Valerie Lovett, Finding a Support Group for Trans Parenting at Our Center

“So many questions, so many fears…”

“A few years back, my elder daughter came out transgender, and I found that I had so many questions, so many fears,” Valerie Lovett told Our Town Reno during a recent interview.

“I didn't know who to turn to and…there's always paid counselors that you can go see, but not everyone can afford a psychologist or $150 an hour,” Lovett said. “So I looked up the LGBTQ community center in Reno and I found Our Center on Wells avenue. And I went down there because I wanted to volunteer and I wanted to get involved with the trans community, but more importantly with other parents or caregivers of gender, non-binary and gender variant youth, just so that they had a place to come because of all the time and effort I spent fearing for my daughter and feeling alone because my husband had passed away 10 years ago and I didn't know who to talk to. I didn't know any other parents with a trans child. And I thought it would be a great idea. So I went to Our Center and I spoke with this wonderful woman named Tina who worked there and she helped me get into the Trans Parenting group…we meet once a month. It's a support group for caregivers. And it's really helped all of us a lot just to have that support.” 

Fifty-year-old Valerie Lovett is a single mother of two daughters, her eldest being a trans youth. She as a volunteer with Our Center makes sure she caters to parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, friends of transgender youth. The support group gathers together on the third Thursday of every month. 

Seeing her own daughter transition around the age of 17 was not easy for Lovett. She wanted to make sure that other parents of transitioning youth know about this group.

“They could be young adults that have questions about their child or their family member who've recently come out or is having a tough time on their own so that they can learn how to support them. And when your child first comes out as transgender, there's a million questions you have…where do I go to get this? How do I find support for legal issues, housing issues? And, you know, just being there with other parents is so comforting because a lot of us, when we get together, we have ideas or thoughts or answers to help each other out.” 

Lovett didn’t know where to turn to initially to help herself and her daughter.

Opening Up Lines of Communication

“Not only had she lost her father at the age of 13, she had a rough time coming out, which I know it wasn't her sister or I, because I'm a very liberal person. I had a lot of gay friends or gay family members, but I think for my daughter, it was trying to come to terms with it herself…she got into drugs really bad,” Lovett remembers on the difficult journey it’s been in her family.

“And I just always knew that that wasn't her. I just knew that something was going on and it took her a really long time to come to me with it. And, honestly, she never even really did. I asked her and it was about the time that a lot of focus was being put on trans celebrities. And it just kind of popped into my head one day…‘are you having gender identity issues?’ And she said, ‘yes’. And that was a relief because then we could start working on…okay, we have this drug piece. Now we have this trans piece. We are gonna get through it… but the most important part of that was I did not want to lose her. Sadly enough whether it have been a drug overdose or suicide, transgender people have the highest rates of suicide from what I've read, it's about 44%, which is crazy high and it's mostly because they don't have family support. So that was really important to me.’”

At Our Center Lovett works towards the perceptions that people may have towards trans youth. She says there is still a lot of stigma attached to this for no reason. Initially she was worried not for herself and the reactions of people but just the fact that she did not want her daughter to get shunned by society.

“ I think the main point is I want people to know that it's not something that somebody just says one day to get attention. And I see a lot of new parents who come in and when their kids are younger, you know, probably right around puberty or something,” she says.

“And to me, that's when my daughter first started. I could tell her attitude started changing. It's biological. I 100 percent believe it's biological. I don't think that people choose this rough road, you know, because they're bored. So to me, that's the part I wanna get out the most is that it's not a, it's not a choice. It's who you are. It's like the color of your skin or your hair. And so instead of judging them or thinking something's wrong or abnormal, just imagine trying to live in a body that your brain doesn't match. I can't imagine how hard that would be. And I just want people to have compassion and sympathy for the struggle that trans people go through because it's, you know, it's not something that they wanted.”

There have been discussions about what to do with the Record Street shelter, including possibly having a wing for the unhoused trans community.

The Need for a Trans Specific Shelter

As a Northern Nevada resident Lovett has seen a lot of insensitivity around the behavior of people towards trans youth. She has often chosen to stay away from social media pertaining to the ignorant posts and comments people make. Discussions over transgender in the military which came up during the tenure of the last administration and the comments over the recent talks of need for gender inclusive bathrooms have particularly irked her, Lovett says. She has often shielded her daughter against many situations but says that she has felt threatened still. On the 21st birthday of her daughter, an older waiter at a restaurant had said something to her which had terribly upset her. 

Though she works mostly around the parents and families of trans youth, she feels that the older transgender people may need more consideration as well.

“ I think for older transgender people it's harder because they weren't able to come out young and I'm so thankful that trans people are able to come out younger and younger before they start to develop too much one way or the other. And I think for older trans people, I think there's still a huge discrimination and stigma, which breaks my heart,” she says.

Lovett also feels that the city needs to have safer places for houseless trans people.

“I would love to have a place just that for that specific group, because even with the Eddy House or with the Cares Campus, I still feel that those places aren't a hundred percent safe for transgender people. I've heard some stories that, I don't know if they're true, but that there's been some assaults and I just wish we have a place specifically for those, for that group. I think it would be great. And maybe that's a pipe dream.”

Lovett wants to keep working towards sensitizing the parents of trans youth who sometimes disown their child once they come out. “ You know, there's actually a thing where parents of transgender people do grieve because when your child is born, you see the future for your son or your daughter,” she said. “And then they transition and they're like, okay, well, that's gone, but I wanna emphasize to them that it's not, it shouldn't be grief. It should be a celebration because they're like a little butterfly coming out. They can finally be who they're supposed to be. And I would much rather have parents hear that instead of their child killing themselves one day, because no one accepts them. So I wanna help the parents, but I think ultimately it's to help the transgender kids because I want to help their parents understand that there's nothing wrong with them. They are still the same person just because they go by a different name, they are still the same.” 

She realizes that having her daughter the way she is has turned Lovett into a more compassionate human being “....being able to go to Our Center and just be a part of that…supporting people at pride, it's made my life so much more fulfilled… is just seeing and helping people with their struggles. And even if you can't do anything just so that they know you're there.”

Our Town Reno reporting by Kingkini Sengupta

Kyle Isacksen, from Biking with Compost to Running for Washoe County Board

Community Experience and Priorities

The last time Kyle Isacksen says he ran for an elected position was for fifth grade class president and he came in third. He’s now running for Washoe County Commission District 3, a post held since 2007 by soon to be termed out Kitty Jung.

“Why am I running? I get asked that now every day and I think the easiest way to answer it is to say that I care really deeply about what happens to our community, what happens with our environment and how we are moving into the future. My entire adult life has been centered around service in one form or another being a teacher, a community organizer … and I see it as an extension of that work,” he explained during a recent interview in our podcast studio.

In terms of current issues if he were to eventually win the seat, number one, he says “is bringing some creativity around affordable housing. So that's something that we need. And the same thing with mass transit, as somebody who didn't drive a car, or didn't have a car, for about seven years, we biked and we took the bus and it was really hard to get around, especially with two kids, using the bus. And so again, we need people in leadership positions to say, ‘hey, what's going on with this system? Why does it take me an hour to get from point A to point B?’ You know asking these questions, looking at creative answers, saying, maybe we need to redo this whole system. What are we doing around climate and how are we contributing to solving that problem? These are all things that we can be working on smarter, better, harder.”

The timing for him also feels right with both his kids now teenagers. He’s bothered by all the conspiracy theories floating around. He says he’s healthy and energized to “put his hat in the ring.” 

His mother-in-law Susan Chandler was a professor at UNR for 20 years and is also a well know activist locally. Isacksen, a native New Yorker, first arrived in Reno in 2004 as part of get out the vote efforts with his wife, for a group called America Coming Together. 

With his wife he then started a middle school program in partnership with the High Desert Montessori charter school, before working with other schools, going on a green learning discovery trip across the United States, and then returning to Reno to put in practice some of their new knowledge with the local Be The Change project.  This has included putting a house in a community land trust, building their own house which is an award winning off the grid homestead, testing the Truckee River for micro plastics pollution, organizing mural projects, the Reno Garlic Fest and the Reno Rot Riders bike-powered compost collection. 

Why the County Commission for a first run? After talking to different people in the community, Isacksen said a former county commissioner told him that position has the largest impact on people’s daily lives.  “The county is involved with parks, it's involved with the sheriff and the jail. It's involved with roads, it's involved with river health. It's involved with land use planning and development. It is mass transit, it's senior services, homeless care, it's all these things that directly affect people's lives. And so with my varied background and kind of all these different things that I've taken on and done over the years, I feel like I'm a really good fit for the job and that I can bring middle class values, creative problem solving to this position to bring us into the future,” he said. 

District 3 is the smallest of the five districts in the county, which as he mostly rides his bike to and from meetings is practical. “It's the most compact,” he said.  “Each district has about a hundred thousand people in it.  Washoe County goes all the way up to the Oregon border. District 3 includes Sun Valley… It's incredibly diverse. UNR is right in the middle of the district. Downtown is in the middle of the district. It just feels extra good to be able to run for something with all these places that I know and care about.”

Isacksen has been making tours as part of his campaign, including to our podcast studio.

Running as a Democrat and an Incubator for Future Candidates

Isacksen is running as a Democrat in a district he says the primary on June 14th will probably determine the winner of the general election in November.  

Nevada is also now an all mail-in state, which changes dynamics.  “I think it's going to get more people to vote. If we can get participation up, especially in these non-presidential election years when participation is traditionally a lot lower, I think it's great to have more access to voting, to have easier ways to do it,” he said.

Isacksen says less than 5,000 votes are usually cast in the District 3 primary, which means he only needs 2,500 or so votes to win. He’s the first to have announced his candidacy for this district, and has been meeting with different stakeholders, organizers, leaders, developers, advocates and other residents, posting photos of his encounters on social media.  

“I mean, it's just been nonstop and it's, you know, I said this to my wife this morning, I was like, ‘well, I hope I get elected because I'm learning so much and meeting so many people’ and she's like, ‘you know, it doesn't matter because you'll be able to use this knowledge for whatever we're going to do.’ And I was like, ‘oh, absolutely.’ I mean, it's, it's just been a blast. And it's kind of funny just by saying I'm running for something it's given me this little bit of access or to meet with all these people that are doing these cool things.”

Asked about splits at the local and national levels among Democrats, he says he’s been in different parties during his life, but “I’m a Democrat because in general, I agree with the platform. I agree that we need to have a living wage. I agree that we have to have a strong social safety net. I believe unions are essential to a well-functioning democracy and kind of balancing power structures. I believe in equal rights. I believe in equity. I like to say I'm pro smart development.”

How can we make our own region greener? “We can ensure that solar panels are on houses and commercial buildings,” Isacksen said. “Making pedestrian friendly developments. So not putting parking garages on the first floors, for example, to have commercial and retail spaces on the first floor. So when you're walking downtown in Reno or Sparks, you're not walking for blocks that are just dead because they're parking garages, having multimodal effective mass transit which incorporates safe bike lanes and has bus routes that are more effective. I was talking to a guy the other day, and this is my favorite quote from the week in all my conversations, he said, ‘people aren't going to bike if they think they're going to die.’ And I was like, yeah, that's exactly right.”

Learning about Washoe County, Campaigning and District 3

He’s also learning more about how Washoe County operates. “It's really blown my mind, reading the county budget, you know, where money is being allocated, looking at transportation, what's going on with the bus system? What about bikes and public land stuff? There was a little bit of a snafu recently with a public lands bill being drafted by the county and then kind of taken away from the county, because there was so much disagreement about what was included. I wanted to get in early to really dedicate, be able to dedicate the time, that it requires to be a good candidate, to be able to serve in a way that respects the people of the district and of the county,” he said. 

One scary fact he points out is that Reno is the second fastest warming city in the country, second fastest after Las Vegas. “So that's a result of climate change and changing weather patterns and things like that. It's also a direct result of how we develop, of how much concrete we're putting on the ground and what kind of roads are we doing and how much tree cover we have, and those decisions lead to decreases in quality of life. And so if we are, if we're losing our cooler high desert nights, if we're having to run the AC more during the day, because it's getting hotter earlier and all that kind of stuff, we need to reconsider in a big way, how we're doing things. If we can assume that we're going to be having a wildfire season, from now on, which is just very disheartening, we need to be looking at air quality more holistically and doing all we can the rest of the year to make sure the environment is in better shape.”

He’s been told to raise about $40,000 for the race. He understands the concerns voters have when too much campaign money is coming from developers. “Reno, for example, underwent the master plan effort a couple years ago with a lot of input. And so if a developer comes to the planning board and says, I want do this, and the planning board says, well, no, you can't do X, Y, and Z because it doesn't fit, in some cases, the developer can then say, ‘well, I'm gonna appeal that.’ And then it goes up to the city councils and then it becomes a political decision. And I think that's where those donations really could pay off for a developer. So if you've given five grand to a candidate or whatever, and they're now a council member, you know, this is how things work. They're gonna say, ‘well, it's a pretty good plan.’ Even if it doesn't, you know, it doesn't meet everything we want, let's just go ahead with it.”

He’s not sure who his competitors will be and who they might be backed by, with many more established politicians circling around county commission positions. 

We also asked him if this was the right time for a white male candidate to seek a leadership office, given the drive for more diversity. 

“I’ll be the first to admit that I was born on third base,” he said. “I’m a white male born to a loving middle class family. My life has been easier than most. I was able to go to school. I was able to graduate college. It's been a pretty straightforward process for me, which in large part is why I have dedicated my life to service. I have a safety net. I can fall when I leap like what we've done with our lives, our activism, our community service. And so, jumping into politics is part of that. “

He says he didn’t see anyone else running yet, and could see himself as an incubator for future possible candidates. 

“If my running can inspire other people and can have somebody else say, ‘Hey, I think I could win a city council or commission seat,’ that would be the ultimate victory. We need more people who want to truly serve as elected officials who will take a stand for the environment… Who will take a stand for affordable housing, for example. If more of those folks are getting into politics and more diverse views and experiences are represented, then ultimately we'll have a better society,” he concluded.  

Our Town Reno reporting, February 2022

Staff Inside Cares Campus Speaks Out About Harsh, Dangerous Conditions, As Separate Area for Women is Set Up

Allegation of a Sexual Assault, with Poor Staffing and Safety

In her email (referred above in photo caption), County spokeswoman Bethany Drysdale confirmed information we received through a source working inside the campus that a new women’s dorm section has been set up with 85 beds. “It … allows us to keep women separate from men, in addition to the beds available for women at Our Place,” Drysdale wrote.

Our source told us a sexual assault recently took place inside the Campus, information that Drysdale did not confirm or deny. The county official pointed us to a recent This is Reno article, which quotes the county’s head of security Ben West confirming crime is an ongoing problem at the campus, without going into specific crimes, while saying getting witnesses has been difficult. We also couldn’t confirm the sexual assault.

Our source for this story chose to maintain their anonymity due to their ongoing employment with VOA. 

“The Cares campus is just kind of warehousing people,” the employee said. “We’ve even admitted it on the VOA side. It’s way too many people, it’s way too packed. From the VOA perspective, we aren’t able to provide the level of care we would want to … It never should have been built that big.” 

In recent years, Our Town Reno has sent multiple emails to Pat Cashell, the VOA regional director and son of former mayor Bob Cashell, who has been thinking of a mayoral run himself, perhaps in 2026, but we’ve never once heard back from him.

The VOA employee we spoke to expressed alarm at how the Cares Campus has been set up with so many people packed into one space, a fear many advocates voiced from the inception of the plan. The current county shelter dashboard indicates there are 603 available beds, often nearly all filled.

“I do know that basically every VOA employee does not support it,” the employee said.  “We all know that it goes against best practices of homelessness issues. You don’t want shelters that big.”

Staffing and safety have been the main challenges.  “I think we can increase safety especially with more staff. We’ve been low-staffed basically since it opened,” the employee said. Advocates have pleaded for higher salaries for regular staff. 

One rare photo we’ve been able to get from inside the campus.

Challenges of So Many People in a Low-Barrier Setting

Being a “low-barrier” shelter makes it especially challenging, our source said.

“It’s easier to run a great shelter when you’re turning people away who are substance abusers or extremely mentally ill or extremely disabled. Ultimately when you have [over 600] people in one tent, many of which may struggle from substance abuse disorders or severe mental illness, it’s really hard to make it a one-hundred percent safe place,” the employee said. 

“We hadn’t operated a shelter this big. I think the recent move for the women to have their own dorm, that’s been an improvement. Our staffing has gotten a little bit better but we need roughly 25-30 more staff, but other than that there hasn’t been much improvement,” the VOA worker said. 

The employee also noted services which used to be available at the Record street shelter, such as picking up mail, using a phone or computer or having many options to ask for assistance, aren’t available yet, even though the campus opened last year.  The employee said easy access to organizations such as the Community Health Alliance and Washoe County School District as was the case at Record street is also now lacking. 

Storage is also an issue.  “There’s no space there even for storage,” the employee said. “Which means no place for people to take donations, no place to store donations really. For example, Our Place, the women’s and family shelter opened a boutique at their shelter. They have clothes racks and all these clothes where people can come and get clothes when they need it. There’s no space like that at the Cares Campus.” 

For people staying on the campus, the only things allowed in their small locker or on their bed, the employee said, are essentials. Non-essentials are stored somewhere else on the campus and the employee said theft does occur.  For months, the worker said locks weren’t even provided for the lockers.

There have been concerns about unhealthy food being served on the Campus.

Tensions Between VOA and County, with Very Few People Getting Housed

There has been growing tension as well the employee said between VOA employees and the County now in charge of homeless services, replacing Reno, including over the purchase of needed items, such as the locks.  

The employee said VOA case managers are gradually being replaced by County case managers. At the recent CHAB meeting, county officials said less than 6% of the hundreds and hundreds of people who have slept at the campus received housing, despite that being the stated goal of the shelter.

In addition to our own lack of access, volunteers, who helped set up a small library with books and games, haven’t been allowed on campus either, the employee said, even though some wanted to offer free classes and workshops. 

A tent city has occasionally popped up just outside the Cares Campus.

Advocates Kept off Premises

“They are not being let onto campus,” the worker said. “The county is being incredibly strict about who they let onto campus, even for volunteer groups or church groups they are now requiring a Memorandum of Understanding for anyone who comes onto the grounds.” The worker said it’s a question of liability if a volunteer were to get injured and describe it as counter-productive in trying to help streamline the efficiency of the facility. 

“There are a lot of community advocates and mutual aid groups and a lot of people who want to support the unhoused community and are finding their own ways to do it. I think they need to be let onto campus… I don’t think we can just overlook the importance of the volunteers and advocates and the work that they are doing, they can be a huge help for us I think,” the worker said. 

“I think we’re doing our best given all of the circumstances from having a shelter that’s too big to not having enough staff…We make mistakes, we have made a lot of mistakes, but I wish people understood that this is a really hard thing to do,” the employee said at the conclusion of our interview. “Managing a huge shelter where there are so many different people with different traumas and different disabilities or different issues of whatever kind, is just a lot.”

Our Town Reno reporting by Matthew Berrey

Masud Shagor, An Immigrant Store Owner Feeling Shunned by City Council

An Impediment to Survive?

If you follow the Reno City Council meetings closely, you may have noticed Masud Shagor stand at the podium and address his concerns in front of the council members quite a few times.

Earlier this year, Shagor was back at it, asking the Council to reconsider a new proposed law on banning single serve alcohol in certain downtown areas, including on N Virginia St. where his convenience store Silver Smoke is located.

His requests to Council members were specific: “200 ml, can you please let us sell that one item and if you reduce some liquor license fee, we are paying almost $2800 a year,” he said.

“They heard me clearly, they heard me last time also, but last time it seems to me, their feeling was, ‘wait a minute, it is done already,’” he added.

The ordinance, which will be enforced starting summer 2023, will prohibit the sale of single serve alcohol in containers less than 20 ounces, including single prepackaged shots. Packaged alcohol, though, as well as beers in containers 20 ounces or more, will still be allowed. The final ordinance was a step back from an earlier proposal to ban all single serve alcohol.

Shagor still sees it as an impediment for his small business to survive.

From Dreams of Being a Barrister in London to Running Corner Stores in Reno

Shagor, now in his mid 40s, came to Reno from Los Angeles in 1992. He owns three convenience stores, with another one in Sparks which is next to the Nugget Casino and a third in the southern part of town.

As a child, he wanted to be a barrister in London but says he ended up in America. Over time his aspirations changed and he only wanted to be a businessman. He has three stores now but definitely wants to ‘upgrade’ himself.

“I started going to school, but then I stopped myself. It was a little late for me to start all over, because I finished my Master’s in Bangladesh and I came to America, then I started making money to start a family and back to my family ( in Bangladesh), I have to help them also,” Shagor said.

In the past three decades, Shagor has seen Reno evolve. “It was so busy,” he remembers of Virginia street in the 1990s. “Casino was so busy, downtown was so busy. It was literally a gambling industry, now it is not like that anymore. So it is now a warehouse town and Tesla came here and Panasonic came here and the town is getting bigger and people are moving from all over.”

It was specifically his friend working in a local casino that made him choose Reno over all other places in America. Two sons grew up here; one pursuing geological engineering at UNR and the other at McQueen high school.

A Sour Taste

Shagor regards America as a land of opportunity. “if you are nice, people are nice to you,” he said. “If you work hard and be honest … it will be sustainable and you can achieve your dream.”

He remembers local support he got after the 9/11 attacks fondly. Immigrant store owners were being attacked in other parts of the country. “It was morning, I was going to open my store and I did not know it happened in New York … police came to my store and gave me security and gave me a phone number and if anybody try to loot my store or hurt me, they will be there. That means they do care for their citizens,” he said.

The new ordinance is leaving a sour taste for him though amid stressful inflation.

“It will have a big negative impact on our business,” he said. “it will take at least 30% of business from us and before this the payrolls, which is employee were $10, $12, $9 per hour, now we have to pay $15 an hour. So our overheads went up already. Our income is going down because of that…I was asking to reduce the liquor license fee, fees is too much high, if they stop selling those items, they could reduce the fee.”

He doesn’t see the change as beneficial for customers either. “For example not only homeless people or people who panhandle, the people who work in casinos or the retired people, have very limited money,” he said. “So what they will do, they will get the money together and buy the big bottles. So when people have more, they will drink more. It will be more alcoholism… and the homeless people, they will gather together, put the money together to buy big bottles and what they will do is they will start fighting for bigger bottles…this will not keep downtown clean.”

The ordinance will also mandate that stores have at least 10 percent of their products be fresh or frozen perishable food, another impediment to his business practice Shagor said.

“Most of the people who live in downtown, they don’t have kitchen. What they do, they buy the frozen food, they buy the canned food. And in my stores, for example, I do have some, it's not produce. It's just like, say potatoes, onion, that kind of thing. I do carry oranges, bananas. We do have it. And we do have a lot of canned food. So we do have more than they are expecting. We do have 20 to 30% food line already. And if they expect us to sell cabbage, cauliflower, or that kind of  vegetables, it'll be just an extra burden for us. Nobody buy[s] those things. Nobody even asked in 20 years, ‘Hey, do you have a cauliflower in your store?’ They don't have any kitchen. What will they do with that? Yes, we do have packaged vegetables. That's reasonable, that's logical. And we don’t have storage, we do have a freezer but vegetables, I don’t know if vegetables will store … in frozen cooler, that will be another problem,” he said.

In due time, Shagor says he is ready to go back before the City Council to keep fighting for the livelihood of store owners like himself.

Reporting by Kingkini Sengupta for Our Town Reno

A Case Manager at the Washoe County Safe Camp Pleads for More Community Support

Lacking Office Space and Rehousing Options

Elizabeth Pope, the case manager at the Washoe County pilot safe camp, has made recent appearances at the Community Homelessness Advisory Board, pleading for more housing in the community as well as more support from volunteers. On social media and at City Council meetings, advocates and others have been critical of the Karma Box Project, which has had the contract to operate the safe camp since its inception last year.

“You have a really deeply caring group of people who are sometimes faced with situations that most people, you know, will never face in their life,” she told Our Town Reno during a recent interview from her car which is also her office. “And they show up every day to do their best. And so, no matter what our grievances are with the system, I really do feel like the staff deserve a lot of support and a lot of kudos, which oftentimes they sometimes get a lot of criticism,” she said.

Working from her car is also a current challenge, which should change once the safe camp is moved to its future permanent location inside the Governor’s Bowl, below from where it started.  Having no office complicates her tasks and also makes it difficult to get private meetings with camp residents she is trying to get into housing.  

“I think office space is a challenge,” she said. “Coordinating care takes a lot of infrastructure, it takes access to a scanner, a printer, fax machine , with all those different things, when there are documents that need to be sent, it's important to have a way to do that,” she explained. 

Other challenges included the initial tents set up last year at the camp, which proved to be leaky under stormy conditions. ModPods were ordered but those have yet to be set up, Pope said.

Long waiting times to get people from the camp into housing has also been an issue. “As we know, there's a huge shortage of housing in Washoe County right now. And so that process does take time,” she said.  

 “Ideally, we would be able to find everybody housing within the first month. The reality of the situation is there isn't a housing resource that we can usually make happen within that amount of time,” she admitted.  She says she wouldn’t be surprised if eventually the average length of stay at the safe camp will be half a year.  “Getting someone into housing is not an easy process right now. It's just taking time.”

Shelter space has also been limited despite the opening of the Cares Campus, with beds often filled, and demand for the safe camp higher than its actual 45 spots. 

The safe camp relies on outreach workers dispersed throughout Washoe County to identify individuals who might be interested in trying the safe camp on their rehousing journey. 

“We identify those unsheltered individuals who we can bring into the safe camp and who are ready and willing when we have an opening come up,” Pope said. “And then once someone is interested in coming into the safe camp and we have a space available, we bring them in and the Karma Box Project staff work with them to help set them up with their space, with their tent.”

File photo from 2021 of the Governor’s Bowl location where the safe camp will eventually be moved.

A Vulnerability Index

As part of her role, Pope, who has been working in this field for over two decades, helps with the Northern Nevada Homeless Management Information System, trying to get data on the unhoused in our community. 

At intake, she evaluates what is called a person’s “current vulnerability index.”  That helps identify the type of housing programs people would be most suited for based on their score.  “I usually start there,” she said.  “I start with that assessment, and then we talk through what their ideal housing situation would look like, and connecting them with whatever resources might be available to help them get there.”

Pope finds out if a person being helped needs to get an ID and Social Security card. “A lot of times folks don't have … the things that are needed to help facilitate their process into housing once there's a housing resource available. So we help connect them with those things,” she said.

Most important as part of her duties is coming up with a durable and sustainable housing plan.  “Oftentimes there are things that will help someone maintain housing as well, such as identifying medical issues that might exist, mental health issues that may exist, any sort of substance abuse issues,” she said.

Pope also connects people with health and recovery resources. “I have become familiar with the different resources available through the different insurance companies and trying to make sure that if someone needs a doctor's appointment, if they are ready to engage in substance abuse treatment, if that's an issue for them, we will do that,” she said. “I’ve helped people connect with medically assisted treatment with methadone. We’ve helped people get into transitional housing programs.”

Another photo we took on our only allowed visit in the early months of the camp’s existence last year.

A Housing First Approach

She says her approach is housing first though.  “You don't have to participate in any treatment. You don't have  to be clean and sober. You can move into housing just as you are at that time,” she said.   “I do my best to meet that person where they are … This person is on their own journey, they are in charge of their life. I see my role as helping connect them with the resources and equip them with the skills that they need to help move them in the direction that they want for their life. We do ask that everybody that comes into the safe camp works on a housing plan. So ultimately we're working in the direction toward housing.”

She is hopeful there is movement in the community currently to expand on lower incoming housing opportunities as part of the Cares Campus and Built for Zero philosophies.  She says there’s also efforts to bring staffing ratios up, so there can be more case managers like herself. 

Pope would also like to see more help from developers and landlords often wary of housing vouchers.  “If we could get more landlords on board, more housing options available, new apartment developments to allocate certain apartments for affordable housing … I think that would be incredible.” 

For some of the camp residents who got into housing, she did a few follow up calls to see how they were doing.  Our Town Reno hasn’t been able to get precise numbers on how many former camp residents are still housed.  

As part of the interview, Pope reiterated her plea for more support from advocates who have criticized different failings at the Cares Campus, from the tent conditions, to the food being served there, to how residents and those trying to help them on a volunteer basis are treated.

“It’s a very stressful job,” Pope said.  “So, making sure that the staff who are doing that work, feel supported and cared for by the community is I think a really important thing.” She said if staff is not doing their job to an adequate level, proper grievance procedures should be followed. 

Reporting by Kingkini Sengupta for Our Town Reno

Student Roommates and Friends Create Simple Bare Necessities

Weekly Trips for Grocery Shopping Give Ideas

The first thing that often comes to mind when one hears ‘Simple Bare Necessities’ is the green pastures of the ‘Jungle Book’ where Baloo, the bear, sings a song and tells Mowgli about the raw elements of nature like fruits and vegetable helpful to human beings and animals for survival. Baloo sings with joy, ‘...the bare necessities will come to you’. This line is not always true. The bare minimum is not always available to the unsheltered who are seen struggling and residing out in the open on the streets of Reno.

However, this song title ended up being the official name of a club that helps people of the houseless community in more ways than one. “ Initially we came up with the name ‘Helping Reno’ and something related to the ‘Pack’ and soon we were like this is not working, that is when I came up with the name ‘Simple Bare Necessities’ from the Jungle book theme song,” Sneha Thomas one of the founders said. ‘It all worked out in the end and funneled up into this one cool club, which is really fun to see,” she added.

Janavi Sathappan, Thomas and Don Maria Benny are roommates. They often made weekly trips to the Northtowne Winco of Reno for grocery shopping. “We noticed a lot of homeless people at the intersections of the roads every time we went there and read the signs that they would hold in their hands, asking for help,” Thomas said. “We discussed with each other about ways we could help them. We wanted to safely do something and help them out even during the time of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

That is when the three students all in the third year of college at UNR as undergraduates got along with their two other friends Angeline Nguyen and Genesis Tranquilino to start a club for helping the impoverished. “ Angeline and Genesis were our neighbors in sophomore year and that is how we all decided to come together,” Thomas explained.

This five member club has also set specific roles for each club officer to play. Janavi Sathappan, President of SBNUNR had prior experience of serving at a club called Seva in her freshman year and was very excited to bring her previous experience into the new club. She manages events and coordinates with different planners and community services. She, along with Benny, the Treasurer, attends various club funding meetings to receive funding assistance and maintain the paperwork for the club. Vice President Sneha Thomas mostly looks at coordination through emails and does event planning for the club but is also readily available to help anyone who needs assistance in the club. Genesis Tranquilino, the Secretary, looks at the various other organizing aspects and the designing of Powerpoints where she makes sure that the color schemes of the documents maintain identity with the theme and logo of the club. Angeline Nguyen, the Public Relations Coordinator had designed the flyers and is mostly responsible for managing the social media accounts of the club. 

Volunteering Outreach

There were talks about the formation of the club since the previous Spring but the club became registered and fully operational around April 2021. “It was very last minute but our club got approval just before the day of the club fair,” Sathappan shared. As a group of undergraduate students at UNR, the club receives funding of $500 for each school year from The Associated Students of University of Nevada (ASUN) which is a student government body for the undergraduates at University of Nevada, Reno. 

The club members volunteered for the soup kitchen with St. Vincent’s last year and also took part in organizing and racking clothes for the St. Vincent’s Thrift Store around the month of September. On October 15, 2021 they conducted their first in-person meeting where they got other student volunteers to help them with packaging of feminine hygiene products for the women on the streets of Reno.

A total of five women volunteers showed up at the Ansari business building at UNR where all of them helped pack a total of 50 bags of feminine hygiene products that the club officers thought would be useful to any unhoused woman on the Reno streets.

Powerpoints and Partnerships

The event began with a brief introductory Powerpoint presentation that Tranquilino put together for the meeting. Soon after, the club members and volunteers played a game of bingo cards in order to get to know each other better. Tranquilino also played some music in order to keep the event light and interactive. The volunteers were instructed to pack each brown bag with six sanitary napkins, three tampons, two sanitary wipes and two panty liners.

Sathappan wrote little messages on each bag with colored pens to give it a more personal touch. The students laughed when they found out that a bag being packed with feminine hygiene goods also had the brand named ‘Dude Wipes’ in it. After the packaging the club members said that they would themselves drive to the Reno Gospel Mission in order to drop the bags off. “ We are not doing in-person handouts due to the Covid situation,” Thomas said.

SBNUNR, though a small group, has often had as many as 95 people reach out to them when they’ve conducted Google Surveys.

“ This work is hard with Covid restrictions but when volunteers and other outreach groups reach out to us in large numbers, we find it really cool and that keeps us going forward,” Benny said. Though their bigger focus is helping the houseless people, their plan is to prioritize better health and sanitation for the unhoused women population of Reno.

Benny says she has also been in touch with Red Equity, an organization in Reno trying to end period poverty. SBNUNR is still in talks with them and is trying to help partner with them or get donations for the organization in the near future. Since SBNUNR is a fairly new club with limited resources, they are yet to help some bigger organizations who work around organic female hygiene goods. “ Those organic products are costly and would need a better packaging event and not like the small 50-bag packaging we did in October,” the group said. However, they acknowledge this as a great starting point and are looking at conducting more events to help out the community in 2022.

Reporting by Kingkini Sengupta for Our Town Reno

Danielle, A Mom Becomes Houseless With No Available Options After Safe Embrace

We followed up on an urgent message we received earlier this week from Danielle, living when we reached her at Safe Embrace, a local domestic abuse treatment center.  “My children and I (along with other women and women with children) are being thrown out out with nowhere to go after 90 days of being in here,” Danielle wrote. “If somebody could please reach out to me, so I (we) can tell our story and let the public exactly know what we’re going through and exactly what we’ve been told. PLEASE!”

“They do tell you you have 90 days, no extensions, maybe circumstances for a few days or something like that,” Danielle explained in a follow up phone call.  “I actually stayed in a weekly for a couple of months until there was room in here, which I paid for myself, I worked at Tesla and just kind of did that until I was able to come in here,” she said.

She’s since changed jobs several times, and started a new one with a temp agency this week that pays $18 an hour, but she still can’t afford any place in Reno right now, including a weekly,  while her time at Safe Embrace is coming to an end. 

Danielle confirmed Tuesday night she’s been told today would be her last official day, and that Safe Embrace said it would pay for her for two nights at a hotel, with the weekend and the week after totally uncertain mow.

She says there has been staff turnover including with leadership at the domestic abuse treatment center recently, which has created communication problems. Previous staff told her they wouldn’t allow her and her three kids to be unhoused, but now she says trying to communicate with the new staff has been “frustrating.”  We emailed Safe Embrace for an interview about this situation but after responding they were willing to do so, while mentioning their confidentiality policy, we did not hear back. Their About Us has TBDs in several key positions including for sexual violence advocate.

“They give you resources to help yourself with housing,” Danielle explained.  “So I signed up for rapid rehousing and I qualified. Now, this was just a week ago. But we don't know how long it's going to be to wait… “  Her rapidly shifting job situation created additional problems, but she says she’s not alone in not knowing where to live after her allotted time with Safe Embrace. “There's another woman with actually four kids that lives here and she has a couple more weeks. And it's gonna be the same thing with her. And another woman she's been working and, there's nowhere for her to go either. ”

One Safe Embrace resident wrote us she was also on waiting lists for housing after her stay but that nothing was opening up for her either with her time quickly running out. She said she is on the waiting list for three programs, transitional housing, rapid rehousing and their shelter house, but that all are still full. She said she’s been told the Our Place shelter for women and families is full as well.

The mother of four wrote us saying she only had a week left. She said she now regretted leaving her abuser. She said she feels the stay is too short as well, and she needs more time to sort her future. She says staff has also been stingy with cleaning supplies.

Several women who reached out to Our Town Reno said the help felt short of their expectations. Safe Embrace agreed to an interview, but then didn’t write back.

Danielle says she’s been told she can’t get into another domestic abuse center either, because her incident is now more than 90 days old.  Applying for her own housing has led nowhere either, as she says she has a prior eviction on her record. “You know, you have to make double the amount and what not. I have an eviction that's like five years old and basically it's open closed, like, ‘oh no, we won't take you,’ unless I'm not honest about it. But I'm not gonna lie about anything. Like this is what's happened. I have one in 2016 and they basically shut the door and they don't take us.”

She has no vehicle as she sold a truck she had to afford a weekly in Reno until a spot opened up for her at Safe Embrace. She was referenced to go there from another domestic abuse center in San Diego, which transferred her due to her extended ties in this area.

Danielle used to live in Reno five years ago and worked for a while for Volunteers of America at the women’s shelter.  The father of her kids lives in the area, as does his family, and her own mom and sister.  The father has been keeping the youngest child during the week as Safe Embrace doesn’t allow kids to stay unattended.   She says having family here as helped but not as much as she hoped for, and has also created new problems.

Danielle wanted to get an extra 30 days or at least two more weeks at Safe Embrace to have enough money to move in a weekly again, as she said she’s also still waiting for her last check from her previous job.

When she first arrived at Safe Embrace, she felt it might be a turning point, “but now with everything kind of being pulled from underneath us, it's frustrating,” she said. “Can you just give me a couple more weeks? Like I just need a couple weeks to get a new check from this new job,” she pleaded.  “I just feel as though there should be a little bit more leniency and they should see, they should take a case by case into what's going on with people. It's not like I'm just sitting around, not working, not trying.”

She was unhoused previously at the start of the pandemic in San Diego after she and her partner lost jobs, and then when they got jobs again she thought they were on their way to better times there, but the partner she was with got violent again.  

“She was very abusive to me and my children. That's why me and her got into a physical altercation is because she put her hands on my daughter,” she said.  “And so when I confronted her about it, we began to fight and she actually gashed my whole eye open. I had a black eye and a busted lip.  The police were called by one of our neighbors... The kids got three outfits. I grabbed my German Shepherd and jumped in the car and I haven't looked back. I was in a domestic violence shelter where CPS came and you know questioned the kids, questioned me… They went ahead and pressed charges against her and she was actually arrested and apprehended for child abuse and child neglect, I believe, or I don't know the exact charges.”

The shelter in San Diego then transferred her to Safe Embrace.  “I was like,’ okay, sounds good. And I did that. But it's just been trudging through mud. It's just hard,” she said. Her kids wake up early every week day to go to school and catch the bus and she breaks down in tears talking about their own fears about what’s ahead.   “They're just, they're really great kids. And they try so hard. And they're like, ‘mom, where are we gonna go?’ I'm like, ‘I don't know.’” And they're like, ‘mom, please, not another shelter. But I don't even have that to offer them.”

Our Town Reno Reporting, January 2022

Graduate Students in Reno Lead Statewide Push to Get Housing Help

UNR and then Statewide Resolutions

After considering the plight of various UNR students regarding their housing and stipends they get, Matthew Hawn, the President of the Graduate Student Association (GSA) which represents the more than 3,600 graduate students at UNR, along with 25 other elected members, decided to present a Housing Resolution to highlight the problems that the current students are facing.

The authors of the resolution, Matthew Hawn (GSA President), Taissa Lytchenko (GSA Internal Vice President), Fatema Azmee (College of Liberal Arts & Journalism Representative), Monika Bharti (College of Education and Human Development Resolution) and Arturo Macias Franco (College of Agriculture, Biotechnology, & Natural Resources Representative) requested American Rescue Plan funds for universities in Nevada to go toward supporting affordable housing for students. After careful consideration, the GSA council members voted unanimously and passed the resolution on November 30, 2021.

A partnership was also formed with UNLV's Nicole Thomas (representing UNLV's Graduate and Professional Student Association-GPSA). Together the two graduate student bodies submitted a similar resolution to the Nevada Student Alliance (NSA) to be presented to the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents.

The NSA acts as an overarching student government association for all 10 NSHE student government organizations and represents 110,000 students.

UNR and UNLV grad students then passed a joint resolution on December 2, urging the state to use American Rescue Plan funds for affordable housing for graduate students. To follow suit, the GPSA, also passed a similar resolution on December 2nd to match the NSA and GSA Resolutions. 

President Hawn believes that with these funds UNR, a R1 Carnegie Institution, will be able to help its highly valued research students diminish some of the unnecessary pressures that a student might face due to high housing costs in the Reno area, which he says serves as a barrier to entry for students seeking a higher graduate degree.

“Unless we ban together to address the devastating problem of unaffordable housing in Nevada, our young and vulnerable generations will continue bearing the crux of the financial burden. Is this really the way we want to equip future leaders of our world? “ asked Taissa Lytchenko, Vice President of Internal Affairs, for GSA. “I truly hope that the current Nevada administration has the willpower to answer this urgent call to action to help our students in need.”

Gripping Testimonies for Help

Other members who also helped put the resolution together include GSA General Council Members Fatema Azmee, Monika Bharti and Arturo Macias Franco.

Bharti, an Indian international Ph.D. student at UNR residing in Reno for the last seven years, said, “I think GSA's Housing Resolution will provide a sense of direction on how to make housing opportunities available to both international and [local] students as well as it gives a clear picture of what barriers do exists when it comes to housing. And I think, without question, creating more affordable housing is fundamentally important.” 

“Prices in Reno are too high, and graduate students cannot afford to live here, we risk losing talented individuals to other institutions because of the prices of rent and the low stipend offered by the University,” said Fatema Azmee, a Master's student in History who has been a Reno resident for the past twenty-three years.

“The cost of living has gone up, but our stipend has remained the same. This resolution is important because legislators and people need to know that the graduate student population is growing at UNR but in terms of funding we are very limited compared to undergraduates. Many people view graduate education as optional, but a higher educational institution cannot function without us. Graduate students lead discussion sections and labs, grade, do research and help undergraduates and professors in other various ways. For example, I have gone out of my way to help my students write their essays holding one-on-one zoom meetings with them during the late evenings or even my weekends. UNR is becoming a top tier institution and the President [Brian Sandoval] has big hopes and dreams for the university. I think it would be wonderful if UNR can become part of the Association of American Universities [an organization of American research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education] like President Sandoval aspires too. However, they cannot reach this milestone without great graduate students, and we cannot be great when we are focused on whether or not we have to choose between rent, gas, or food. Our students are mentally exhausted, stretched thin, and with the increases in student housing are at a breaking point. Receiving funds for student housing would help us succeed, so we can help our undergraduates and our professors succeed too.'“

A Student Not Knowing Where He was Going to Sleep

Arturo Macias Franco, PhD Student in the Animal and Rangeland Sciences Program who also helped with the drafting of the Resolution said he had to have three jobs concurrently while attending school full time, and not always with stable shelter. “I always prioritized my education and making my tuition payments so that I could persevere on my dreams,” he said. “With that, I unfortunately experienced hardships that teenagers and students should never have to experience. Finishing 20-hour shifts, working overnight cleaning carpets and toilets, I recall finishing my shifts not knowing where I would sleep each night. At times, lucky enough to have a couch or a floor inside of friends and family houses, keeping up with my schoolwork and research was extremely challenging.”

Franco said sadly he’s heard of many others who have been in his situation. “No student should ever have to choose between skipping meals, or losing their homes in pursuit of their educational dreams,” he said. “The current increases in rent in Reno are extremely alarming and should particularly be worrisome to NSHE and its institutions for the wellbeing and continuation of many students is at jeopardy. As a land-grant institution, serving the state and all Nevadans should be our focus. It is clear that NSHE, our governing body, and our executive leadership should be committed to serving the wellbeing of all students, not only those who can afford the increasing fees. “

The housing crisis in Reno is not a recent problem but a perpetual struggle that a student faces here, year after year, without a permanent solution. Graduate students only have one graduate housing unit which is now having almost equivalent rent as other apartments in Reno. 

Ponderosa village, a housing complex located on campus, only available to graduate students, professional students, faculty and staff, also proposed a 4.5% increase in their accommodation rates for Fiscal year 2023. This means a one bedroom will go from $1,150 to $1,202 per month for a yearly lease, and a two bedroom full unit from $1,370 to $1,432. There is also a two bedroom shared unit possibility which will go from $705 to $737.

The GSA voted against the proposed rent increase after surveying the residents of Ponderosa village twice. However, the Board of Regents on their December 2, 2021 meeting voted in favor of the rent increase with just one of the regents against and one absent.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

NSA RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF PROVIDING FUNDS FROM THE ARP TO INDIVIDUAL NSHE INSTITUTIONS FOR AFFORDABLE STUDENT HOUSING - https://nshe.nevada.edu/wp-content/uploads/Academic-Affairs/Student-Govt/NSA%20Resolution%20Supporting%20the%20Use%20of%20American%20Recovery%20Plan%20Funds%20for%20Affordable%20Student%20Housing%20(Signed).pdf

Reporting by Kingkini Sengupta who is also a Council Member of the GSA

A Free Boutique to Shine at Our Place

Nestled within the sprawling campus for about 250 unhoused women and families off of North St. in Sparks, in the back of building 2A, is the Our Place to Shine Community Boutique. It looks and feels like a cozy vintage thrift shop.

Mary Gilbert is working on painting a new section with more warm colors and a mountain scene to make it look she says “more like a boutique and not an institution.” There’s a row of funky hats, racks full of useful and beautiful clothes, cosmetics, hygiene products, and endless boxes of hand sanitizer. The twist: items here are free for those in need at Our Place.  

“So this area is gonna be the space for kids and male identifying folks,” Gilbert, the community engagement director for the Reno Initiative for Shelter and Equality (RISE) explained on a recent tour. “So I'm in the process of painting this right now and all of this will be filled in the way that is over here. And so over on this side, we've got the women's clothes. So jackets are over here. We have sweaters and long sleeve shirts, bras, underwear, socks, blankets. We also have like work wear. We have like scrubs, we have the uniform black pants, which are common in a lot of the casinos and spaces like that. So it's like a multitude of things. We do have dresses and stuff over here for folks that would prefer to wear a dress for like a job interview. Or we also have women who want church clothes. We have a ton of socks. When I first came in here, we had like virtually no underwear, and now we have so much underwear, somebody when they donated a big box of underwear, I've never seen somebody so excited about underwear.  ”

The items are also a stocking area for Our Place outreach director Wendy Wiglesworth, a notorious expert collector herself, who has donated many of the hats. She will sometimes take blankets to people not yet at Our Place but as part of her outreach efforts along the river, where she used to live herself.

“And a lot of these hats, some of them are really fun,” Gilbert said. “Like I think that honestly there's some of them that people come in and they're like, well, look at this weird hat. Right. Like, at least it brings a smile to their face, even if they're not gonna take it with them.”

Gilbert continues the tour meticulously and explains the worth of having a special boutique.  “We’ve got like pants and makeup, and job interview clothes over here, we have a dressing room. So when I first came into this project, it was just kind of like the requests were filled and taken down, which was definitely effective. Everybody got the stuff that they needed. But now with the support from our Washoe County partners, we were able to make it super pretty in here and a space where women can come in, and essentially shop for clothes.  And they get to decide what they're wearing. And so then they leave feeling better as opposed to, you know, just getting they needed. They can get some stuff that they want.”

The boutique is a partnership between RISE which operates Our Place and the Washoe County Human Services agency.  It’s had a soft opening for the ready women’s area, and plans to do a bigger opening once all areas are finished.  Excess donations are sometimes handed out on a per need basis to other advocates doing outreach. 

“The main focus is obviously the folks that we're serving here on campus, but I'm really fortunate to work with folks that understand that if we have enough, then we should be able to share it with the folks that are out there that we can't quite serve yet,” Gilbert said.

Gilbert herself has lived experience with institutions, “and it wasn't super healing for me,” she says, so she’s trying to get it right with this boutique.  “I’m like, why would we not make this a more comfortable space?  We can bring this to the folks that we're serving and then they can have a much more enjoyable experience than feeling like they're in like some weird flesh tone institution, grabbing clothes, right. Everybody deserves that sort of compassion, dignity, and a beautiful space to spend time in.” 

Gilbert draws on her own experiences of living in poverty to make the store part of the healing journey for residents of Our Place.

“I could never go to a store and just like grab whatever I wanted,” she said. “Like I had to check the price tags and be like, okay, I can maybe afford this. And then like, you gotta go up to the register and then you gotta like put things back or whatever. I think that it's not only like a great feeling to know that you can, you can grab things that make you feel like beautiful or comfortable or, you know, like some of the folks that we've had come in have been like, holy crap, like this is the first time, I felt good about myself in a really long time. And also it gives them that motivation to be like, dude, you know, like if I keep working on my case plan, if I keep moving forward, like eventually I could get to that point where I can go into a store and not have to add everything up, like perfectly in my mind and maybe have to return one or two things. Like it gives them that motivation as well to start moving forward.”

The wide array of blankets is for people entering the boutique to find that blanket that will make them feel more secure at night. They can also choose from different types of pajamas. There’s a table with boxes of chapstick, makeup, hair ties, earrings, toiletries including Black hair products, and travel size items. There’s a wall decorated with fancy purses.  

“For the most part, we do encourage, when they come in, like, remember that, you're sharing this with everybody else,” Gilbert said in explaining in more detail the process of when someone staying at Our Place enters the boutique. “I just ask them to be conscious of that. And we try to make sure that the amount of things that they take, isn't going to overwhelm them on campus.”

Gilbert has been in her job since November and is thrilled with this new part of her duties.  “I was essentially working on my own, working on social media and making all these fun graphics, but I felt like I could be doing so much more. And so this was like, this was just like a dream, right? Like, this is the best because, not only is it a space where people can come and find things that make them feel better, [it also gives them] some peace for a minute…”

It’s also open for community donations which also makes people giving feel better about themselves. “People want to help, but not everybody always has money to donate, but everybody always has at least like some clothing items or toiletry items or something that they can give and so that feels good for the community to be able to contribute these things to the guests that we serve that so greatly deserve it,” Gilbert said.

Our Town Reno reporting, January 2022

Shelby Lopez, Seeking Urgent Help to Avoid Eviction in Reno for Her Family of Four

Shelby Lopez, 26, a stay-at-home mother of two working part-time as a brand ambassador, is trying to raise her two small children in Reno, but now after an unexpected setback for her fiancé Jacob at his work, she’s reaching out on GoFundMe to save her family from being evicted from their two bedroom place at the Vizcaya Hilltop Apartments.

After utilities and pet fees, they’ve been paying about $1,800 a month.  When they moved there several years ago, she says their rent started out at $1580, not a huge increase, but now too high for any wiggle room. 

Shelby says her fiancé, who is 24, works for a local logistics company. A recent problem with that job cost him hundreds of dollars in pay they were expecting. “They deliver like Pelotons and stuff like that,” she explained. “And, his boss just has a contract with XPO Logistics. And so they have big box truck they drive around and his boss owns that. And the engine blew or something on his truck. And so, they were out of work. It was for four days total and it was about like $600.”

In December, the family was only able to pay about 900 dollars rather than their full rent.  “And they said it would be fine just like give 'em what we can like, try and get it paid or whatever,” she said of the apartment managers initially. But she says they then filed paperwork, setting in motion a possible eviction.   “We have a 30-day notice to pay and then we have been emailed and told through our manager that if we don't get the payment paid by the 10th in full that we will be getting the eviction, and then that will be like a 24-hour lockout. I’ve never dealt with anywhere, that's so like, doesn't care. I get that it's a corporate setting, but they're just … they don't care.”

Rent is usually paid by the family on the fourth of every month, and when it’s not paid in full they also get an added late fee of 90 dollars.  Shelby says they now owe $2,009. 

In her GoFundMe post she wrote: “We somehow always seem to figure our stuff out but with Jacob's current job wages he's just not making enough money to cover all our bills and it's finally catching up with us…. We're already doing everything we can, giving plasma, selling our TVs, and anything we have of value that we can replace, but it's still just not cutting it with having enough gas money for work and food expenses. I'm extremely embarrassed and reluctant to post this because I just feel so ashamed that we're in this position in the first place but God has put it on my heart to ask for help so here I am to ask.”  

“You know, I was desperate and so that's why I made it, but it's actually gotten a good amount of traffic. I had a few friends that donated and shared it and my one friend, in Hawaii, she has like 20,000 followers. And so I think that really helped. And so just the kindness of strangers is what is getting us through.” The GoFundMe has been stuck now at $658 of the $1,000 goal for several days.  

Previously in Motels, Thinking of Leaving Reno Eventually

Shelby says it’s been a difficult road already from her family. She says they really wanted to build a life in Reno where her fiancé is from but that eventually it might be too difficult.  Shelby is from Rockland, Califonia, where she says it’s “pretty pricey” as well. “As we moved to Reno, once we got here, it seems like the market just kinda blew up,” she said. 

They initially stayed in motels, including the Reno Royal Motor Lodge, and in a Siegel Suites. 

“We’re trying to start better habits this year and start a savings account with our tax return and get going with that,” she said of hopes for 2022. “We have a car that we only owe about a thousand dollars to a friend of ours that we have a payment plan with and it's worth a good amount of money. It's like a Toyota Land Cruiser. And so just trying to pay that off as quick as we can, and hopefully we'll be able to sell that car. And with the way Reno is, the market, I think we'll be heading out of state, but that's a whole other fun situation in itself I think, figuring that out.”

Shelby doesn’t have family that can help with the kids, and with preschools so expensive and always shutting down with the pandemic that hasn’t been an option to find more work hours for herself.  She says she’s tried getting rental assistance through COVID funding, but was denied.  

“Low cost housing is the biggest issue I think at the end of the day,” she said of people like herself.  “We’re definitely trying to get ahead in life and not let this be our situation every month.”

Our Town Reno reporting January 2022

Richard Bednarski Bids Farewell to Our Town Reno

Reflecting on stories shared

CS: What have you liked the most about being a reporter for Our Town Reno?

RB: I think just getting out there and being in the community and following the stories that happened, especially in the past year and a half. There's been so much shift in the affordable housing crisis and homelessness. Some of that was spurred on by the pandemic, but some of it's burdened by the city, the city council and developers. Just seeing all of those balls kind of roll down the hill and being right there, covering it and telling the stories of the people most impacted has been the part that's brought me the most satisfaction because I get to help bring those voices to the unheard. 

CS: Do you have a favorite story or something that you wrote about that?

RB: I was thinking, because I figured this would be a question of what my favorite story was and I thought about it. I've done a handful of stories interviewing people on the streets and learning their experience. I think all of the stories of me just going down to the Wells underpass and speaking with people who live in tents there before it was swept or see people get swept from the Gateway park a couple of weeks later. Just the idea of going down and meeting with these people and having a conversation with them on a human level was awesome. 

But I did speak to a fellow who was going blind. His name was Troy. And this was about this time last year. He was a contractor for a long time, had a back injury and one thing led to another and he was homeless. And that resonated with me because I have a bad back and I have an injury there and it's something I have to contend with. It just kind of made the point hit home that one thing can make anybody homeless, especially today. The economy where it is and what the whole country, the whole world has seen in the past year and a half with the pandemic. His story really stuck out.

Further reporting, he's now at the Cares Campus. As of probably September, I saw him there doing another story. He was waiting in line to get some food and some provisions from a community member who came down there on a weekly basis to help provide services that they're not getting, or that are not being met at the Cares Campus. So it seems like he's in good hands. At least at the Cares Campus, he's got a roof over his head, but I haven't talked to him since last year.

Another part of the reporting I've done that has stuck with me is the advocates. There's so many advocates for the unhoused here in Reno. It's crazy. It seems like they're doing so much more than other people or other entities that have the resources that aren't just putting forth the effort. Whereas these community members, just like you or me or any of our listeners, are stepping forth and using their own resources, their own time and money to help these people who have fallen on hard times. And that spurred a photo project for me kind of focusing on them as a way of promoting the efforts of what they're doing to help the unhoused. 

One of the people Bednarski wanted to mention specifically was Troy, who Bednarski connected with on a deeper level. (http://www.ourtownreno.com/our-stories-1/2020/11/26/troy-living-in-a-tent-in-reno-with-a-bad-back-and-going-blind)

Changing views on the streets of the Biggest Little City

CS: Since you started reporting, how do you think this work has changed your views on the unhoused or housing insecure people and like those issues surrounding them?

RB: I think it's made me more empathetic towards their struggles and their problems. One thing that I kind of knew going in before I started reporting on them is there was kind of a mental health issue, but it's far more prevailing than I would've ever imagined beforehand. And it's something that's not getting addressed. A lot of people that think of the homeless, they just look at them as having some sort of issue; they're on drugs, they're drunk, whatever. But, often they're in that state because of some sort of underlying mental health issue. That is something that I don't think is being as addressed as readily as it needs to be.

And then also seeing so many hotels get just destroyed and leveled by the Jacobs Entertainment company has been extremely frustrating to me. Because yeah, these hotels weren't the best living conditions, but with a little bit of investment, they could have become great transitional housing. Not only do we have more people moving onto the streets, we have empty buildings. Now if we want to create some sort of transitional housing, we have to use all those environmental resources to build something new. It's more impactful on the environment. It's more impactful on the economy because that money now has to come from somewhere and it's a lot cheaper to refabricate and renovate a building than it is to build one brand new.

I'm still upset at the hotel's getting destroyed. And there's two more on the docket and I'll probably kind of try to document them again. I documented one earlier this year, the Townhouse Motor Lodge. I'll probably continue that project as well to showcase the story because Reno is changing and it's at this point where city officials and residents can put forth effort to make Reno become a great town or a great city. But I don't know if those steps are going to be taken, and if we get too big, then the homeless issue is going to get worse and worse and it's going to be harder and harder to fix. 

It's going to be interesting to see what comes out with this, this investigative piece and what happens next year, being an election year. There's a lot of important city seats that are up for reelection, including mayor. So we'll see what happens. 

A photo Richie Bedmarski took of Carl at the Wells Ave. tent city before it was swept as people were encouraged to go to the newly opened Nevada Cares Campus in 2021.

Evolving as a Multimedia Journalist

CS: How would you say that Our Town Reno shaped your work specifically as a journalist?

RB: I came into this program hoping to come out as a stronger photographer and get a job in photography. But those jobs are unicorns and they're few and far between unless you want to lug TV equipment around and work for a TV studio, which I am not about to do.

So I fell in love with audio and it was because of the reporting and the interview style that I do with Our Town Reno and some audio classes that I've had that have really shown that audio, to me, is really fun. It's a really interactive and engaging way to produce the story. I get to think differently than I do if I'm writing or photographing the story. I never thought I'd get into audio, but now I have a podcast that I'm hoping to continue after school, and I hope to use my audio skills in the future for a job and to supplement and augment my photography. 

Bednarski closely followed Jacobs Entertainment as they bought out and then destroyed locally owned motels in the Reno area. Photo by Richard Bednarski.

Plans for the Future

CS: What's that podcast about?

RB: It's called Changing the Climate. It's a podcast that's geared towards changing the conversation around climate change with the idea that I can take the science of a lot of things and distill it down into kind of a conversational level. That will allow people to think differently about climate change so that it's not always doom and gloom. And there's some sort of positive or solutions oriented ending to my stories. The first season is all about wildfire and it's kind of what my master's project is. It’s about how climate change is shifting the fire regime across the West. I utilized a lot of the interviews I did for my masters and the research I did and built a more specific story based podcast out of it.

CS: Where did you start getting into climate change reporting? 

RB: It's something I've always been interested in. I'm a huge environmentalist and conservationist and that philosophy kind of drives everything I do. Moving into journalism, it was kind of natural for me to focus on the environment. And a lot of that comes from just love of being outside, being in nature and away from buildings and cities. I figured if I could get into storytelling about the environment, then I could have more opportunities to be outside. 

CS: What are your plans for after you graduate? Would you like to continue with climate change reporting? Stay here in Reno?

RB: I’ve gone back and forth about where I want to end up, but I know I need a job where that job's going to be, I'm not sure. Ideally, I've landed on staying in Reno initially. I thought maybe I'd move to cover something else, but as I thought about it more and more, I've been in Reno for so long. I'm really invested in this community. I know a lot of people, I have a lot of sources and I know a lot of the issues. I think having that insider perspective is going to bring something to local journalism that it is in dire need of right now to kind of help rebuild. So I'm hoping to stay in Reno and find a job. I don't know where it will be, but I do want to eventually focus on the environment, climate change and natural disasters. I think in the long-term, it'll probably be a freelance base where I can pick and choose what stories I tell. I just need to get there. Hopefully there'll be a break there. But if a job comes, the job comes, but I'm hoping to take a week or two off work.

CS: Where can people find you and find your work? 

So let's see I'm most active… in person. So that's kind of hard to find me. I have Instagram @photo_bednarski and that's not as active right now because of school, but that's where I kind of do a lot of my photography and promote my podcast. And then I have a Twitter, which @bednarskiace, and then @converseclimate is the Twitter account for my podcast. My website is just richardbednarski.com and I'm always open to talk about anything really.

CS: Is there anything else you'd want to tell people reading?

RB: No. Just keep being you and keep making humans awesome. 

Interview and Reporting by Catherine Schofield for Our Town Reno

Complaint about CHA Grant by Former Employee is Being Looked at in Washington

The email message is short but to the point.

“This matter is still ongoing. I’ll reach out to you if we need additional information necessary to advance this case,” Special Agent Ike Abanobi, from the Office of Inspector General with the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, wrote back to James Fleming in mid-December. Abanobi is part of an operation overseeing the HHS’s portfolio of programs.

The matter in question here is Fleming accusing his former employer, the Community Health Alliance, a Federally Qualified Health Center catering to lower income populations in northern Nevada, of not adequately spending $455,059 of recent grant money earmarked for COVID testing.

The Health Resources and Services Administration grant for the March 2020 to March 2021 period came with stipulations to “purchase, administer, and expand capacity for testing to monitor and suppress COVID-19.”

But documents on CHA spending that grant money obtained by Fleming through the Freedom of Information Act (including below) have no checks in the testing category. There are marks for staff and patient safety, including the purchase of dental suction systems and blood pressure cuffs, maintaining health center capacity and staffing, including upgrades to its telephone system and replacing flooring in a mobile medical unit, and expanding Telehealth capabilities, but in the delineated testing category, there are no indications of any activity.

Fleming says CHA staff could have put efforts into reaching out to the unsheltered and lower income immunosuppressed in the community, and find a way to actually protect them with testing.

Fleming says he’s looking forward to what the investigation comes up with. “They're experts and they have a very large budget and I'm looking into other fraud cases, you know, around the country that they've looked into because they publish what they've done and what they've caught people doing. And that gives me a lot of confidence,” he told Our Town Reno during a recent interview at the downtown library. 

Misspending the grant money is just one accusation he makes, as he also alleges other manipulations, including increasing the number of unhoused and agricultural migrant workers the CHA serves to get access to more funding, using Telehealth as a means to make more money, being way overstaffed with over a dozen employees for the results he saw accomplished for the CHA’s WIC outreach program and losing his job for reporting internally on activities he believes were wrong.  WIC is the government program which offers free nutritious foods, health and social services referrals, breastfeeding support and nutrition education for women, infants and children. 

Fleming says one recent goal seems to have been to repurpose money that doesn’t actually help the community, but helps the CHA itself. “Imagine like water going into a giant pool,” Fleming said as a way of explaining this. “Like if you had water in a pitcher that was just meant to water the garden, but instead you just poured it into the pool. You can't really see where the flower watering money went.” 

He also describes 2020 as a perfect storm of fewer services and more federal money. “We were closing facilities for many months the dental program, the homeless facility shut down. So a lot less services, but more money coming in because you not only do the regular yearly grants and contracts keep coming in, but the Cares Act emergency funding and the paycheck protection plan money is coming in at the same time.”

Fleming says more staff were hired, such as a chief legal officer.  Fleming has been trying to organize a meeting with Casey Gillham, listed on the CHA website as the Chief Administrative Officer, and while that seemed like a possibility at first, his recent Medium posts, where he accuses CHA of fraud, seem to have put that type of meeting off the table.

Fleming recently pointed Our Town Reno to documents (including above) indicating salaries have gone up recently, such as for  CHA’s CEO Oscar Delgado, who was listed as making $180,000 in the position in 2019, raised to $199,166 in 2020.  The previous CEO Charles Duarte was listed as making $146,264 in 2018. Fleming sees this as a disturbing overall trend of money not being used to help those most in need.

Fleming also posts his stories on Facebook, often tagging city council members including Delgado. He’s also sent versions to the Reno Gazette-Journal as letters to the editor. 

While he used to be able to tag Delgado, that option was removed in late 2021.   “I think it tells me that he's at least noticed a little bit or somebody has told him, ‘hey, some guy's airing out dirty laundry.’”

Our Town Reno reached out to several employees at CHA including Delgado for a response before the Christmas holiday season.  Megan Duggan, the Director of Community Relations for CHA, emailed a detailed response this week with Gillham cced. 

In terms of the grant for testing and Fleming’s allegations of misuse, Duggan wrote: “This belies a misunderstanding of the HRSA grant process. First, CHA had to apply for the grant. As part of that process, CHA is required to inform HRSA what it expects to spend the funding on. HRSA reviews the application and makes a determination as to whether to award the funds. Second, CHA has to provide quarterly updates and documentation to HRSA on what the funding has been spent on. At any time, if HRSA does not believe the purchases are within the scope of the award, it can prohibit the Health Center from drawing down additional funds. CHA was awarded the funding and never received any indication from HRSA that CHA somehow used this funding inappropriately.”

She also addressed his allegations of how people are categorized when being helped. “Mr. Fleming has also alleged that CHA has inflated the number of homeless people it serves in exchange for some financial benefit,” she wrote. “This is simply not true… In 2018, CHA reported serving 2,250 homeless patients. In 2019, CHA reported serving 2,257 patients, which is seven more patients than 2018. In 2020, CHA reported seeing 881 homeless patients. First, CHA does not receive some type of “yearly bonus” based on the specific number of homeless individuals that we serve. To that point, there is no incentive to inflate that number. Second, if CHA’s intention was to inflate the number of homeless people it served, why would we have reported a nearly 150 percent decrease in 2020?”

In terms of WIC she noted in part: “The National WIC Association reported that since 2017, WIC clinics across the country have reported a heightened level of fear among immigrant and mixed-status families participating in WIC services, prompting eligible families to refuse access to vital nutrition and breastfeeding support. Due to this fear, families have sought to withdraw from WIC services over the years. Hence, the decline in our numbers, though, we continue to be optimistic and ensure the protection of patient information, including one’s immigration or citizenship status. To emphasize, WIC funds are used for WIC services only. In August 2020, the State of Nevada performed an audit to ensure that expenses charged to the WIC program were in accordance with established cost principles in 7 CFR 246 and 7 CFR 3016. The audit stated that ‘[n]o findings were noted.’”

Also included in the email was explaining in person outreach and assistance for unhoused communities: “With regard to the homeless healthcare services CHA provides, we continue to provide free health services (primary care, dental, behavioral health and pharmacy) to the homeless population at our six other health centers in Reno and Sparks,” Duggan wrote.  “Additionally, CHA provides medical services on-site through our Mobile Medical Center at OUR Place weekly. Our dental team also regularly visits OUR Place to provide dental screenings and fluoride treatments to pediatric patients. If restorative care is needed, our team follows up to ensure they have access to transportation and can receive the necessary care at our Wells Ave. Health Center. Up until approximately three weeks ago, CHA had an employee serving as a homeless outreach specialist, who would routinely visit homeless camps in attempt to arrange for individuals to receive services. The individual who was serving in that role resigned to take a position with the County.” 

There was an article published by This is Reno in November which had back and forth as well between Fleming and Duggan over how the unhoused are counted. Fleming says he was happy with that article as ultimately he says he wants more discussion, openness and transparency in how the CHA operates and funds different programs.

Fleming says he worked for CHA from October 2017 through February 2021 as a “statistician.” We weren’t able to confirm the exact dates of his employment, but he says he started doing data extractions related to dental services CHA provides, and then he says when he did his job well he became “the data guy for everything.”  

“I’d be reporting to the federal program that fund CHA and also for internal internal requests, like where are our patients? Where do they live? Where's a good place to build a new clinic? Do we have people coming from Sun Valley enough that it's worth it to open up a clinic there, those kind of metrics,” he explained. “And, also like is the dental department charging out enough services and receiving enough from Medicaid to justify having a dental department, you know, internal questions like that.”

In February 2021, though, he says that after complaining to high level staff that CHA was “turning in false data,” publicly available data he says which did not reflect his own work, and then later that he was filing his complaints to federal authorities, he says he was let go from his job. 

He admits part of his current pursuit is “vindictiveness” but that he also wants to do good for the community and CHA in the long run.  He says he was complimented for how he was doing his job initially and feels he was then doing what he was supposed to do.  “Like if you see something, say something,” he said.  He says he loves the idea behind the Community Health Alliance and just wants to make sure it uses the money it gets wisely to help the people who need it the most.  

CHA’s Duggan concluded her email saying:  “CHA prides itself on serving the most vulnerable in our community. It is unfortunate that Mr. Fleming has resorted to wild, outlandish, and false allegations.”

Our Town Reno Reporting, January 2022

Agorism, What is it and could it be what Reno needs?

Rooted in Non-Violent Anarchy and Individual Counter-Economics

“It can be many things; it’s a political philosophy, it’s a form of economics, or counter-economics,” explained long-time Nevadan and business owner, Kevin, when asked to explain the concept of agorism, which was brought up on Twitter recently and piqued our interest. It can also be the pursuit of a range of lifestyles. Kevin believes it has the potential to be a form of social change. 

“It’s a form of anarchism,” he explained, one that is based on free-market forms. Anarchy sometimes gets painted as rooted in violence and riots, but the true definition is simply a society without a government and absolute freedom of the individual. Some see this as lawlessness while others view anarchy as a path to self-reliance and sufficiency. 

“The central grain of agorism is to eventually deprive the state of its source of funding,” said Kevin. This form of government has no central funding platform and fully believes in the power of the free market. “Agorism advocates non-violence,” he added.

Kevin feels that any society that does not have to deal with the surveillance and taxation of the state is more productive and can offer more wealth to all its members. “The goal is to exist without all the baggage that a state comes with,” he explained, including state-sponsored wars.

“I think agorism points to contradictions in Marxist philosophy and gives us a better way to look at it,” he added, explaining further. He feels agorism takes the better parts of Communism, anarchy, capitalism and combines these elements into a new package that embodies the spirit of the individual. 

Created by Samuel Konkin, a political philosopher, it came out of the split between libertarians that occurred in the 1970s. One group sought to seek change through political means while another group realized there was a contradiction. “Between wanting to get rid of the state and seeking political power through the state,” Kevin explained.

According to Wikipedia, Konkin rejected voting, “believing it to be inconsistent with libertarian ethics. He likewise opposed involvement with the Libertarian Party, which he regarded as a statist co-option of libertarianism.” 

Cryptocurrency is a contemporary example of a form of agorism, according to Kevin. Anyone taking means to avoid paying taxes is also an agorist in his book. The waiter who does not claim all of his tips or the driver who avoids registering her car, all agorists. These subtle steps lie in the shallow end of agorism while living fully off the grid and being completely self-sufficient occupies the deep end. 

“We all take means to evade the burdens that the state imposes on us,” Kevin said.

The Experiment of Burning Man, and the Free Market as Opposed to Capitalism

Burning Man, the arts and culture festival was founded on agorist principles but according to many has since been overrun by corporations looking to cultivate a sense of agorism, if only for a week. In a purse sense, it’s a way for the individual to reclaim a portion of their perceived lost rights by not paying taxes or acknowledging the state; by focusing on the notion that the free market is always right and can be trusted. 

“Agorism will divide the economy into three parts,” Kevin explained. Part one is the red market, the only one that comes at the expense of human lives. The other two, the gray and black market are more attainable to live under. Though Kevin did not elaborate on these two, he said the important part of agorism is to avoid the red market.  According to Wikipedia, the Counter-Economy “excludes all State-approved action (the "White Market") and the Red Market (violence and theft not approved by the State).”

“You can barter for goods, if you’re a business person, you can exchange goods and services,” he explained. There are many ways for anyone to ascribe to agorist principles. Raising your own food, providing your own power, or riding a bike. Kevin explained many of the things people already do would categorize them as an agorist. 

“I think the free market, as opposed to capitalism, provides opportunities to improve the quality of people's lives,” he explained. “It gets rid of the onerous burden the state imposes by getting rid of taxation.”

Based on these explanations, do you think agorism could be applied even more locally, how so, and would that be a good development?

Our Town Reno reporting by Richard Bednarski

A Local Farm Manager Keeps Busy in the Winter with Reno Food Systems

As the recent wave of pogonip covered many parts of a local five acre farm, the sun set on the shortest day of the year. The fields were all covered with tarps and tires as the farm manager fixed the shade structure for the goats. The farm dog, Lefty, was on guard duty as I waited.  Heavy snow was on its way.

Most food travels nearly 2,000 miles from farm to table, sometimes thousands and thousands more. Much of the food is held under refrigeration, further increasing carbon emissions. Local food rarely travels more than a few miles and does not lose quality, flavor, or nutritional value in that short distance. 

“It’s meant to be a place where a person can come and learn about agriculture,” explained Lyndsey Langsdale, the farm manager of Reno Food Systems. We stood outside of the solar powered refrigerator in the last sunny spot of the day, which was quickly fading. 

Reno Food Systems is an urban farm located on the corner of Mayberry drive and McCarran boulevard. Everything from fruit to fresh vegetables to medicinal and culinary herbs are produced on the lot during the growing season. Everything is grown organically and with sustainability in mind.  

“We have workshops, we have volunteers, we have interns,” said Langsdale. The farm has become a staple in the local food community. “We also do a lot of educational things as well.”

The non-profit began as a vision between a few friends about five years ago and this last season was the fourth successful growing season on the farm. Next year they hope to expand growing into the winter. Currently, somewhere between Reno and Iowa is a large hoop house they ordered and plan to set up during the winter. This will extend the growing season.

Reno Food Systems can be found on the web at renofoodsystems.org

“We have a very special opportunity to be able to steward this land…and make it something that’s a benefit to the community and do it in a way that makes sense to use and matches our values as humans” said Langsdale. This project allows the people behind the organization to work in a way they want to live their lives and exist as community members. “We get to create that from scratch.”

This philosophy has spilled beyond growing food, allowing Reno Food Systems to become more than an urban farm. Notably, they have a food justice program. The highlight of this program is a mobile farmer’s market. “That’s where we take our truck out to different food desert type neighborhoods,” explained Langsdale. A food desert is a place where there is no access to fresh food. These are typically lower-income areas without a grocery store in walkable distance. 

Langsdale explained there is a federal program that provides coupons for low income people to use at farmers markets, however, many times, she said, these coupons go unused as farmer’s markets are not accessible. The mobile food truck combats this by parking in these areas around town and providing fresh and nutritional food.

“We parked our mobile farmer’s market at the Reno Housing Authority’s low income senior residence this year,” explained Langsdale. This allowed the use of state provided coupons for seniors to use at farmers markets. 

Another way Reno Food Systems stands out in the community is by donating food. This year alone, Langsdale estimates they donated about 1,000 pounds of fresh vegetables to people experiencing food insecurity, including the unhoused. They do this by working with many of the community partners and advocates.

As a non-profit the organization must stay funded. They accomplish this through a three-tiered funding model: sales of produce, grants, and memberships. This requires everyone at the farm to wear many hats in order to grow the food and earn the money to stay afloat. There are a few local community grants they receive and these required diligent reporting and management. 

Ways a community member could support the farm is by shopping there during the growing season or purchasing seedlings for a garden. However, they also have a membership program which allows people to create a recurring donation. 

“Finding the funding and staff to maintain grant writing and all of the fun little details in writing grants and reporting on them,” has been the largest challenge Langsdale explained. This year they ran into many overwhelming moments as a team as they are pushing capacity. “I think all of our team members are the type of people who want to do everything.”

With the sun long set and the temperature dipping, Langsdale was optimistic about the farm and the value it is providing the community. “Our goal is to be an asset to the community, but we don’t expect to plop a farm in the middle of a neighborhood and think that everybody is going to understand what we’re doing,” she said. It is a two-way street they are working through together with the community around them.

“Definitely being conscious of how we affect the neighborhood, both the positives and the negatives and really working with our immediate neighbors to be an asset and teach about the realities of growing food,” Langsdale said.

Our Town Reno reporting by Richard Bednarski

JP Harvey with Helping Hands Loving Hearts in Reno

Imagine a storage unit stocked with jackets, boots, hand warmers, and blankets where anyone in need of an item can walk in and take what they need. Free of cost. What if this resource was made available to the most vulnerable, the unhoused.

“Our goal someday is to have something like that,” explained JP Harvey, a Reno resident who has seen the city change from okay to worse in regards to housing insecurity in her lifetime. The mother of three, she wants to make the world a better place, to change it. 

That is why she first started volunteering with the Reno Burrito Project earlier this year. Working with the founder of that group Blaize Akanaab Abuntori and watching other volunteer advocates give their time, energy and ideas, inspired her to do more than just roll burritos.

“I saw all the work that, not only Jessica [Castro] and Bill [Simms], but everybody in the community has been doing more hands on and I decided to take that leap and do more hands on work,” explained Harvey on a chilly morning. She currently is working towards continuing her education at the University of Nevada, Reno and studying sociology in order to better understand what challenges people face to provide better advocacy. “I’ve been in Reno a really long time, I grew up here, and I just want to help as much as I can.”

Currently, Harvey is focusing on building a better bridge between advocates, community members, and officials. “I think it seems everybody is overwhelmed,” she said. She explained that the pandemic and raising rent costs are all compounding to create a situation no one has seen before. “A lot of the people I meet doing outreach, have jobs,” she explained. Yet they are still living on the streets. The main issue, Harvey believes, is that there is not enough affordable housing.

Harvey has joined forces with Simms and Castro and formed a group known as Helping Hands Loving Heart. Castro, formerly unhoused, understands the plight of living on the streets and has been providing food and essential items to anyone wiling to take them for a while now. Simms, who currently lives in low-income housing, understands the stress and concern of being on the brink of living on the streets. Nonetheless, the three have pooled together their time and resources to spend nearly every day of the week conducting outreach and providing resources for anyone in need. Be it food, a blanket, hand warmers, or boots. 

“Honestly, it is probably just being out,” explained Harvey about her niche of advocacy. “I am probably out seven days a week.” When she gets word about someone needing something, she make it a point to procure those items and hand deliver them. Whether it is through donated items, monetary donations, or her own money—Harvey makes sure boots are on cold feet. Especially as we enter the coldest part of the year. 

“Just making sure everyone has what they need,” she said. 

This is not easy work and takes a toll on the mind. But Harvey keeps pushing ahead knowing that her work is impactful and helps ease the strife of living on the streets. Recently, she learned that some she helped were able to get housing and this encouraged her to carry on. The single thing that keeps her moving ahead is allocating a bus pass for someone so they can get to work. “I mean it’s so easy for me to do but it makes such a huge impact.” Harvey is the middle woman, helping convert cash into donations and connecting these donations to those in need. The best way to provide a donation, be it a jacket or tarp or tent or cash, is to reach out to Helping Hands Loving Heart on Facebook. She said one of the three will make it a point to connect. 

“The biggest thing right now for the wintertime is just jackets, and blankets, and tents, and shoes, and boots,” she explained. “If [anyone] reaches out to us we can figure out a place to distribute that to the community. 

“A lot of the unhoused people think they are forgotten about,” Harvey said was the most challenging aspect of her work, along with the sadness and grief. “They just feel like people don’t care about them or there are stigmas attached to people being unhoused.” We talked a lot about this stigma and it is something that pops up on social media a lot. People pointing the finger and looking down upon the unhoused; when in reality, the majority of American citizens are one calamity or paycheck away from joining the ranks of the unhoused. 

One thing Harvey talked about is the fact repeated sweeps of encampments are detrimental to her work. When she saw that an encampment by the university was recently being swept, she was aghast. The day prior she was down there talking with the folks and passed out goods to many of the unhoused. Some of these newly purchased items were just gathered and tossed into a dumpster by city officials and will be hauled out to the landfill.

As winter is with us, Harvey and the others are assembling bags equipped with blankets, socks, undergarments, and food. As she has done in recent weeks, she will spend the next few weeks as 2022 begins, driving around looking for encampments and passing out goods to anyone in need. Harvey will be thinking about how to expand Helping Hands Loving Hearts into a storage unit lined with provisions.

“With the city and county displacing more people…I want to save the world,” she said. “If this is what I can do, to put my little hand in there and do that, that’s what I’m going to do.”

Our Town Reno reporting by Richard Bednarski

Tuesday Nights at the Believe Plaza with the New Family Soup Mutual Aid Group

Family Soup Mutual Aid started just over a month ago as a leaderless group to help support the unhoused population and others in need in Reno. As of right now, this group is run entirely on donations from the community and has seen great success since starting.

Nicole Anagapesis, 28, moved to Reno in June of 2019 and immediately felt unhoused individuals weren’t being treated well in our city. With the change in weather, Anagapesis and a group of her friends decided it was time to take matters into their own hands and began searching for winter gear to donate to people weekly.

“I think that the whole concept about mutual aid is that if there is need you can try and help out and do everything you can within your own power to try to remedy horrible situations that people are living under,” Anagapesis said. “Especially right now with the aggressive gentrification of Reno that we’re seeing.”

From lack of affordable housing to a decrease in public space, Family Soup Mutual Aid wants to advocate for people who are often left behind.

“We’re doing what local government won’t. Distributing necessities to the community who needs it the most,” Anagapesis said. “This is a community space and we want to keep it that way.”

Sienna Russell, a member of Family Soup Mutual Aid, helped a woman find clothing that fit her from the dwindling pile that had been brought. People were coming up to Family Soup members in the Believe Plaza for an hour before they ran out of food and winter gear.

So far, their Tuesday night distributions have been increasingly attended. Anagapesis said that Family Soup has hopes to increase people’s awareness of the program.

“I recognize them, they don’t always recognize me,” Anagapesis said. “I think what’s important and what we would like to do is have people recognize us and have them know that, yes you’re a part of this community, we care about you.”

Right now the group is small, but mighty. Family Soup totals six consistent members including Anagapesis. But people are always welcome to help through donations or attending the weekly distributions.  “I think that anybody who can do, whatever they can do, is doing enough. That’s really where our heads were at when we got together and decided that this is a project that we wanted to work on,” Anagapesis said.

These people were sorting through donations looking for clothing for winter. All the present members of Family Soup said that winter gear and blankets have been the most requested items by unsheltered people.

Family Soup will be collecting clothing donations at the Matador on December 22. Your donation gets you $2 off the cover charge for the 6:30 p.m. show.  Distributions take place every Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. at the Believe Plaza downtown. You can reach out to Family Soup through their Instagram @familysoupmutualaid.

Reporting and Photos by Catherine Schofield for Our Town Reno

From Unhoused to Hemorrhaging Finances and Run Arounds, Students Face Massive Rent Challenges

A Student Quits Due to Lack of Housing

During the Fall semester, on a Monday afternoon as I walked into the class that I was a Teaching Assistant for, one of the students wanted to leave the classroom early. The Professor excused him. The following class the student requested the teacher that he wanted to leave early again. He said: “I am homeless and it is getting cold, I want to enroll into a shelter facility before they close for the day.”

The following week, he emailed, informing us that he was taking the semester off and expressed his hopes to return in the Spring.

Such is the story of one of the many students who are facing the housing affordability crisis full force in Reno. The prices of apartments are continuing to rise and students are struggling to make ends meet.

Many students who are able to find housing facilities are also faced with additional troubles of allotment and move-in date deferment because the builders are unable to hand over the apartments on the stipulated time. This problem doesn't just affect undergraduate students but graduate students through limited state-funded stipends that haven't been increased since 2018.

Not As Expected at Park Place

Katelyn Counts is a pre-nursing student enrolled in her second year of college with the University of Nevada, Reno.

She had signed a lease with Park Place (above on Virginia Street north of campus) in April of 2020 and was told that her move-in date would be on August 15th. However, she could not move into Park Place until October 1st. She says she also did not get to choose her roommates, paid an additional $25 to the existing $825 of her rent and got allotted a totally different apartment than the one she was initially promised. She had to take it. However, the living conditions were not as expected.

After moving in she was living underneath construction as the floor above her was not done yet, according to her. This was not the only ordeal Katelyn had to go through. Before officially moving into the complex  she was constantly receiving uncertainty from the management over the actual move-in dates. She was asked to stay temporarily at the Circus Circus casino and hotel in Downtown Reno. Katelyn was paying the same rent amount ($825/month) to stay there without any amenities on a floor that also hosted strangers and not just students. '“Coming home late at night to a casino hotel was a little scary as a young woman,” she remembers.

In terms of food, they were also promised free “breakfast” which consisted mostly of granola bars.

“I think the biggest part was mostly just like trying to figure out what to do for food. Because there weren't microwaves in any of our rooms,” she said. “We only had a mini fridge and they said like, oh you can use the microwaves downstairs. But then the store wasn't open for a lot. Like it closed at 8:00 PM. So I had to work until like one a.m. and wouldn't be able to get food unless it was in my fridge. So I had Starbucks food for most of the time, which I worked at Starbucks and at the time they were doing a free meal every day.”

Katelyn also adds that she was lucky enough to have her family just hours away from Reno but realizes that it is a lot for a student to deal with housing issues, figure out their food, walk to school as well as deal with midterms and submissions all at the same time. She also says grades are everything for a student and research students should not have to deal with the added stress of finding housing. 

A Mess of “Clerical Errors,” Noise and Bad WiFi

Nathan Noble, a current Park Place resident, a sophomore at UNR and an elected senator with the Associated Students of the University of Nevada, Reno (ASUN) had no different experience.

He was tired of living in the overpriced dorms and was excited to be able to choose his roommates before moving into Park Place. As a person who loves to cook his own meals, he was also elated to have a kitchen. However, he too faced constant delays for his own move-in and could not do so until November 12. His initial move-in date was July 30th.

While waiting for his apartment to be ready, he too had to put up with residing at Circus Circus. He was paid back in installments of $500 as he had a roommate.

“The common feeling was that it was hush money really to stop anyone from filing action against them or from  trying to do something about it,” he said. “But basically that money only went so far because it didn't even compensate for rent. Also when I moved out, they still charged me for Circus Circus rent. Their accounting structures are very bad. They were scrambling and it's not the fault of the front desk workers or the Park Place workers. They were honestly doing the best they could in a terrible situation. It's really the fault of management for not handling this very professionally. I know people who never got their checks, I know people who never got their prorations, people who ended up paying for parking for two months when they were living in Circus Circus, where parking is free, just a bunch of very serious clerical errors.”

Nathan describes his Circus Circus experience as a deeply unpleasant one. They did not have amenities, noise control and the wifi kept going out which made it impossible for students to do school work.

Additionally, Nathan went to his friend’s house to be able to cook and bring food back for storage for the rest of the week. Nathan was thankful to have a vehicle that helped him in this but expressed his concerns for the many students he represents.

There was the emergence of an idea to craft a housing resolution for students. ‘The most important thing that we can do with our voice is advocate on behalf of students who are suffering from a lack of basic necessities,” he said. “And as I painfully discovered over the past few months, housing is certainly one of them, usually the emphasis is put on food, water and all that stuff. But housing is a key one. Especially if you're going to school the next day. I believe that a resolution will not only allow the university to take some form of broader action to adjust their process for dealing with housing complexes off campus but I also believe that it's important for the student body to stand up and claim control over what's going on because it affects students and there should be some kind of student oversight.”

Not Quite “Awesome Apartments”

Another student who prefers to remain anonymous about his Park Place experience says that the place dubbed itself as ‘awesome apartments’ made him hemorrhage his finances. The website states: “ Park Place is designed with the needs of today’s college student in mind. Experience the difference in Reno’s new definition of luxury student living.”

“The entire time they had no intention of letting anyone out of their lease, so I made contact with the company that owns Park Place at Reno directly to be let out of my lease,” he said. “I had had enough of being told one thing and then having the rug pulled from under my feet at the last minute. The leasing office kept stringing the students who were stuck at the casino along for a long while. Luckily, I was able to be released, but a majority of the other students were landed with the hotel room. Any who asked to be released from their leases were turned away (sometimes rudely) because they had given ‘alternate accommodations’ as stated in the lease. Clearly, this did not mean ‘equal’ accommodations. Some who were paying for separate rooms in an apartment with a roommate were given a room at Circus Circus with two beds. Their accommodations at the casino were in no way proportional to what the students are/were paying to an unfinished apartment complex. Because there are no kitchens, the students had no choice but to hemorrhage finances even further on expensive meals or choose to eat cheap unhealthy alternatives. I do not know if what they are doing is legal, i.e., to not even give the choice for tenants to break their leases in order to search for homes. But I do believe something must be done to rectify what it is that they have done, which is to take advantage of students by giving false promises that they were unable to fulfill,” he said in a lengthy explanation of his frustrations.

One student, Eli Denmead, struck out on the sunny looking Ponderosa Village, which was just the beginning of his problems.

A Long Run Around to Find Housing

Eli Denmead, a second-year Master’s student in History, has been through a long run around himself, which has seen him bail on two places. Denmead initially applied to Ponderosa Village, a housing complex located on campus only available to graduate students, professional students, & faculty and staff.

He says he did not receive any correspondence from them for about four months. On contacting them again Denmead learned that the apartment complex had undergone a change of management and he was not placed on the waiting list at all.

The person from the office then placed him on the eighth position of the waiting list. He was assured that he would not have an issue getting in for the Fall. However, a few months had gone by and he had heard nothing from the administration on his allotment. He sent a few emails that never got answered. On calling the apartment complex directly he learned that the leases were sent out and was also informed that if he had not received one, he would not have secured a place. Denmead was angry.

Being a few weeks away from the start of the semester, Denmead contacted Park Place to find a place there.

He says he was offered a spot in the three by three units. In utter desperation, he jumped at the opportunity. His application was quickly pushed through and the lease was signed in a few days. He faced a similar fate to the students mentioned above though. A week before classes, he received emails regarding lodging preferences and amenities at Circus Circus.

On contacting Park Place he was informed that the apartment was not ready for move-in and the students would have to reside at the casino for a few weeks.

“I was frustrated, but they promised a number of amenities and to reimburse portions of our rent to make up for it. I moved into the Circus Circus, under the assumption that the move in date would September 15th. As that date approached, they told us that the new move in date was actually October 1st. They again promised to reimburse portions of rent for us. Once that date approached, another bombshell dropped. Building One was ready to move in, and the bottom two floors of building two would be ready the next week, but the top three floors (including my unit) would not be ready until November 12th. I was now looking at another month and a half in a hotel, without access to a kitchen, and only a small portion of the rent for the next month and a half would be reimbursed,” he said.

Our Town Reno contacted Park Place to get a reply on these multiple situations we have recounted but did not hear back by time of publication.

Because of the trouble that he was facing, Denmead decided to discontinue living with Park Place at this point when his friend mentioned a room available was available for him at a shared house they were renting. Sadly he is paying double rent now, $580 at his new place, and $925 at Park Place which he is trying to get out of as soon as possible.

“I quickly jumped at the opportunity, as I was tired of living without a kitchen in a hotel. I contacted the complex to let them know I would not be moving in, but was told that I was still responsible for the lease and would only be let out if I could find someone to replace me. I have spent the last two months attempting to find someone to take my space to no avail, despite the fact that I was not made aware of construction issues before signing my lease and the fact that I have never stepped foot in the unit,” he said.

My Own Predicament

I, as an international graduate student from India, battled similar issues while searching for an affordable student apartment in Reno. I was 7800 miles away from this country on a different time zone, calculating the currency exchange to be able to understand if I could afford living and studying in Reno for 18 months, with the amount of stipend I was being offered.

Houses rented out by families were way above my budget and Ponderosa Village facilities (which looked like one of the best options available) were not answering any of my emails. Cheaper housing options were already filled up.

Tormented by the situation, I started emailing and connecting with other international students who were currently living here. Finally, with the help of some kind Indian students on Facebook, I was able to secure a place in an off campus apartment.

My rent is $665 and I barely make a little more than $1000. I belong to a middle class family in India where my mother is the only other member of my family. I do not have a father. My visa does not permit me to work more than 20 hours as per the federal stipulation for International students. I work 15 hours/week currently. I have managed a one room apartment here in Reno with a shared kitchen area with four other flatmates. I walk to school and curtail grocery shopping in order to avoid a hand to mouth situation.

In part two of this series of articles I will explore the recent actions taken by the Graduate Student Association in order to draw attention of the higher authorities to help solve this problem.

Our Town Reno reporting by Kingkini Sengupta

Ben Davis, A Local Photographer Documents the Changing Face of Reno Nights

A pandemic project that is turning into a historical document on the shifting face of Reno is nearly a year old. For local photographer Ben Davis, he sees his work becoming a medium to educate Reno about what downtown is and as a tool to promote improving the downtown corridor.

“I came out one evening, figured out that Reno’s got a lot of bright lights and the town sort of comes alive at night,” said Davis. He is the person behind the Instagram account Reno After Dark. At the encouragement of his wife, he began spending evenings downtown a year ago and creating images at night. Over this time he has seen people throw things out the window from the former Harrah’s casino, a near riot and tense conflict between a large crowd and a handful of police officers under the Reno Arch. He’s seen more and more motels get demolished and replaced with empty fenced lots. 

For Davis, whose bread and butter photography is corporate, commercial and event based, this is a way for him to push his creative skillset and improve as a photographer. 

“My dad bought me my first film camera when I was 10 and that sort of laid the foundation for photography,” he explained. He quickly realized the analog format was too slow for him and without the instant gratification, moved onto graphic design. A quick look into his photography shows his background as a graphic designer. He would return to photography when he purchased his first digital camera in 2005. 

“Street photography is probably one of the harder genres of photography because you’re trying to take something that in of itself might be boring,” he explained. It is a process that he constantly finds a challenge in and by getting out one or two days a week to create these images continues to grow creatively. “You’re trying to make it interesting for people and look for the art in it.”

“I wanted to show the world a little bit of the things that make Reno unique,” explained Davis. 

He spends usually a Friday and or Saturday evening roaming the streets of the downtown corridor, looking for ways to make the normal interesting. To get people to look at scenes they take for granted in a new light. Some nights he tries to tell the story of what Reno is on that particular evening. Other times he challenges himself to make images of only red subjects. It is a scavenger hunt for him each night. 

“The other interesting thing too is a lot of locals don’t come down to downtown,” Davis said. He treats his work as a way to illustrate what locals are missing by not visiting the heart of town. He hopes his work can serve as a method of advocacy for improving what downtown is and making Reno a better, safer, more enjoyable place. 

“I don’t think most locals appreciate how much of downtown Jacobs [Entertainment] has purchased and that there hasn’t been a whole lot of public debate about it,” he said referring to the ongoing acquisition of property by the Cleveland-based company. He is concerned about the process of having that much land in a developer's hands and not having an open and valuable public conversation about the goals and vision for the future. “I think that’s kind of scary a little bit.”

As night photography project continues into a second year, Davis is hopeful his body of work will serve as a historical document of what Reno was and is becoming. He remembers snapshots he created over seven years ago that showcase a far different Reno. He has no plans to wrap this project up and looks forward to getting out there each night and creating color-rich images of what Reno is becoming.

Being a street photographer, Davis also faces ethical challenges. The lifelong debate about creating a photograph of a person in a public space is something he thinks of every time he presses the shutter button. He acknowledges that it is not okay to photograph people in a vulnerable state, such as the unhoused, but understands that we live in a surveillance state. By walking in a public space, people agree to be photographed. 

Legally, under the First Amendment, photographers can create images of people without their permission. It is when the photographer becomes obnoxious, confrontational, or creates the images with bad intent the ethics are challenged. 

“I try to be respectful to people that are out and about,” he said. “I want to be out of the way.” As a documentarian, he wants to observe and be a fly on the wall of what is happening downtown. “I try to represent them [people] fairly.”

Davis’s work can be found online at www.RenoAfterDark.com. His work is defined by vibrance colors and bleeds neon. “I feel like I have a good pulse of the city,” he explained. “I like to advocate for the city,” he said.

Reporting and top photo by Richard Bednarski for Our Town Reno

RoMar Tolliver, Giving What He Didn't Get as a Kid with Black Wall Street Reno

Black Wall Street Reno is a nonprofit organization spearheaded by its two founders Donald Griffin and Romar Tolliver, going stronger and stronger in its second year of existence. Both men hope that their organization can be one that steers local teens away from the adversity that they faced as youths and young men.

“This organization is to provide preventative measures for teens,” Tolliver said during a recent interview with Our Town Reno. For him, Black Wall Street Reno is a way for youths to channel their energy into productive learning and enrichment activities instead of being out on the streets.

“I got in trouble as a kid,” Tolliver said, referring to the time he spent in the Nevada Youth Training Center (NYTC) when he was younger. His experience at NYTC was an eye opening one, and it’s marked in his memory as eight months of his youth that could have been spent doing something better.

The Nevada Youth Training Center is a you correctional facility in Elko, Nevada that has appeared in the news multiple times for wrong reasons. "It was a lot of discipline-- things of that nature," Tolliver said. "But it kind of helps you prioritize and focus on the things you need to do in life."

As a Reno native, Tolliver has experienced what it’s like to grow up as an at-risk youth in Reno, but he doesn’t see his ordeals as a purely negative experience.

“It’s kind of a give and take,” Tolliver said. “We wouldn’t have created [Black Wall Street Reno], if I hadn’t gone through those hardships.”

As a non-profit organization, Tolliver believes that it’s important to connect with the youth community. “You have to have, you know, some empathy to where you can kind of put yourself in their shoes and kind of understand what they're going through.”

Tolliver gave out lunches at a recent outreach event.

Pulling from his own experiences and feedback from the kids, he is able to plan programs that cater to their needs.

“When we are passing out lunches, we interact with them, you know. Ask, what are they learning in school ... You know, how would they give back to the community?” Tolliver said.

Over the summer, Black Wall Street Reno took 75 kids to Project Discovery on Mount Rose Highway. Project Discovery offers dynamic learning programs and child-focused summer camps.

“There were a few at-risk kids that came along with us, and we could tell throughout the day that they were slowly opening up-- coming out of their shell,” Tolliver said about the day they went to Project Discovery.  “Learning social skills, kind of questioning their upbringing and, you know, the habits that they're developing. None of these kids knew each other. So to see them in their shell and uptight at the beginning of the program, to supporting each other by the end of the program-- it was a great experience,” he said.

More recently, Black Wall Street Reno hosted a Thanksgiving food drive, partnered with Reno/Sparks Mutual Aid to provide a free community narcan training, and currently pass out after-school lunches outside their office on Wells Ave. on a weekly basis.

As the organization continues to grow and learn, they hope to provide more outreach programs that include financial literacy workshops, and food and clothing drives for the community.

“We've grown tremendously from the community support,” Tolliver said. “That grassroots support kind of keeps the ball rolling.”

Their next event will be a holiday toy and shoe drive on Saturday, December 18.  “I’m trying to give away a hundred pairs of shoes and a hundred toys,” Tolliver said, adding that shoes will go to teens aged 12 to 17, and toys will go to kids younger than that. They are looking for donations, which can be dropped off at their office between 3pm and 5pm, Monday to Saturday.

Reporting by Lynn Lazaro for Our Town Reno

Perla, Evicted as a Child, Now Organizing to Give Gifts at Our Place

Crystal Gomez, who works at Our Place, was asking friends and family if anyone knew any businesses they could contact to participate in the family shelter’s holiday gift giving program. 

“Usually a lot of of businesses put up a tree and people, their customers, will buy a gift for somebody in the tree,” Perla Gomez said during a recent interview from the checkout room at the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno.

“So my sister’s like, do you guys know any businesses that would be interested because it's been a rough couple years? And I was, I kind of was like, well, I don't really know a lot of business owners, so I kind of stayed quiet. And I was like, ‘could we do it like as a school? Like maybe we could do it at the journalism school?’ And she said as long as families are getting presents, you know, it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be a business, but that's how it's been done previously.”

It was worth a shot. Perla emailed her colleagues, hoping a few might be willing to participate.  She says she got five responses in the first ten minutes.   “So I was like, okay, we'll do a family. And then I had like another five and then three more. So I was like, we have 13 and my sister's like, oh, okay, then you could probably help two families.”  She added a few friends to the initiative to where she’s now buying gifts for four families.  As part of the program the families have written Christmas lists for their kids to get special presents. 

She’s happy she went ahead and did the group email. “I was a little bit shy to put it out there at first because I wasn't sure how to word it. So I wasn't sure if people would take me seriously, but I was excited. I think this is special because when people ask for help, they usually ask for the necessities, like just food, shelter and things to help them survive,” Perla said. “So when you give them something out of their way, it just helps people restore their humanity. The real gift is giving.”

Perla, born and raised in the area, and a graduate of North Valleys High School, speaks from a lived experience of hardships growing up.  This included moving repeatedly and several evictions.

“The first time I was evicted, I was in sixth grade, I think. I had moved out, my parents separated in fourth grade, but then they got back together and right when they got back together, we got evicted and then my parents separated again. So it was just a lot of moving and I didn't really realize like why we got evicted. It was just like, oh whatever, I'm moving again.”

She remembers being upset and confused even though others in her family helped. 

“We didn't get to take a lot of our stuff. We had to leave a lot of our stuff there.  I was just like confused. Like why, you know, why do we have to leave? That was like the house I grew up in. We had an apartment before that, which I was too young to remember. Before that we had a little apartment, then we lived with our aunts. It was like 10 people in one house. And then we moved into this place and this is where I called home. I had a slide in the backyard. So when we left I was very upset because that had felt like hope. And I feel like I haven't felt at home since that place because we were moving back and forth.”

Her own father has been unhoused, as even though he works hard and makes ends meet usually, he has suffered from alcoholism.  Perla says this has increased her empathy for the unhoused.  

“One time we got evicted when I was like 15 and my dad stayed at that place,” Perla remembers, of her father surviving as best he could.  “So he'd hop in through the window and we'd follow him and he was in that place, but he didn't like to ask for help.”

Perla finds rising prices alarming.  In addition to her UNR job, she’s been a server at a local chain restaurant, and now a bartender at a nightclub.  

Perla is not surprised it’s often those who have struggled who are the most generous to those in need. 

“I feel like because you know what it feels like to feel hopeless,” she said.  “It’s easy to empathize with people to understand where they're coming from. Even if it's not the same story, you know like how hard it is to feel hopeless or sad or heartbroken.” 

“I think it's awful,” Perla said of rising rents. “I think a person with a regular salary it's hard enough for them. And most people don't have a regular salary. I'm single and it's hard to afford a place by yourself. I can't imagine with having kids or just not having a consistent job, especially during these times.”

She said she was inspired by an Our Town Reno article once on the importance of just talking to people who are unhoused.  She goes by the area behind the Peppermill Casino, where just next to a park with tents, there are some new luxury apartments.  “I see a lot of people working. I see a lot of people reading, like educating themselves, people with cell phones, they just can't afford a house. I’m like, like what is going on? Like we all see have a problem right here,” she said of the juxtaposition. 

“These studios go for 2000. So I think it's just very ridiculous. Our priorities are not focused on the right things in Reno.” 

She recommends others to do what she’s done with their own workplaces. “I feel like it's worth it. I think it's important to ask and even if you're feeling nervous, it's really nice to give back and the worst that can happen is people say no and that's it. Like, nothing else can happen, but nobody's gonna beat you up for trying to help anybody. So I think just go for it. And there's somebody that's in a tough situation right now that you could help while you're okay.”

Our Town Reno reporting, December 2021