents should pay close attention to their child's adolescent years and their behavior during this time.

“Try and understand what these changes mean. Talk straight but don't talk down to the kids and so many parents don't do that. As baby boomers, we were crazy in the 60's and 70's and then you grow up and you are like ‘I don’t want my kid to do anything I ever did’. I don’t want my daughter to date me when I was 19, so they’ve got to keep that open mind, They’ve got to remember what it was like and not just say ‘no don't do that’. For the kids: ‘don’t get all your info from your friends. Look for someone who can give you good advice.’”

As far as organizations working with troubled youths, he also has advice. “I want to beg people to open their minds on how we work with teenagers. Children of any kind should never be a business,” he said. “People and communities have got to demand that we bring a rite of passage especially for our teenagers.”

"The third book I wrote is more of a philosophical one. It looks at modern adolescent discontent and America's shallow approach to teens." It can be found here on Amazon.

Don't Disconnect the Youth from Elders Either

Even though he is dealing with extremely troublesome back issues right now, Stephenson said he will never ‘retire’ from helping troubled youths. “I don't agree with the concept of retirement,” he said.  “It’s really damaging because it takes elders and removes them from the youth.”

He also doesn't mind if people reach out to him, either via his website https://www.adolescentmind.com/ or via email: bret@adolescentmind.com

Reporting by Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno

Jerry, Helping and Healing Without Expecting Anything in Return

On a recent Friday, Jerry Wagner was busy helping coordinating volunteers at the Reno Center of Influence, a multi-faceted operation run out of a large compound on 1095 E Taylor street near Reno's Veterans hospital.

"We did research and found out this building in the heart of Reno and so we started a thrift shop and helped maintain the building and then we started the food pantry next door in the warehouse building. Since then, it has grown and grown and we are feeding close to 4,000 people combined with their families and they can come up to two times a month," Wagner explained.

"It doesn't matter whether we are rich or poor. We all need help. The best blessing anybody can get is helping people out whether it’s your neighbor or someone you've never seen in your life. Try and help people," Wagner said.

Regular Food Donations and Classes

There is a special food donation for homeless veterans on Wednesdays from one to two p.m, and plans for regular and extremely useful classes on leading healthy lives open to all.  

"It may cover how to clean your toenails, what kind of water to drink, what is better food ... classes on diabetes recovery, depression recovery and others," he said.

According to the Center of Influence Facebook page, classes started on Thursday mornings in February, with a class called Bountiful Breakfasts. Other planned classes were called Living Water, Joyful Juicing and Healthy Snacks.

Photos and Reporting by Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno

Jerry Jackson, After a Breakdown, Looking to Climb out of a Hole in Reno

A Burnout Leads to Alcoholism and Being All Alone

Jackson, a native of New Mexico, who also grew up in Wyoming, and has since bounced around from state to state, says it can take very little in our rush, rush, rat race society to lose your footing.

“My breakdown was basically like a domino effect, it took a little bit of time. I split up with my wife, moved, got more responsibilities at work and then just the depression of not being around people that I wanted to be around and then just the normal pressures of life,” he remembers.

He says he doesn’t see his wife anymore or his daughter, but he’s proud of her as she’s in the College of Pharmacy at Oregon State University. He remembers how even though initially they wanted to help, he pushed his family away.

“I wanted to sleep all the time. I didn't want to wake up and do anything,” he said.  “I started pushing my friends and family away and all of a sudden all I wanted to do was drink and not do anything other than numb the pain. My family, they tried to help but I was in such a bad place at the time my head was so mixed up, I couldn't help myself, let alone allow somebody else to help me…. I pretty much pushed everybody away because I didn't want them to see me like that…. I was too proud. I pretty much buried myself in the bottle which made things worse. It took me a long time to get out of the bottle and now I’d just like to get back on the top side.”

"Most of the time during my free time I read novels, or walk around. I actually have got my tablet. I was just reading it right before you walked up here. If I have a good book call I’ll sit and read somewhere. I would say my favorite book is probably the Lord of the Rings series.... It just enthralls. It uses all my imaginations, takes me out of the day to day life type of thing," he said. Photo and Reporting by Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno.

Now Homeless in Reno

A homeless life, he says, can be extremely dull.  He looks for aluminum cans to recycle, or for day labor jobs. He usually gets food from local churches, but avoids the shelter at night.  

“Because of my anxiety and stuff like that, I can't stay around other people. I can't stay in the shelters. It just drives me almost insane. I usually stay wherever the dark places are, out of the way, whether it’s a bush or behind a wall or whatever," he said.

He says the biggest challenges for him are staying away from others on the streets during the day as well, avoiding being robbed, and finding bathrooms where he can clean up.  He says he’s seen lots of despair and drug use.

“I've seen everything from somebody stabbing [someone else] for something as simple as a cigarette. I've seen you know the drugs out here on the street. You know the meth and all that stuff it drives these guys nuts. I mean they stay up for four or five days at a time. And some of the stuff that they do is just I mean you want to help them but you can't get through to them. I mean they'll do everything from go out here and jump in the water in the middle of winter time. I mean it's just crazy the drugs that are out there,” he said.

After he broke his arm recently, he says a woman put him in contact with the Reno Bike Project. "They gave me the bike to try and help me you know get out there, look for work. Oh, it was like Christmas morning. You know opening presents, you know, just like when you're a kid. I mean anything like that, that somebody gives you. It just it makes you feel like you know …. some good people are still out there," he said. Photo and Reporting by Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno.

Stuck in Reno's Underworld

“It's like this paralyzing effect. I don't know how else to explain it," he said. "I mean you can't go in anywhere. You know you can’t keep your hygiene up and all that stuff. You know it's hard to look for work when you're dirty.”

He says he would like to find any job, even cleaning dishes, but he now says he feels like a pariah who will always get rejected.

“I had to constantly move around basically to keep warm," he said of the recent winter. "I mean you also have to carry more stuff around just to stay warm. A lot of the bathrooms are closed up because you know they can't keep them open because of the cold weather. I've got about two -three sets of clothes besides what I'm wearing and then I've got like three blankets, a pair of tennis shoes and my bicycle.” Photo and Reporting by Prince Nesta.

Fears for Reno’s Future

“The biggest message I'd like to send out there is … most people are probably one paycheck away from being where I'm at. I mean anything can happen if you don't want to be in my spot, plan for the future,” he said.

He says people should also lose some of their pride, face their reality and seek help when they need it. “I've got lots of regrets. Probably too numerous to count. Probably the biggest one that I regret is not asking for help when I had my nervous breakdown,” he said.

He fears with rising rents though that more people could become homeless like him in the Biggest Little City, especially as it moves more toward a more hi-tech business environment.

“They're driving up the cost of apartments, [you] can't hardly get even in an extended stay motel anymore. There's a couple property owners here in town that are buying up some of the downtown on Fourth street and stuff where a lot of financially challenged people live and a lot of those people are on fixed income. You know they're getting social security checks and stuff like that. And if they raise the rent they don't have a place to go,” he said.

Photos and Reporting by Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno

Food Not Bombs, Finding those in Need Along the River

Monday Nights, Rain or Shine or Stormy

Staying warm and dry during stormy and wintry weather is a top concern. So something as simple as a stomach full of warm, healthy food can go a long way. Fortunately for a number of people making their own shelter near Galletti Way by the Truckee river, warm faces, as is the custom most Monday nights, are arriving with even warmer food.

Food Not Bombs is an activist group made up of independent collectives that organizes pop-up soup kitchens or “potlucks” around the country. Nationally it began in the 1980s and since then has created chapters all over the world. According to local chapter member Griffin Peralta, this Reno chapter of Food Not Bombs has been in existence for around seven years  and began in conjunction with the brief Occupy Reno movement in 2011. It is now made up of several dozen members.

Finding Encampments and Reaching Out

“Occasionally the police department will come down here and bust up a bunch of living situations. We’ll have to scramble around and find new concentrations of people,” Peralta said.

There may be times when the authorities force people to leave the small square of earth that they call home, but on this Monday when reporters from Our Town Reno came to take photos and interview those helping and those being helped, the group is at their customary spot, on the corner of Galletti Way and Glendale Ave. They serve warm food that they brought themselves, to a long line of cold and grateful people.

Peralta who has been with Food Not Bombs for about three years says his chapter began in conjunction with the brief Occupy Reno movement in 2011 and is now made up of around 30-45 members or recruits. Photo and Reporting by Jordan Gearey for Our Town Reno.

Equipped to Serve and Feed

The chapter members come equipped with crock pots and soup ladles. They try and serve primarily vegan and vegetarian dishes but meat is always accepted when provided. They’re all dressed in caps and coats. Some of them give off smells of cannabis and Backwood Cigars. This isn’t your ordinary church crew or charity organization. This is Food Not Bombs, a group of self-identifying anarchists who flash smiles beneath snow-covered hoods, as they feed some of Reno’s houseless.

For over an hour people in need wrapped in coats shuffle through the line to fill their stomachs before they retreat beneath a nearby bridge to try and sleep through the cold night. Photo and Reporting by Jordan Gearey for Our Town Reno.

Direct Action

“It’s direct action, and in this crazy world it’s easy to feel hopeless. It’s just helping people out in a small way and it gives us an opportunity to show people that we care,” said Reena Spansail, a more recent member of Food Not Bombs Reno.

Spansail works as an English teacher at Wooster High School. She says she tries to teach her students to incorporate kindness and inclusion into their lives.

Spansail also applies her values in her classroom. “I tell my students to equalize the playing field and effect change. Get literate and communicate at a level that they can be understood. It’s a way to live my political truth towards a more hopeful and egalitarian version of what we hope the future will look like,” she said.  Photo by Jordan Gearey for Our Town Reno

“The hardest part was the wind last night. It seemed like it would never stop,” a man who wished not to give his name said of sleeping outside. He has with him a beautiful female German Shepherd named Clyde.

Clyde is in luck. Food Not Bombs does not discriminate against furry companions.

Dog food is also provided. Many houseless with pets avoid shelters because their companions are not accepted there. Photo by Jordan Gearey for Our Town Reno.

Shuffling Back to Bridges

Once the majority of the food is gone, the people begin to shuffle back down to the darkness beneath the bridge. The late night Glendale Avenue traffic runs over their heads, and the frigid Truckee River waters threatens nearby.

The Food Not Bombs members pack up. “I hope that people say that I cared and listened, and as far as the organization, I hope that people just say yum. I hope they are satisfied, I hope they’ve got food in their bellies, and I hope they’re warm with a smile on their face,” Spansail said.

For those interested in participating, Food Not Bombs Reno can be found on Facebook. They say those who wish to help can just come at 5:30 on Monday evenings with whatever they can bring, from food to utensils, garbage bags and plastic plates, as well as donations for the houseless.https://www.facebook.com/renofoodnotbombs/

Photos and Reporting by Jordan Gearey with additional interviews by Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno