Renee and Steven, Trying to Get Sober on the Streets Together

Back Together in Reno, after a Jail Separation and Family Troubles

Two college graduates whose lives took difficult turns, Renee and Steven were recently separated after he went to jail in Louisiana and she decided to go back home to Pennsylvania. “I was assaulted while he was in jail. So yeah, it's hard,” she said. She said she missed the embrace of his arms and feeling safe with him.

Renee has two adult children, from before she was with Steven, but she doesn’t speak to them often. He has a daughter from a past relationship. He moved to Reno when his dad got out of prison himself, and started building a house for his daughter, but family relationships soured.

Now, back together, Renee and Steven camp where they can, hustle to find food, and say they drink too much.

“We did this to ourselves,” Renee said. “We made the choice to be this way. And when I walk into a store and somebody follows me because they think I'm just homeless … it's because I made myself this way. We chose this, but we don't hurt people. We don't hurt people. I made bad choices and that's mine. Nobody else's but mine. I was violated, but that's not an excuse. I made my own choices.”

Steven said the two are very similar, and feel much better together than separated.

“I hope you're never homeless... Ever,” Renee said as her parting words. “I hope you never have people look at you like you're nothing but trash. I hope you never have that.”

Renee says she’d like to get sober with Steven, as the lows are getting harder and harder to deal with.

Reporting by Jordan Blevins and Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno

Tex, Back to His Street Family in Reno after Losing His Mother

Losing Family at Home and on the Streets

Tex went back to Texas, where he’s from in the western Midland-Odessa area, after his mother died there, but now he’s back in Reno, where he’s lived on the streets before.

He found out some of his friends had died while he was away. “They died out here freezing to death because they had nowhere to go,” he said. “The shelter, I don't care if they have space, I will not ever go there because it's nothing but disease… It's just nasty. People fighting all the time.”

He used to wok in saw mills, but injuries have weighed him down. Still he says he’s a survivor.

“I know how to live. Can't knock me down. I got more metal in my legs and I feel every screw right now in this cold weather. It doesn't matter. I just keep moving. They told me I wasn't going to walk again. I said bullshit. I call bullshit on that.”

During the winter he says the key is to keep your feet dry. “I mean, this could be a Vietnam for us out here, 24-7, but you gotta keep your feet dry and clean,” he said.

He depends on Medicaid and food stamps and donations from church groups, including lunches and the coat he was wearing. But he says he’s always ready to help someone in a worse predicament than himself.

“We all help each other with blankets,” he said of surviving the most recent winter. “We see somebody who shows up, needs help, hungry or whatever … if we got it, we share it. That's the way it is. We might be homeless, but if we got it, you know, if I got a couple of bucks in my pocket, I see some guy that needs help… Here you go. Don't go buy booze, find something to eat.”

Tex says if there’s events in downtown Reno and people leave a mess, he’ll try to clean whatever can.

Trying to Get Back on Track

Sometimes he says people will be extremely generous to him. “Someone actually once walked to me and gave me a hundred dollars and told me to go get a room,” he said. “So I went and got me a room, took me a nice hot shower and watched TV, refreshed in the morning.”

He says he’s trying to get back on track for his soon to be 18-year-old daughter. “I'm still married but let's not get into that,” he said. “I last saw my daughter two Christmases ago. She's a good kid. She wants to move in with me. I'm trying to get a job and trying to stay out the streets. I'm getting too old for this,” he said.

He says the homeless are just criminalized for being in public parks, when they have nowhere to go, and that he’s spent many nights in county jails.

He’s worried about the direction Reno is headed with more and more motels being sold off, shut down and demolished. “It's all about money,” he said. "This ain't Vegas. They want to be big and bad. Go to Vegas. Reno is Reno, the Biggest Little City. It says it right there,” he said pointing to one of the arches.

Reporting by Prince Nesta and Jordan Blevins for Our Town Reno

Stacey Payne, Establishing a Model for Recovery Housing

Her Own Past as A Guide to Becoming a Recovery Entrepreneur

Stacey Payne, a 54-year-old southern California native, has gone through many ordeals in her own life: losing a baby in pregnancy, and not being able to birth children, struggling with cocaine and meth abuse, getting arrested many times, relapsing when her father passed away, and then becoming a recovery entrepreneur. She is now competing in alpaca show competitions, but that’s an entire story altogether.

Payne believed in her housing vision, and after working for others who did similar work, opened sober homes in northern California, Las Vegas, and then in northern Nevada. The Lyfe Recovery website shows current addresses at group homes in Reno, Sparks, Carson City, Dayton, Fallon and Elko.

“The first houses were actually completely funded by me,” she explains. “I took money out of my retirement and kind of bet on myself that I could do it. Since then, I've had the ability to gather a couple of investors who believe in the cause, so to speak. And everything now is self funded. The company is pretty much self funded, all its expansion. And we do that by charging fees to live with us. So the idea of someone living with us isn't to have a handout. It's a hand up. So they do pay rent. And that helps for us to provide the services and grow the company to more houses.”

Payne says she is also now looking for grants and more donations to help fund operations, which includes staff. When we conducted the interview, she said seven houses were operating with an average of 10 clients each.

“When someone gets off drugs, their life isn't magically changed, right?” Payne told us. “There's so many things that have to grow with a person. I mean you have financial situations and relationship situations and relationships that need to be repaired, relationships with yourself, that need to be fixed and you've got all these different things that compose a life. It's everything. It's not just come hang out with us and stop drinking. It's really about, okay, that's the first step. Stop using and stop drinking. And then the next step would be what do we need to start fixing? And let's create a plan to get to your end game. Or if you could have it any way in the world, what would you want your life to be like? So LYFE Recovery services became the name that I chose because it's everything in life that we want to focus on when you're ready, but in a plan. And that's how it all came about,” she explained of the origins of her company.

Challenges, Success Stories and Tears

Despite many challenges, such as delays with the Elko City Council and permit denials over issues of parking spaces and the number of residents allowed in the homes she operates, as well as different licensing start and stop obstacles, Payne pointed to success stories.

She talked about a man without shelter in Reno who started using a wheelchair to carry around his oxygen tank, and then wasn’t able to walk anymore.

“Through the support of people in the house and us as staff, we encouraged him. We're like, okay, so you're only 53 years old… like let's get you walking again. You can do it. And we encouraged him and pushed him and put a foot up his butt then, and we got him a walker and we said, here, try it even five minutes a day. Let's get you in the walker. Right? And so fast forward to today, you know, almost a year … this man does not need a walker. He walks to the store, he walks to the park. He does have his oxygen. But because he wasn't homeless anymore, he was able to now get a smaller unit. I mean, he was able to get himself situated to where he could build up his lungs by exercising to where he can have a little unit that he takes with him and he doesn't need to haul that big heavy metal canister. Can you imagine changing a man's future? Like, I mean, it brings tears to my eyes. Just thinking about it, I'm blessed to be able to do something like that,” Payne said.

Books at one of the houses are part of entertainment and recovery from deep, dark depths for many, including Payne, who owned a restaurant before her life got derailed. “When you're out there on the street, the only way that you can survive is to stay numb, stay numb to what you had in the past,” Payne said. “Stay numb to the fact that you don't have a house to live in anymore. Stay numb to … you've lost your career… Maybe you're just going to find a place in a doorway to stay out of the elements. I mean imagine that you've had a full life before that. And I've been there, like I've been there … I lived in a cargo container in the port of Long Beach. I lived wondering if I was going to get robbed or raped. I lived with one eye open and one ear to like ....is somebody climbing in to my container? Is my stuff going to be there when I'm coming back? And so in order to survive , you have to develop such a hard shell. You have to like create this impenetrable like wall around your consciousness and your heart because how else do you survive every day?”

Difficulties of Homelessness and Most Basic Services

Payne says many people who haven’t experienced it themselves day to day, week to week, don’t always understand how difficult it is to get out of homelessness.

“You have nowhere to get mail, you have nowhere to shower, you have nowhere to leave your things… Like you can only carry so much. And if you do get a bed at the shelter, they make you leave. You know, I don't know exactly what the rules are here, but I know in Las Vegas at Catholic Charities … you have to be in line at 2:30 p.m. to try to get a bed that night... You have to pack up your stuff the next morning at 8:00 AM and carry whatever you can with you. And there's a little secure area outside that if you do have a suitcase you can leave it there. But like there's no, there's very few places where you can get mail, where you can get a call back.”

The precariousness of having no stable place can be debilitating, so that’s the key component in helping, she explains.

“How do you go for an interview when you have nowhere to shower? Where you don't have clean clothes … You know I asked a guy one day,I pulled over, and I saw him every single day in the entrance to the Walmart parking lot and I'm like, tell me your story... Cause I have a house right over here, I can put you in. Clark County has a voucher program and he's like, every day I have to buy new socks. I asked … like what do you spend your money on? How much do you make everyday panhandling? He said, I don't know, $75, $80, $90 I'm like, okay, $90 a day…. That's like, that's a good amount of money. If you're making 100 bucks a day and it's 30 days a month, you're making $3,000 a month. Why are you not living in a house?”

Those looking down on those without shelter is also foolish, she says.

“It can happen to anyone. It happens to anyone. Like I grew up in a great family. I grew up in an upper middle class family. I'm educated. I owned a business. I've owned a couple of businesses, but all it takes is, is a long enough situation to destroy your life. And like if somebody had said, when you're going to be a drug user, at 20, I would have been like what? So you know, people need to stop sitting in judgment and stop assuming that because that a person is in this situation right now, that that's the situation that, one they want to be in, and two they don't pray every single day that they can get out of somehow. And that's where I come in and that's where we need to come in. We need to have places that are actually affordable and actually available to people that want to try to change.”

A decoration inside one of the rooms. Payne who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder says she now struggles with staying away from sugar. “Like I love chips and crackers and you know, I could open a box of Triscuits and demolish it. I think I'm pretty stable these days and I keep an eye out for how I'm doing and that’s something that we all have to do, you know, be honest. Check in with yourself. If you're struggling with something, reach out for help,” she said.

Scaling Up Her Model and Working within a Community of Services

Payne believes if there were more initiatives like what she is doing and more support for these types of programs, it could do a world of good for communities around the country.

“It doesn't take millions to change someone's life,” she said. “Like we did it for under a thousand a month. You know, you can change somebody's life by just giving them housing and like I have, I have a lot of plans on what to do for expansion. But this model of wraparound services used correctly, put in place, can really help people.”

She’s not impressed by what most elected officials pursue as solutions in terms of the housing component.

“I don't think they're doing anything effective. I mean I'm going to be real honest about that. I think that there's a lot of talk and I know that there's a lot of talk and it goes on for years and years and years and I know there's a lot of moving parts to it, but like I came to northern Nevada two years ago and I've helped more people, I believe in the past two years that I've been here, housing people, I didn't wait for approval from anybody…. I just opened a house. I didn't have to figure out, I mean I had to figure out budgets obviously, but it doesn't take years to figure it out. Get a group of people, get a house together, put a program in, call me or consult. I mean we just do it. We don't have a bunch of meetings about it,” she said about her own approach, which also involves working with other organizations.

“Treatment for an individual is done by an organization like Hopes or the Community Health Alliance or at the hospital. Right. Or if they need a therapist, they see a therapist that's a licensed therapist. So we're able to stay below a threshold of needing higher level certifications. Of course we have inspections, we just had inspections by NAMS a couple of days ago where they come in and they make sure that the house is sound. Make sure that there's fire extinguishers, emergency plans, emergency exit plans, everything works in the house. The heaters work, the ovens work, the plumbing works… But those are standard things if you're going to house anybody …. So again, you don't have to spend a lot of time and a lot of money getting a lot of certifications because you're housing people and you're directing them to services that are already established in the community.”

“We literally could move somebody in while were are on the phone with them getting their information. So if somebody reaches out to us, we do have an 800 number. It's (888) 590-9691. We also have a website which is www.lyferecovery.com And so if someone calls us and they're looking for housing, all we require is that they're willing to try to change their life and follow just basic living rules, keep your stuff clean, do your chores, be respectful…. We gather a little bit of information, name, date of birth, emergency contact, any meds that they might be on, legal issues that we can help with and if they're able to pay the fees even if someone's on SSI or SSDI and they have a reduced income, we have a reduced rate. Our hope is that once we get somebody housed, we're going to help them figure out how they're going to survive in life the rest of their life,” Payne said of the process of becoming housed in her program.

Affordable and Accessible Housing with Progress in Life

Payne says there is a range of prices to be housed, but that discounts are given for those on fixed Social Security incomes.

”575 is our cheapest rent, 750 is our most expensive rent and it's for a two person room in a five or six bedroom home.”

Food is also provided initially to newcomers.

“So we do go to the pantries and make sure that there's always food available for somebody coming in that maybe, is not able to provide their own food yet. And then once they come in, we're going to make sure that we get them to the pantries so they can start stocking up on their own…. “

The next goal is to get boarders to become fully independent again and get employment if possible.

“It really is just about meeting a person where they're at, providing hygiene packs, maybe getting them through Good Shepherd’s to pick up some clothes and getting them the basics so they have a place that they can call their own, wake up, get their messages, get mail, cook a meal. So in a way, I'm like a parent to a bunch of adults that have just lost their way.”

She also has a system of sponsorship for new clients.

“If somebody in the community wanted to just sponsor a bed, for say a year, then someone that didn't maybe have the ability to pay right at the beginning, we could put them in that bed, say for a month and say, you've got 60 days in this bed. It's paid for. And during that 60 days, we’ve got to get you employment and you be able to cover your rent from that point forward.”

Registered sex offenders are the only population she can’t take currently, she says, but she is trying to change that.

“The reason for that is our homes are in single family neighborhoods and there's rules about how far someone can be from other children or from schools. And so there's some regulations that our homes currently just don't meet. It's my goal to be able to find a location where we would be able to have that population.”

Payne says she does check for violent offenses, and does thorough background checks on prospective clients, and that sometimes some just aren’t a good match.

“We've had to ask people to leave,” she said. “Unfortunately the level of care that they needed was above like what we could provide. So it was too dangerous for them and for us liability wise because their medical conditions were just too precarious for us to be able to handle. And I thought that, we just weren't able to provide the level of care that they needed. And that was really difficult. And it's difficult for the rest of the residents because they become a family. Like you have no idea. They squabble like siblings and they really become a family and they start to really care about each. So when something goes wrong, it really rocks the whole house. They're very protective of each other and we're very protective of them. You know what I mean? It's a group endeavor. It really is.”

Reporting by Jordan Blevins for Our Town Reno

Cheryl, Struggling to Get the Medical Help She Needs

An Unsuccessful Attempt with a Pop-Up Clinic

On a recent sunny March day, Cheryl McFarland, who doesn’t own a car, walked to the Southwest Medical, Health Plan of Nevada and Sierra Health and Life’s “Medicine on the Move,” a large truck with a pop-up clinic for medical health care inside. McFarland had to make several stops to catch her breath before arriving by foot because she has Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), a lung disease that results in increased breathlessness.

“I mean the normal person, if they can breathe, it’s probably about 15, 20 minutes. It takes me a good hour,” she said of making it to the clinic. The distance between the Lake Mill Lodge where she lives and where the truck was, on 40 E 4th Street, was a half mile.

“I get kind of upset because I can't breathe and I just want to get things done,” she said.

Cheryl waited inside the bus but then her insurance was not accepted and she wasn’t able to refill her inhaler as she hoped. Medicine on the Move is headquartered in Las Vegas. They parked at different locations during a recent trip to Reno including near the Record street homeless shelter.

Trying to Refill Her Inhaler and in a Bad Spiral

McFarland’s inhaler had been empty for over a week and she was hoping Medicine on the Move would get her out of her current jam. However, after waiting inside, McFarland had to leave empty handed because they didn’t accept her insurance, SilverSummit Health Plan.

So it was a lot of energy spent on her part with no gain.

“I'm trying to move with a little cart and I’m trying to carry stuff and do that because I have no vehicle and I'm trying to move and it's just, it's really hard because there's a lot of stopping on the way,” she said.

Over the past year, McFarland says she has missed four appointments at Renown due to being late and her inability to get to places as fast as she should, she said, further compounding her problems.

Reporting by Lucia Starbuck for Our Town Reno

Lee, Helping Others without Shelter Survive Insecurity

Not Enough Resources For the Cold and Insecurity

Lee said there haven’t been enough resources to help those without shelter deal with the winter we’ve just gone through. His hands bear the marks of cold nights and mornings.

He says a bad marriage is what derailed his own financial situation. He says he helps his kids, and friends on the streets, and prefers to help others than worry about his own lack of shelter.

More generally, he says all this attention on the new downtown ambassadors is misguided to him.

“There are a couple of them, a few of them that are really good. Some of them try to be my buddy, but it's hard … If I don't like something, I'll say it. I don't give a shit. You know what I'm saying?”

He says those without shelter often have to take security in their own hands. “I've got another buddy, a man, I can't tell you his name, but he was raped out here,” Lee said. “He was held against his will by a couple of other dudes and he was raped. I helped him out by chasing them off with my machete.”

“The ambassadors, what good are they? To boss the homeless around? I don't see them out there telling people that run their dogs out there, without leashes... It's mandatory park law. Put your dog on a leash. If I have to follow every law, why don't they?” Lee asked about what he views as unequal treatment in downtown Reno areas.

A Tight Community

Lee says he sees himself as a leader protecting those around him without shelter, and that the sense of community is vital to surviving without shelter.

“We all do something to pitch in. Some bring food, some bring blankets, some bring medicine, whether it be a bottle to help keep us all warm at night or a little bit of pot. You know what I'm saying? It's real out here. 90% of the people in this town can't handle it,” he said.

For outsiders, he says a little bit of empathy goes a long way.

“Talk to us like we're human,” he said. “We're just down on our luck. It takes somebody to just step up to the plate. Even if they have nothing to give… Hey, here's a cup of coffee, or hey man, you need a cigarette? Here's a cigarette. You need a dollar to eat something? Great heart and that's all that matters.”

At the city level he’d like to see a drop in center not just an overnight shelter.

“What we really need is a place where we can go, where we can stay and we don't have to be shooed out every 20 minutes,” he said.

“We need those motels. nothing wrong with them,” Lee said of the diminishing availability of motel rooms, as more and more get demolished in downtown Reno. “I mean, you give a homeless man a room and … I guarantee you it will be better off than when they walked in. You know what I'm saying? We're just carpenters, pipe layers, gamers, all of us are out here. Why? Because we had a bad turn and luck, or we lost our jobs due to the new whatever. Yeah. But other than that, it's hard because everybody says, oh yeah, we're gonna help. We're gonna help… I've not seen it yet. I mean, I'm, like I said, I've been out here almost seven years …”

More Advice for Others and a Touching Anecdote

Any regrets in his life? “That I didn't make enough money to help more people. I mean, what can I say? I mean, I've fought for my country, I've worked my whole life and well… this is where I am. Why?”

As we concluded the interview, he wanted to emphasize how important it is for those on the streets to have interactions with others. He also wanted to explain how difficult it is for someone without an address, without a phone that works to get employment.

“Just bring food,” he said. “Just bring a smile, bring a hug, let the person know. Hey, it's going to be alright tomorrow. Other than that, I don't know what else to say. It's harder and harder and harder and I am glad when I do see one or two of my friends say, ‘oh, we got into a place’ … But then it’s only for a month and then they're right back out here. What good is that? If you're going to put somebody in a place for a month, why can't it be two months? Why can't you come by yourself and say, ‘Hey, come on, let's go look for a job today’. I mean, this town is supposed to be full of jobs, right? Yeah. I've been putting in 10 applications every week, two years I've gotten one call … Because, I don't have a steady way for them to get a hold of me. I don't have a place of residence. I don't have a phone.”

He also wanted to share an anecdote.

“Last year for Christmas here in this town, which is the only reason why I'm still here, I was down and out and I was over there by SPCA, this little girl…. she couldn't have been more than five years old, walked up to me and handed me a hundred dollar bill, said here, Merry Christmas, and her mom went no, no, no, no, you can't. And she looked at her mom, she said: ‘It's mine. I can do what I want with it.’ And I cried like a little girl. I shit you not. I go, sweetheart I can't take this. She was like please and I go, only if I can buy breakfast. I took her and her mom and her dad. We all went out and had breakfast…. Humanity …. always give your all and no matter what just share it... Humanity. “

Reporting by Prince Nesta and Jordan Blevins for Our Town Reno

Bob Jones, Another Dedicated Helper at the Overflow Tent

Making Sure 50 People Get a Safe Rest

“I've been doing this since December. I don't know why I'm doing this. It's just something that needs to be done. That's about it. I look at it like maybe if I don't show up, 50 people won't have a place to sleep tonight. I can't do that.”

“There are approximately 50 people in this tent (behind me) right now… There are 50 beds. Sometimes I will let somebody come in and sleep on the floor, sometimes that makes it 51 or 52 but I think last year that's what they were doing, sleeping on cardboard on the ground. Now they've got bunk beds and a lot more people can get in, so that's good. Basically I’m trying to make sure they can close their eyes at night and not have anything happen to them.”

“Generally, I think we could do a lot better. A lot better. It was a real eye opener when I first started here and I walked upstairs into the day room and there were people just sitting around tables trying to sleep in chairs and people in wheelchairs shoved over in the corners and waiting for morning to go eat breakfast. I mean, it was an eye opener. I wasn't used to anything like that.”

“I'm retired,” Jones said of his current situation. “I was a tooling inspector … in Florida. I moved around a lot. My work moved, so I went with it and I think I lived in three or four different states. I was originally from the west coast,” he said of finally deciding to move to Reno, not wanting to return to California’s high taxes or to live the Las Vegas style. But he says he noticed more older homeless in the Biggest Little City than he’s used to seeing elsewhere.

Homelessness Getting Worse?

”I think it is getting worse since we've got the problem of all the rentals, the prices on housing going up so fast, there are people here that can't afford it. We have people that have got to leave here and go out to a job. This is where they're staying, while they're going to work. There’s also a lot of mental problems with people here and that's the pity that, you know, they're just done going to be able to do it. So they will be here all the time. “

“If there’s a problem, we have a walkie talkie and we just call security and they're here within two minutes. Once I called security, and they're quick. But normally everybody in here is just thankful to have a bed and a place and they're usually really nice to us because they know we're just here to help them out. But you do get a few people in that just don't want to go to bed or whatever….”

Some Pets Allowed and More Volunteers Needed

“Some of those who sleep here bring their pets. We usually have the regulars and I know the pets that are the regulars and they're okayed through the men's shelter and they have paperwork for their pets. So I've never had any problems with any of the pets here.

”We'll always need more volunteers. Organizations are usually the ones that volunteer, like people from Baptist and Methodist places, on Monday or Tuesday nights … and they'll furnish the people. It's the nights that don't have that, you know, like Wendy Wiglesworth (another volunteer we’ve profiled) or I will say, ‘yeah, we'll do it’. That not a problem. But it's a little hard to get someone to work from midnight to seven in the morning.

Reporting by Prince Nesta and Jordan Blevins for Our Town Reno

A Day for Local Action on Housing Justice, a Q and A with J.D Klippenstein

ACTIONN from Washoe County to Carson City

On March 26th, ACTIONN, a faith-based non profit group whose acronym stands for Acting in Community Together in Northern Nevada, will work on further developing a new Washoe County Affordable Housing Trust Fund.  The initiative aims to increase the accessibility of housing for those in low income brackets.  It’s been announced this will operate with public funds through the Community Foundation of Western Nevada.

March 26th is also the national Housing and Homeless Awareness Day.  Those interested in taking part in this local initiative will carpool from the Washoe County Commissioner Chambers to Carson City, taking these issues to both county officials and then state representatives. Service and food providers, concerned citizens and business owners, activists are among those who have signed up to take part.

Our Town Reno reporter Prince Nesta recently spoke to J.D Klippenstein, ACTIONN’s 30-year-old executive director, to find out more. Note, this is just part of the interview, as we trimmed answers for conciseness.

The event also comes against a backdrop of more and more motels, which have also been a place of long term lodging, being blocked off and then demolished amid yet to be detailed private redevelopment plants for large swathes of downtown Reno.

Q: So what will be happening exactly on March 26th?

So for the past year we've been running a campaign to … have our Washoe County commissioners create an affordable housing trust fund. So on March 26th, it's set for the second reading and official adoption of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund… So in the morning, we're having a bunch of folks. We have 115 people who RSVP'd to this point, just to go and show support and celebrate that victory.

It took us about a year's worth of advocacy. We had town hall meetings with county commissioners. We had a group of … experts help us put together a proposal for how the housing trust fund would work. So kind of from beginning to end, we've shepherded this policy tool and in the morning they're set to officially adopt it, which is, the culmination of a lot of work.

March 26th also happens to be housing and homeless awareness day at the state legislature. We have been planning on that for quite some time and we had to kind of adjust when the county commission decided to have the second reading… We've rented some charter buses and ,most of the folks who are there in the morning will come down with us to Carson City in the afternoon to meet with legislators to do office visits and talk about some of the bills that are in session right now, particularly around minimum wage, affordable housing and homeless services. .

Q: Why are these issues so pressing right now?

The big reason of why now is Washoe County has a historic housing crisis. Our community hasn't seen this kind of growth and this kind of housing crisis before. And we're in such a bad spot for low income, affordable housing and affordable housing for middle income, working class folks, because our region does not have a single tool, to encourage affordable housing at the scale that we need.

So the reason now, is, we're already behind the curve. So at the local level, we just want to keep making sure that our county and cities build the toolbox they need to truly resource and enable the housing construction for affordable housing that we need at the policy level and the resource level.

And then at the state level, because our state legislature meets every other year for four months, there was an interim committee that we were engaged with that brought forth some of these bills that would increase tax incentives to build affordable housing. It would increase the way that Medicaid can provide support to keep people in their housing…. some really important big picture systemic tools that we need.

Fundamentally we think the housing crisis is not a generosity problem. We can't donate our way out of this. We can't wait for some large donor or Elon Musk to come in and save the day. It's a systemic problem. We have a broken system that will not build the affordable housing or provide the homeless services that we need ….

What we're engaged in is advocacy work that specifically is designed to encourage those who are in places to make decisions to make the right decisions.

Developers have promised some of their new construction will go towards affordable housing, but activists worry on how affordable that might be. They also say the housing issue is systemic and that a public solution is now needed.

Q: What message would you like to tell the general public so that they can come out ?

I think one message is, it's really important for our elected leaders to see what's happening. So even if someone is not experiencing homelessness themselves, they know someone who is struggling with rising rents or their kids are struggling with rising rents. So it’s a crisis moment. And this isn't the time to sit back and wait for someone else to solve it, it's the time to kind of get in there and move so that with one voice we can influence the direction of our community.

So on the 26th, if you care about affordable housing and you want to see better tools to build affordable housing, I encourage them to be there at 10:00 AM at the County Commission meeting so that our County Commissioners know we're not going anywhere. And this is just one of many tools and resources that we intend to fight for to change the direction of our community.

They can go to our website. It's actionn.org/march26 and they can register. The form is embedded for them to sign up if they're interested.

Reporting by Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno in March 2019

Wendy Wiglesworth, Giving Hope, a Big Heart and Infinite Wisdom at the Overflow Tent

A Collective Effort with a One of a Kind Volunteer

Wendy Wiglesworth, who slept for years along the Truckee River after fleeing a bad relationship, now helps others at night, volunteering at the overflow tent in the parking lot of Reno’s main downtown shelter.

“I do this because when I was homeless everybody really looked out for me and it's the least I can do because I would run around making sure everybody was sleeping safe at night and wake them up before the cops do so they don't have to go to jail for being homeless or sleeping. So … it's just something else to give back because I don't know, I have lots of hopes so they need more hope. So I have plenty,” Wendy said, explaining why she sometimes works both shifts at the tent, from 7:30 at night to 7:30 in the morning, which also involves lots of clean up.

On the night we caught up with her, she said there were about 100 people in the tent. Making this tent run is a group of effort, she explains. “ACTIONN got the tent and then the VOA … checks on it. The City of Reno supplies the cleaning supplies, like the gloves and masks, the bleach spray, the paper towels and Kleenex and enhanced sanitizer. And then we have a cleaning service for the towels and sometimes we have water. Sometimes people will bring by snacks and that's all donations,” Wiglesworth explains as to some of the components which go into the organization.

“Tonight we're only two and in the morning shift we'll have two as well. A lot of the times they'll be three. When the churches do it, they usually have three, three people on each shift,” Wiglesworth said of keeping the tent going. “Doing this makes me feel rad. I love it everyday. Like I'll talk about it all day long. It's good stuff cause nobody, unless you come down here you don't even know. Like you don't even know what kind of people are here. I mean you could be meeting like who knows? There's just so many great people. So I love giving back.”

A Sisterly Anarchist Night Owl

“I'm a night owl anyways, so I would be awake at home and I'd rather be here awake, you know, knowing that it'll help people sleep,” Wiglesworth said. “So it just works. It's what I do. It's like my full time job.”

She deals with people being sick, or running away from others, or complaining about each other, all with a huge heart and street sense. She says no one is better than anyone else and that’s why she helps.

“It’s sad that we even have homeless people in the first place ,that we haven't like helped our brother and our sister. Like they're hungry. Like first of all, how did they even get here? Like people closing their doors on their family because of their choices… It sucks that we even have the situation just like hand in hand with the housing situation right now. It sucks that it's even there. It just sucks because it's still people. It's still someone's brother, mother, sister, daughter, uncle, whatever. “

“The best thing I could tell everybody is come down here … be a part of your community. Ask a question, make the conversation, changes someone's life….” Wiglesworth said. “I'm an anarchist because I give someone something because they need it and I have it to give and I figure it's the right thing to do, not because I'm expecting something. I'll think for myself like if right now I'm not happy with my local government, I'm stepping up and doing something. I'm not going to be in a cubicle just following the herd.”

Last Days of the Tent but not of Wiglesworth’s Impact

The tent will close end of March, even though it’s been full.

“We're full capacity every single night, with a wait list,” Wiglesworth said. “Be a part of your community. You don't like something, speak up. Otherwise no one will know,” she advises to others who see the problem of homelessness and the affordable housing crisis but don’t know where to start. “People, copy me to the fullest extent, be a copycat and do things for the greater good,” she advises more generally.

For those without shelter, what does she have to say to when the tent will close?

“If your family forgot you or you don't have family, I'm your family now and I won't forget,” she said before getting back to work, making sure everyone was getting as good a night’s sleep as possible.

Reporting by Prince Nesta and Jordan Blevins for Our Town Reno

Eric Englund, Preparing Warmth on Cold Mornings in Addition to Daily Lunches

#OperationNoFreeze

In recent weeks, when the the weather was bitter cold, Catholic Charities of Northern Nevada opened a warming center, with hot beverages and cereal, in the St. Vincent's Dining Room at 325 Valley Road from six to nine in the morning.

It’s part of an operation hashtagged #OperationNoFreeze.

“For these guys to hang outside even with gloves and hats and all of that, it's just, it's horrid,” Englund said. “It's kind of inhumane, maybe even cruel. I mean, try it, it's rough. So the thought was let them come in and at least warm up. That's the very least we can do. I have the space. It's warm. It's easy to give them something warm to eat so that started it [the warming center],” Englund said.

Helping a Population often Stuck Between Difficult Choices

Englund says every little bit helps as for people without shelter, it’s so difficult to eat healthy and feel warm. Shelter space is often at capacity, which is why during winter there is now an overflow shelter in the parking lot by the main shelter.

“There is a need in our city to help take care of them,” he said. “They don't have the facilities that do all of that in one place. They like get to sleep over here or in the summertime there is no overflow tent. You know, they just, sleep on the street or in an alleyway or wherever they can find that they won't get bothered. And then as far as served food goes, a lot of them don't have money, so they can't buy it. And when they do buy it, they're not able to go get a carton of eggs and cook it and all that sort of thing. They have to buy something that's already made. They're kind of stuck.”

Englund started in the restaurant business when he was 18. He says that cooking for the St. Vincent’s Dining Room brings him happiness. Photo by Jordan Blevins.

A Stream of Donated Food for Free Daily Lunches

For St. Vincent’s Dining Room, the food comes from a variety of places like individual donors, US Foods, a restaurant food supplier, the Raley’s supermarket chain, bread from Subway, and also from local businesses such as Truckee Bagel.

Englund says when trucks can’t get through due to I-80 closures he receives thousands of donuts. At the beginning of the month, Englund says he serves about 400 people for lunch, a number which swells to 600 people by the end of the month.

According to the St. Vincent’s website, its dining room is Reno’s oldest "soup kitchen". It serves a free, hot lunch, Monday through Saturday.

“We’ll let anyone come in as long as there's food,” Englund said. “Even if there isn't food, we would let them come in, but we never run out. We just keep it rolling. We find something. We may not (always) have hot cereal but we'll have sandwiches or something else … soup. There's always something here to eat.”

Dedication: Englund says that his favorite food to prepare is anything that’s fresh. He says that the most common food he’s made during his career are burgers. Photo by Lucia Starbuck.

The Joy of Cooking and Giving Back after Getting Sober

Englund says that his life changed after getting sober. He used to be involved in Meals on Wheels, a program that delivers meals to individuals who are unable to prepare or buy food, before he went to St. Vincent’s Dining room.

He says that it feels good to help others. “It brought some life back to me,” he said. “I was reaching a point in my career where I was ready to make a change.”

He says this type of cooking is also a challenge. “Our menu evolves around … your donations ... So it's fun putting things together and then coming up with something really good to eat that you know people are going to enjoy and seeing happy people.”

Reporting by Lucia Starbuck with Additional Reporting and Photography by Jordan Blevins

Joanne, 73, A Reader on the Streets after Facing Mounting Bills

Retired and Struggling

Joanne, a Michigan native, says she’s been living in Reno for 40 years now, but that recently mounting bills, and problems with family she was living with led her onto the streets. She is trying to secure some senior housing, but in the meantime she said she avoids the main shelter.

“I just don't care to be around a lot of people, you know, I just don't,” she said.

She says she used to work at the local newspaper, putting inserts in, until she retired a few years ago.

An avid reader, she says she goes to the SPCA of Northern Nevada, and finds books for a dollar.

“I love to read… Once I get my own place, I can get them out. I read all the time. I read all kinds of books. I read most of the day and I do my puzzle books. My favorite books are like, John Grisham, Sue Grafton…”

Hoping for Her Place to Help Others

She says she thinks she’ll be able to get a place soon, and that once she does she’ll put it to good use, to help others.

“Once I get myself together and get a place, I can start cooking in there,” she said. “Like I'm gonna make my homemade spaghetti and put it in containers and bring them down and pass them over.”

She has her eye on the Carriage Stone Senior Apartments, which she says she can get for $450 a month, if she gets the smallest room there.

During the day, she says she feels mostly safe along the Truckee River, but that there have been a few instances where she didn’t feel comfortable. “We've got cameras all over … so you can't get hurt here. They do have police on bicycles right around. But last week I had one guy, he said something, I didn't let him finish and I told him, ‘get the hell out of my way. Get away from me.’ It was nasty. Another guy yesterday said something … if i wanted to smoke pot. I said I don't smoke. And he said something else and I said,’ I don't want to hear it go away.’”

Missing Warmer Temperature

She says winter this year has been rough and she misses the warmer temperatures, when she sits outside all day.

“In the summer here at the Truckee River, the birds come out, the geese come out, the ducks come out and you can watch them. Sometimes you see people out there fishing and sometimes you see them riding …down the river.”

“Do what you want to do, go forward … try and better yourself,” she said as we concluded our interview.

Reporting by Jordan Blevins and Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno

Dewey, Stranded and Homeless in Reno Because of a Winter Breakdown

Trying to Get Back to Stockton

People can be homeless for a long time, or temporarily. You can be homeless in your own town, or in a town you’ve never lived in before. There is just no set story. Dewey said he has a home in Stockton, but just doesn’t have the means to go back right now, so instead he’s been homeless in the Biggest Little City amid the recent rough winter weather.

“It's a nightmare. It's the first time we've ever been homeless, you know, snow and cold, but being homeless in the snow, crazy cold, freezing … My wife's diabetic and sometimes I ain't got the food to feed her and much less feed ourselves, but we're going to get home somehow, some way.”

He says he feels like he’s going crazy, trying to find the money he needs.

“I just gotta have faith and I'm losing that. But my wife, she tries to stay faithful. It's been crazy hard and people out here are stronger than I ever thought they could be. You know, I thought I was tough, but this right here broke me.”

Dewey said he’s had a rough life, including being in prison, but that now at 52 he considers being homeless in Reno during the winter his worst experience. “You know, I've been in prison riots, I've been stabbed, I got shot and everything. Nothing's broken me as a man as this has. When your wife looks at you with a tear running down her eyes, she says that she's hungry and you can't do nothing about it. Your pride and manhood, everything goes right out the window.”

Turned His Life Around, But Still Fragile

He said meeting his wife 13 years ago, saved him, convinced him to stay off drugs, but that his financial situation makes it so he was still living day to day, and that a mishap can derail all the progress he’s made to have a simple, safe, sober life.

”You know, I had a good life going and then like I said, my truck blew up. I didn't expect that, you know. And we've been here ever since, so I'm trying to get the money to go home. “

His dogs he says are eight weeks old, and that he’s trying to keep them fed, while also figuring out how to get money for bus tickets back home.

Reporting and Photography by Jordan Blevins and Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno

Warmth Warriors of Reno with Coffee and Blankets

Spreading Warmth During a Chilling February

The group, Coffee and Blankets, recently set up a donation drive on Lake Street near the 4th Street bus station, not far from other services for those without shelter in the Biggest Little City.

They propped up two folding tables for hot drinks and granola bars. A tarp was set on the ground covered with blankets and clothing items.

“I personally decided to do it because I don't like being cold,” Reno resident Brent Woodley said of creating the group with his friends last year and hosting several similar events since then. “I don't usually do any winter sports … I pretty much hibernate in the winter and not everyone has that luxury, to be able to go into their home and get under a bunch of blankets. So I just figured, for all the people that don't have that option to actually a have place to be warm and comfortable, maybe we can help them a little bit.” he said.

This windy morning there were dispensers serving coffee, tea and hot chocolate. Woodley said that they gave away 60 cups in just an hour and a half. “All you have to do is walk down the streets of Reno to see that there's a lot of people in need,” he said. “I don't feel like our city leaders are doing a good enough job to address it. So we kind of have to start grassroots and see if we can build momentum until people take notice and notice that the community is willing to do the work. So our leaders should be able to also.”

Helping People Battle the Winter

Alongside the hot drinks, Coffee and Blankets Reno also hosted a warm clothing and accessory donation drive. On the blue tarp there were jackets, fleece blankets, shoes, and socks. However, this isn’t good enough for Woodley. He says that he would like to see more funding go towards helping people without shelter get by during the winter.

“For the most part, I would like to see developers look at doing small-tiny houses, affordable living, maybe even having warm shelters for the winter months. Our shelters are totally inundated with people. They cannot keep up with the demand. So mainly, I would like to see just more effort and more...funding for things that seem like simple solutions but all they really need is actions,” Woodley said.

To acquire the necessary items to give to people, Coffee and Blankets Reno collects donations from people dropping off clothing at their events, including blanket drives. Some volunteers donate items from their own homes.  Woodley calls himself and the other volunteers who participate in this form of direct action, “Warmth Warriors.”

Shermi Tam was one of the warmth warriors who showed up. “Anyone who's interested in joining us and helping us distribute either; just cleaning out their closets or start helping us serve coffee. We’re all volunteer-based so a Warmth Warrior is anyone that wants to come out and help warm people,” Woodley said.

Plans for a Mobile Cart

Woodley asks people who stop by the table about their circumstances. He says some people only expect to be without shelter for a month, while others fear they will be much longer. He says that people need resources to break the cycle of homelessness. Woodley wants to explore options to help people get back on their feet.

“A lot of what they (people living on the streets) say is that they just don't have access to jobs, clothing for a job interview, an email address, a PO Box, they don't have the things that are required to apply for a job. So that's one thing in the future we might look at doing is trying to help get people established with an actual location and some contact information so they can apply for work,” he said.

Before winter ends, Woodley wants to transition into a mobile cart and deliver coffee to people during especially cold times like early morning and late evenings. Woodley’s agenda doesn’t stop there. During the summer, he wants to continue helping the community by delivering cold water to people.

“All you have to do is listen to the appreciation of the people when you do something very simple as give them a cup of coffee and how appreciative they are. Just to see the smiles and a lot of the people come up to us and they ask us, you know, ‘Which church do we belong to, what do I have to give to you in order to get these free coffee and blankets?’ It's just amazing that they're so surprised that they actually don't have to do anything all I have to do is; pick out something they like and we do the rest,” Woodley said about how giving back makes him feel.

Photos and Reporting by Lucia Starbuck for Our Town Reno

A Q and A with Leann Silvia, Researching Student Homelessness

Q: How does geography and student homelessness interact?

Well, geography is the study of place and why things are where they are and so by studying homelessness, as a geographer, I'm able to see how the homelessness problem is in Reno and then I'm able to connect it to the problems in other cities and hopefully provide solutions that will improve the situation in multiple areas.

Q: What sparked your interest to study homelessness?

Well, it actually started out as a course that I took during my undergrad here. It was a qualitative field methods course, but it was designed as a service learning course, so we were all focused on issues around homelessness. My group in particular was working with the Nevada Youth Empowerment Project, looking at youth homelessness and so through those experiences that I gained by being able to interact with the students, I just found a real passion and love for this topic and then when the semester ended I didn't want my research to stop, so that's what inspired me to start my master’s.

Q: You also come from Las Vegas. How would you compare the homelessness situation in Las Vegas and the homelessness situation right here in Reno?

In terms of pure numbers, I think that Las Vegas has a bigger homeless population, but given that Reno is a much smaller city, I think the problem is easier to spot in Reno because it's on a smaller scale …

A screengrab of images which come up when you google “student homelssness.”

Q: You did your homelessness research, when you were doing your undergrad, and it was part of a class, so what did you find out?

So for that project we were focusing on student homelessness at UNR and just trying to get a sense of the problem and when we first started it was really, it was a bit of a surprise because the UNR campus doesn't have any idea of the homeless population… That arises because there is not a department or an office on campus that tracks homelessness or student housing. And so when we were starting research for that class, we were starting with nothing essentially. We had no baseline. And so throughout the semester we were just interviewing people both on campus and in the community to try to figure out how the problem is understood both at the university and the local level

Q: At the local level, did you go to the downtown area at all or how did you find these homeless students if you didn't have that baseline? How did you go around and find these people?

Our project was working with the Nevada Youth Empowerment Project, which is basically a transition home for young women, 18 to 24, who don't have stable housing and so the director, Monica DupPa, was really helpful in helping us find students to interview.

Q: When you were doing your research and you encountered homeless students, where were they staying?

A lot of them will get together and form a group of 10 and then they'll chip in and buy a motel for the night. But I mean that's not stable … Another common thing that we saw was couch surfing … where they stay with one friend for like maybe a week and then they go to another friend because there's a huge stigma around being homeless and so these students don't want to admit that they're homeless, but they do want a place to stay.

Silvia focused some of her research initially on the NYEP program in Reno helping young women.

Q: What are some of the reasons that they gave you as to why they were homeless?

A lot of them were escaping a bad situation at home, whether it be violence, abuse or a parent passed away. Or for most of them it was something in the home that was broken that they didn't want to be a part of anymore. It wasn't their fault in most cases.

Q: How were they feeling?

I mean, of course when you first leave home at 18, you're going to be scared and nervous, but you know, a lot of them expressed that they felt better staying on the streets or just wandering around the city than they felt being at home because their home environment was so abusive or violent or it was negative,

Q: Any safety issues that they shared with you, like whatever they go through as far as their safety is concerned?

Most of the people that I interviewed were young women and so of course there are safety issues. I mean a lot of them mentioned that they would ride the bus during the night hours because they were afraid to be alone in the city at night. So they would ride the bus all night and then they would sleep during the day when it was light out.

Q: So what are some of the conclusions that you drew from this particular research?

So from the undergraduate research, our main conclusion was just that there was no real knowledge of how pervasive the problem is and we don't really know how many students it's affecting, which is one reason why I was inspired to continue on to do my grad research here.

Silvia is doing her work based out of the Geography department at UNR.

Q: What would you recommend as far as helping the homeless is concerned?

When we were doing our interviews, something that kept coming up over and over was that the city has temporary solutions in place. There's places where they can get food, there's shelters where they can go sleep for a night. There's places where they can shower. The Eddy House offers snacks, showers. I mean there's resources, but they're all temporary. So like there's no resource in place for them to be able to get housing and live by themselves. Like most of these students don't know how to budget, don't know how to grocery shop, don't know how to do laundry. So to expect them to live independently right now would just be insane. And so I think we need a program or we need to take steps to make them be able to be independent because right now we don't have such a program in place.

Q: What are your own plans currently?

So for my grad research, I'm hoping to get a better understanding of how pervasive the problem is here in Reno because as I said, we just don't have a baseline. And then going forward, I want to see how a student's housing, a student’s stable housing or lack thereof, influences their ability to feel like they belong both on campus and in the community at large.

Q: What concerns you personally as far as homelessness is concerned?

I guess the reason that I'm so inspired to do this research is that when I was doing the undergraduate research, most of our interviewees were young women, 18 to 24, and as a 22-year-old woman, I found it so easy to relate to them and then by hearing their stories it just made me realize that they're in this position through no fault of their own and so for one reason or another I could certainly end up in that same position and if I was, I would hope that somebody would be willing to help me.

The Our Town Reno documentary Invisible Girl (above) looked into life as a homeless student in Reno.

Q: What are some of the challenges or difficulties that you encountered was doing this particular research?

I mean, first of all, we didn't really know where to start. We started talking to Monica DuPea and then she suggested that we talked to financial aid to get an estimate of how many homeless students we have (at UNR). Then we talked to financial aid and they told us that they can't really send you information. They directed us to the police department here on campus. The police department said that there was no tracking of student homelessness, so for like a good month we were just sort of lost and it was like the snowball effect. We didn't really know where to go next. We thought we were going to be getting an answer and then the answer always seemed to be, well, we don't have one, try contacting this person

Q: Why do you think that is? I mean, don't you think the city or at least the school should know the demographics of their students?

I don't think it's fine the way it is, but the fact that the university doesn't keep any record of it is partially explained by the fact that if they did, then they would recognize that there is a problem and once you recognize that there's a problem, you have to start to fix it. And I don't think homelessness is a priority for the university right now. Though I do think many realize that it's a concern. It's just not one being spoken about.

Q: What do you hope to achieve?

I hope that my research alerts the community to how pervasive of a problem this truly is and I just really hope that it inspires more people to stand up and make a difference. If my research makes a difference for one person, then I'll feel accomplished.

I would just remind everyone that, you know, we all have a story and we all deserve to have our voice heard and right now the homeless population isn't being given that opportunity. And so just, you know, take the time to listen to them and hear their stories. Because most of the time they'll, end up surprising you.

Reporting by Jordan Blevins and Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno

Katie Colling, Growing a Garden and Striving for Food-Based Communes

Preparing a New Garden Crop to Help Those in Need

Not discouraged by the current snow-filled winter, Katie Colling is busy making sure Katharina’s Gardening and Compost Program is getting new seedlings for its 24 by 32 foot plot of land provided by the Faith Lutheran Church on West 7th street in downtown Reno. This is the third year the community garden will harvest vegetables, fruits, herbs and grow flowers.

“It’s my whole life, if that makes sense. I’m on disability so I can't really go out and get a job,” said Colling who is currently managing the program. “So I have time to be able to put towards my passions...my passion is growing food, eating it, sharing it.”

The proceeds of the community garden will go to volunteer groups that distribute food such as Washoe County Food Not Bombs and the Reno Initiative for Shelter and Equality (RISE). This way, Colling explains, all the food goes directly to those living on the streets.

“Nobody should be hungry,” Colling said. ”So I would argue not only that people get physical food sustenance into them, but also the feeling of somebody caring about them and the human aspect of someone genuinely going out of their way for another person.”

Colling checks the seed packages to see which plant needs the most sun before mapping where it will be grown in the garden.

Preparing for More Planting

Colling says that her goal is to grow 500 pounds of produce this year compared to the 200 pounds collected both last year and the year before.

She explained that last year the actual planting got delayed six weeks due to a layer of plastic being discovered six inches below the surface. Recently, a fresh layer of compost was spread across the garden.

Katharina’s Gardening and Compost Program is collecting materials like egg shells and orange peels to convert to soil.

Indoor Session

Unable to spend time in the garden due to the current snowy weather, Colling and other volunteers recently gathered inside to discuss the upcoming season’s plans. These include constructing tiny homes on the end of the Faith Lutheran Church’s parking lot.

Garden wise they intend to plant flowers in an attempt to attract more bees and expect to begin harvesting food in late July.

The next event, open to volunteers, will be Saturday March 16, starting at 11 a.m., to build up the garden’s soil.

“We're growing it together and serving it directly to people in poverty and that's the goal of the garden versus plots where people can take food and do what they want with it,” Colling said, “It's a real community garden.” Colling (left) and volunteer Clark Watkins prepare a map on how to design the 2019 garden.

Photos and Reporting by Lucia Starbuck for Our Town Reno

Annette and Doug, Working on Love, Sobriety and For Tesla While Living on the Streets

Starting a Janitor’s Job and a New Relationship

When we met him, Doug, 49, was getting ready to go to Tesla for a graveyard shift.

“Today will be my fourth day,” he said. “I'm doing janitorial type of work, which I'm really happy for because that's all I do out in the street is pick up the trash everywhere I go. I've been doing it for free for since I've been here pretty much 25 months and this is my third winter outside,” he said.

He says his life got derailed when his two kids got taken away from him by Child Protective Services in Colorado.

Maintaining a relationship and having intimacy while living on the streets is no easy feat. “There's no sanctuary,” he said. “There's no time to have a relationship. I'm not talking about sexual… I learned that sexual relationships do not make a relationship because we've walked in this relationship for several months now without any sexual activities and our relationship is stronger. “

“This morning when I went to work I was so tired I couldn't even keep my eyes open,” he said of working and then trying to sleep on the streets. “People could see it. I kept smiling and I kept doing my job… I'll keep moving forward.”

Getting Sober and Fleeing Abuse

Annette, 46, who also has two children, has been sober for nearly a year. She used to work in housekeeping, but has a debilitating heart condition, which prevents her from still working. She collects disability payments and keeps her kindest words for her dog Kika.

“I got her in 2010,” she said of her best friend, who is now 14. “She's my survivor right here, you know … She's my great protector. It just kind of hurts me to have her out here so I cannot give up on her. I'm originally from California and I moved up here in ‘88 so I've been up here since I had my boys here growing up.”

She said she fled abusive situations in the early 90s, and that since then her life fell apart. Death in her family, including a brother who died in his 30s of alcoholism, made her spiral further downward. Now as she gets better, she says it takes most of her energy to deal with constant harassment on the streets.

“It's just hard to do anything out here like money wise and stuff like that, but we'll be spending time together,” Annette said of spending more time with Doug.

Love and No Regrets

“Just be honest with each other … and just support him no matter what,” Annette said of her message for Valentine’s Day.

“Treat others how you want to be treated,” Doug said. “Love is being empathetic, compassionate, patient, loyal, honest, kind, gentle.”

Whatever the hardships in her life, Annette said she has no regrets. “There wouldn't be one thing I can change because everything has a story or a memory and that’s what brings life. “

Reporting by Jordan Blevins and Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno

Paul Espinoza, Cracking Whips for a Community's Protection

Not Your Usual Whip’s Use

The web’s dictionary definition of a whip is a strip of leather or length of cord fastened to a handle, used for flogging or beating a person or for urging on an animal.

For those living on the Truckee River though, lashing their whip against the bike trail has a whole range of different meanings. 

Paul Espinoza, who is in his 40s and a veteran of Reno’s streets for over 10 years, says the whips are a form of community signaling, warning others of possible dangers. This includes visits from police or of suspicious people.

Espinoza says police repeatedly disband tent cities he lives in or shoo away those trying to hide amid trees, so the whips warn others of their impending arrival. He says women also use the whip to protect themselves in what can be a very dangerous predicament at night on the streets.

Thankful for His Friends On the Streets

Espinoza says he makes whips for others and uses the end of baseball bats to get the most force and loudest sounds.  He says there is nothing illegal about cracking a whip to communicate with others.  He says it’s also something to make as a gift, and to use as an art form, or to pass time. 

He says even though he has health issues and can’t afford rent, he’s thankful for all his homeless friends he looks out for.

Reporting and Photos by Jordan Blevins and Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno

Steve, On and Off the Streets after Losing His Mother

Aid Resistant or Trying to Survive?

Politicians sometimes call those who prefer to avoid the homeless shelter “aid resistant.” Steve, says he nearly died the one time he tried the downtown shelter and had to go to the hospital, so that’s enough reason for him to stay away.

“I haven't been back. They never opened the windows… So if one person gets sick it goes through like, you know, wildfire,” he said.

The 47-year-old who says he never really recovered from losing his mother says he would like to see more low income housing and less police harassment for those living outside. “There used to be a whole bunch of people camping here,” he said of spots near the Aces baseball stadium. “And they moved them out of here, so they chase them up and down the river, you know, write them tickets for anything, you know, anything they can. Not all the police, but a lot of them.”

Steve has his own spots downtown he prefers not to reveal, as he says he’s remained hidden from both police and violence.

“Canned food helps a lot, you know, even just talking and saying hi and just speaking, you know, a lot of times that helps. Yeah,” he said of how people can help those living on the streets.

A Rise in Homelessness, Addictions and Mental Illness

The recovering alcoholic says he’s seen more and more people on the streets of late.

“Over the last few years that I've been on the streets, definitely there's more homeless,” he said. “Absolutely. Main thing is drugs and alcohol. The cost of housing has also gone up in the last couple of years. Like the motels, like Jacobs Entertainments tearing them down. They were supposed to put low income housing and that was the rumor, but they still haven't started.”

He says even if some homeless are “aid resistant” like he is, it’s ultimately sad people don’t get the help they need.

“I think the person who's homeless has to deal with their problems first… with addiction, mental illness. We see a lot of mentally ill out on the street … you know, they're not getting the cure, you know, the help they need either, and there's been a lot more of the mentally ill homeless that I've seen … that's been a big increase in the homeless population.”

He says he feels terrible for women who are homeless as well. “They are harassed all the time and you know … they got to deal with a lot of bullshit out here…I feel bad for them.”

Reporting by Prince Nesta and Jordan Blevins for Our Town Reno

The Greek, Dreaming of Other Lives

Envisioning Another Life

Like many of us who are stuck in a rut, the Greek is not short on dreams of another life, and they keep him going it seems.

“I have another calling. I want to get into the boat industry. I want to start being in the lake on a boat. That's what I want to start doing. And I want to live in hot weather too. I like warm weather. So my life, that may change,” he said wistfully.

“I like boating, fishing, water skiing. I like the ocean,” he continued. “See now that's another thing. Because if I think of these two things, the lake and the ocean, maybe some day I'll make a lot of money,” he said.

But he says the longer you are homeless, the harder it is to break the cycle of homelessness. He says the lifestyle gnaws at you and grips you and keeps you down.

“I am a survivor and I don't drive a car and I barely take the bus and I walk,” the Greek said of the importance of having good shoes. “But I'm starting to get older. My feet are kind of hurting a little bit now. So I have to pay attention to how many miles I'm walking because it gets too much…”

Health Problems and Risking Death

The Greek says years on the streets are taking a toll on him, with his feet hurting and his eyes getting cataract he thinks.

He says he almost died in the cold last year. “I had too much alcohol and I passed out. It was like 25 degrees and some people found me on the ground. I wasn't breathing…. Now, I feel good about myself but I'm not sober yet. I can't say that I'm sober yet, but I'm starting to turn.”

He once hoped he could be a baseball player but he says injuries derailed those early dreams. “This shoulder right here has a pinched nerve and I got a slip right here on the back from batting practice,” he said.

Before ending the interview, he wanted to share another dream he had, to start an after school program for kids for dirt bike racing.

“I was going to get two vans, come to your house and pick up your kids and you pay me some money and I take them out to a track … I can charge them a little bit of gas money, you know, for the gas, you know nothing to get rich off of. But that was one of my big dreams,” he said.

Reporting by Jordan Blevins and Prince Nesta for Our Town Reno

Georgia Russell, Coordinating Compassionate Solidarity For Those In Need

A Living Charter for Help

From asking for a skillet to emergency rental needs, the Compassionate Neighbors of Northern Nevada Facebook page has become a post-it, listening and direct caring board for some of those struggling in our community and local heroes lending a hand.

The group, which has over 200 members and counting, has a living charter, emphasizing safety and banning harassment or judgment.

“We are active in the community and we were also noticing on Facebook there were a number of groups out there purporting to be there to help people in need. What we were also noticing was a lot of judgment. So people would come to those groups and say I'm in need and they would be getting lectured instead of helped and it was troubling to us… So it actually kind of came out of anger. There was one particular post that was troubling to me and so I said, you know what, I'm just going to start my own group. And so we started Compassionate Neighbors of Northern Nevada,” Russell said.

“I just put an extra bookshelf,” Russell said. “I put it behind my house and labeled it free pantry and anything I have that's extra in my home I put out there and other people in the neighborhood drop stuff off and there's kind of a constant give and take. I try not to do food because I don't want to deal with messes and what not. But there's been clothing, there's been baby items, there's been furniture, just whatever. Again, the same thing rather than me taking it to Goodwill or the Salvation Army.” Photo by Jordan Blevins for Our Town Reno.

From Babysitting to Home Cooked Meals

The group’s headquarter where the free pantry is located is at Russell’s home. The 40-year-old single mother does planning and logistics for a protein bar company and calls this her “passion project.”

She says people have asked for babysitting while they need to go to an important appointment, or sometimes food for emergency situations.  

“There was one young woman who lives in a weekly with her baby and she was saying my kids never had a home cooked meal. And I said, ‘well, I'll just cook you a home cooked meal’,” Russell said.  “Just any little thing that we can do. The main thing is about pooling all of our resources, and rather than, you know, if I have some extra clothes taking it to the Salvation Army so that then they can turn around and sell it, I can just give it directly to the person who needs it. I feel everyone should care, especially now when we're just one disaster away from being homeless . It wouldn't take much. I'm very lucky in that I have this house and I have this job where I can work from home and that allows me some time, that I can do stuff like this … If it wasn't for a few amazing people in my life, I'd be living by the river right now,” she said.

Sometimes just a little help can go a long way. “We've had people who are homeless,” Russell said. “They needed money to get a hotel room for the night and everyone kind of chipped in five, $10 here and there and it didn't take much. It didn't hurt anyone… You know, five dollars. A lot of us can come up with five dollars and enough of us can do that and they were inside for the night.”

In Support of Growth rather than Gentrification

In general, Russell would like to see more low income housing in this area, and more growth for those already living here, rather than gentrification which she views as efforts to bring new, wealthier people in.

She says the “downtown homeless issue” as it’s called by many is not being described through the right lens, and that much more could be done with what we already have. “Homeless people are people, you know,” Russell said. “They are often talked about as if they are not a sentient being, that they're a problem, that they need to be moved out of the way. The problem is our community that hasn't given them a home, not the people who don't have the home. I think there's a lot that can be done. There's a lot of wealth, not just financial wealth, but skills and knowledge and understanding in this community that could be shared better,” she said.

On a day to day, moment to moment level, outside of social media, she would like people to also be more compassionate.

“As far as the people of community, I would encourage them to recognize the humanity in everyone. If you see someone on the street who you think is homeless or someone you see asking for help, say hello and smile even if you don't have anything to give, even if you don't feel like giving, just acknowledge them, you know… it's a scary and lonely place to be. Remember that they're a human being and just say hello and maybe you'll make a friend.”

Reporting by Prince Nesta and Jordan Blevins for Our Town Reno

Brandon Gaeta, Aiding the Youth in Need at the Point in Time Count

A Place to Sleep During the Count

Gaeta along with Eddy House staff, members of Our Center, the Nevada Youth Empowerment Project and other volunteers are organizing this year’s Housing and Urban Development required homeless youth Point-In-Time Count running 24 hours from midnight tonight.

The buzz of activity for local youth in need is at the old converted home on east 6th street, which usually closes at 5 p.m. On this night though, it stays open.

“I am glad because...this [Eddy House] is the central intake facility for at-risk and homeless youth,” Gaeta said. “So the youth are already familiar with this area. Also, it gives them a chance to sleep here, sleep in a safe environment, which is probably the biggest bonus.”

Free haircuts, hygiene products, and three meals will also be provided. Gaeta believes that, unfortunately, the count will yield the highest numbers of homeless youth yet. For statistics compiled in 2017, HUD reported that Nevada had the highest rate of unsheltered youth in the country.

Challenges to Reach All Unsheltered Youth

Whatever the efforts, including the ongoing use of fliers and social media, Gaeta fears some youth will be missed during the count. Many social workers say the numbers are usually quite higher than what the counts indicate.

“During the count itself we’re going to be trying to find youth that don’t already know about the event or have trouble getting downtown,” Gaeta said, in an attempt to get as many concerned youth counted.

The count’s official page posted this notice: “Looking for young people sleeping in the following areas... On the street/outdoors/park/river … On roof(s)/in a garage/attic/basement/storage structure … A place in a house not a bedroom (kitchen, couch, bathroom).. In a friend’s house or family member’s house on a temporary basis … Sharing a living space with another family … In a Car/van/camper … Abandoned building… Emergency Shelter… Weekly Motel…”

“We have been handing out flyers downtown, little wristbands, informing youth and adults alike about the event so the adults can inform maybe other youth that they see out on the street,” Gaeta said. Photo and reporting by Lucia Starbuck.

Collecting Donations While Still Striving for a 24 Hour Facility

As the Eddy House collects donations for all its activities and resources, it’s also still working towards one day opening a 24-hour facility, where youth don’t have to fend for themselves every night when the doors at the drop-in center close.

“We want to be open 24 hours at the location that we're at but it's just not financially feasible and that's always hard, you know, to have to turn away our youth at the end of the day,” Gaeta said. “Hopefully with the new facility, if we do get that, that will change and everything will be great but, you know, it's always painful to have to do that. But I'm glad at least one day out of the year we can provide that comfort and a place for them to sleep.”

Reporting, Audio and Photos by Lucia Starbuck for Our Town Reno