Being A Russian in Reno When Your Country is Invading Ukraine

Fears for Her Own Family

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has dominated headlines over the past few weeks, and for Russians living abroad this has made for awkward conversations and interactions.

It’s no exception for Anna Gartsueva, who has lived in Reno for the past five years but was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. She is a psychology student at UNR who works as a behavioral technician for kids with autism. 

Having lived in Russia for most of her life, watching the news of this event unfolding has been very difficult. “I don’t like what is going on and I don’t support anything that Russia is doing,'' she told Our Town Reno during a recent interview.

“I was frustrated and I think I went through all five stages of grief. Like waking up watching the news, going to work and coming back home and watching the news again and it's like this cycle over and over for a week, you kind of go crazy.”

Part of what’s difficult for her is that her family lives near the border with Finland, who like Ukraine, has flirted with the idea of joining NATO. Another concern is the lack of independent, reliable information that her family has access to.

“My parents don’t really have access to the internet or don’t really know how to use it. They come from an older generation so they watch news on TV, and all the news left on TV right now is pro-government and they are all controlled by the government.”, she said. 

There are those within the country who see the misrepresentation that is being given, and are actively finding other sources of information. 

“Mostly people in my generation, like the younger generation they’re all against it and they don’t believe the news,” she said of her peers in Russia. “They all have internet, they have Telegram channels that they can look at the news that are still up. Recently Instagram also was shut down in Russia, so without a VPN you cannot use it. But still, mostly people don’t support [the war].”, she said. 

A Survivalist Mindset Among the Older Generation

Still, Anna believes the Russian mentality is difficult to change, especially the older generations who have lived through the years of the USSR, where for working class people like her family food was often hard to come by. 

“They think it's fine, there have been wars, we can’t change anything. So we just like, are gonna live. Like, whatever. Our prices are three times higher? We’ll survive. They don’t care, and that’s the biggest problem of Russian people. If it doesn’t directly affect them, they aren’t going to do anything about it. And directly I mean their family. Not prices in the store or gas prices or whatever, but if it’s not going to be a part of their family they don’t care,” she said.

Going forward, Anna is trying not to have too many expectations of what will happen in the coming weeks. 

“I just hope that this is going to end, somehow someday, that's it. I put my life on hold for two weeks basically, just watching the news and being kind of functional. So I’m trying to put myself together right now… I hope that [Russian President] Putin finally gets himself together and stops the war, and leaves Ukraine by itself because Russia right now is sinked. Like, nobody wants to deal with the country. We have over 5,000 sanctions put on the country, the economy is down, and it's going to be like that for another 30 years. Like even worse than when the USSR fell apart,” she predicted. 

As of today, the invasion has been underway for a little under a month with possibilities of an end not being clear. The western powers of the world have united in placing an incredible amount of sanctions on Russia and have rallied to support Ukraine with aid. However, the calls for a no-fly zone by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have not been heeded as Western leaders fear it could escalate the conflict further.

For Anna, she simply wants people to understand that not all Russians are supporting this war, and that Vladimir Putin does not represent the majority of Russian people. 

Our Town Reno reporting by Matthew Berrey

A Stopover at the Radish Hotel with Crystal Leon

In the backyard of a neighborhood home in Sparks there is a farmstead equipped with garden beds, a greenhouse and a chicken coop. This urban farm is called the Radish Hotel. It’s managed by the Leons, a couple who moved to Reno from the Bay Area.

Crystal and Carlos Leon run the farm with the help of their guardian dog Radish.

Last year, Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak, The Nevada Department of Agriculture and the National Association of State Department of Agriculture Foundation announced the selection of 10 Nevada women for the Farm2Food Accelerator program, including Crystal Leon.

The  program is designed to help female farmers and entrepreneurs with food or beverage products. The Leons have been selling produce in boxes, including to isolated seniors. The Leons have also made a name for themselves with their highly sought after homemade granola.

The Farm2Food Accelerator program focuses on supporting women farmers who grow specialty crops for a value-added food, such as turning homegrown strawberries into jam.

“I’ve got a million things going on, but you know, at four o’clock on Wednesdays I’m like, ‘Okay, everybody out. It’s my time to learn something,’” Crystal said in regards to some of her current workflow.

On Wednesdays she meets online with more than 30 other women in the program, and they learn from industry experts. Some of the topics that they cover are packaging, marketing and pitching.

“I’m learning things that I didn’t even know that I had to learn in order to continue doing what I’m doing,” Crystal said. “I found it very helpful and just encouraging to be amongst a bunch of women killing it at what they’re doing.”

Crystal has been gardening and working in urban farms since she was in the Bay Area. She used to garden with her grandmother. In the San Francisco school district, she taught urban farming, gardening and nutrition.

When the Leons first moved to Reno, they had taken a break from farming. They moved to the area to be closer to Carlos’ parents because Crystal was pregnant with their now four-year-old daughter, Noel.

“We were here for a while, and just really missed what we were doing,” Crystal said. “We both love growing food and teaching, and it was just time to start something like that.”

According to Crystal, the Radish Hotel is still in the beginning stages and has only been running for three years. They’ve finally started getting a rhythm and learning how to grow in Reno’s climate.

The extreme dryness in the summer, and the frost and snow in the winter are new challenges they faced coming from the Bay Area.

The Radish Hotel does most of its growing inside of the greenhouse over the winter. Greenhouses can be up to 30 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the outside temperature, and protects the plants from freezing temperatures.

While winter weather limits growing to the greenhouse, Crystal still has work, which can be more unpredictable.

The summer provides a consistent flow of things that she can expect. Their schedules in the summer are dedicated to harvesting and preparing for farmer’s markets in Fernley and Sparks, and changes to that schedule are rare. However, in the winter things are always changing.

“In the winter you don’t know when there’s gonna be a frost,” Crystal said, referring to sudden snowfall after warm temperatures in Reno, a frequent occurrence in March. “Those are things that pop up and we have to kick it into gear to prepare for them.”

Other challenges that the Leons have faced are predatory animals. These range from raccoons to hawks.

“We’ve had three chicken destroyed by hawks,” Crystal said. “[And] we had to create a sort of nighttime locking system because of raccoons.”

As the Leons learned more about how animals targeted their chicken, they moved their chicken coop and added wires as extra protection. Another form of protection for their livestock has been Radish, their dog. “She stopped our youngest chickens from getting taken away and destroyed by a hawk,” Crystal said. Radish isn’t always outside, but does her job to protect the chickens when she is able.

Despite the challenges, the Leons have worked hard at living a self-sustainable lifestyle through urban farming. Crystal hopes that people see what she’s doing and become inspired by it.

As an urban farmer, she’s met many people who have had the idea of starting their own homestead, but don’t know how to start.

“Stop over analyzing and just start growing something,” Crystal said. “Start small and work from there.”

Starting an urban farm doesn’t have to be expensive or big from the beginning. Crystal is proud to say that many of the items for her farm are used and repurposed from Craigslist and Facebook

“There is so much junk out [there] that’s going into the landfill,” Crystal said. “And if we can save it from going there and make good use out of it, that’s absolutely what we’re doing.”

Our Town Reno reporting by Lynn Lazaro

Spencer Banda, Helping the Unhoused with Multiple Local Support Groups

Walking around Barbara Bennett Park in Reno on a Saturday anytime before noon or around the downtown area on Sundays in the afternoon you will often spot a guy in a t-shirt and shorts wearing his sports shoes, carrying a drawstring bag on his back and donning colorful head caps and shades.

If you look closer, you will notice he’s handing out food to members of the houseless community or carrying clothes to be given to a particular person on the street. Spencer Banda, 23, does not only do community outreach but often personally engages the unhoused to understand why the person has reached the situation they are in. 

“We are often very unwilling to look at it as a human issue,” he told Our Town Reno during a recent interview, speaking about general conceptions of the unhoused. “And instead we look at it as an economic issue, we look at it like a property damage issue, we look at it as a crime issue instead of imagining ourselves in these people's shoes, because we've kind of internalized this narrative that it's impossible to get into a situation of houselessness if you didn't do something wrong. I think that is incredibly toxic and it just makes people blame some of the most vulnerable people for their condition, regardless of what they know about this person and it also takes away a lot of our humanity in talking about them.”

He says he is shocked by how people react to the unhoused on social media. “Whenever the topic shifts to things that have to do with houselessness, everybody on the political spectrum suddenly becomes a fascist and they're totally okay with whatever treatment these people receive with the idea that they are somehow dirty, they're forfeited their basic human rights by virtue of whatever they have allegedly done to find themselves in this situation.” 

Banda is in charge of one of the Sierra Kids before and after school programs at a local elementary school. However, since he has graduated from university and has time on weekends and in-between his work shifts, he volunteers with different groups around town that are committed to working for the houseless in terms of outreach and mutual aid. He is actively participating in multiple aid initiatives.  

He gets together with the Washoe Food not Bombs on Saturdays. “We try to cook homemade meals and serve them down at one of the parks by the river as well as different  food donations that we get from  community members or organizations, businesses that are able to spare some extra food,” he explained of that group’s outreach. “And we just go for two hours every Saturday and hand out stuff and just talk with the people who are there. By this point a lot of us know by first name and they know us and they enjoy being there even just for the conversations. Oftentimes they don't, a lot of people don't get people to talk to. Most of them have friends and maybe significant others or who are kind of out there with them, but some people don't and so that is something valuable that we try to provide as well.” 

On Sundays, Banda dedicates about five to seven hours to the Reno Burrito Project. “We meet at a central location every Sunday. We receive donations of meat and beans and rice, and we cook our own sometimes too, as well as the tortillas,” he said. “And we usually, in the last year or so rolled 400 to 600 burritos every Sunday. We take it out in a bunch of coolers and wagons with other kinds of stuff like snacks whether it's like cliff bars or fresh fruit, we always bring out water. And then if we have maybe clothing, socks, shoes, just literally any kind of thing that we can imagine, somebody who's living on the streets could use, we put it in a wagon and take it out,  every Sunday.” 

He is also a part of the group called Family Soup Mutual Aid which donates food and hygiene products or other basic necessities near the Believe Plaza in Reno on Tuesday evenings.

“I've never actually been able to participate in distribution because I work,” he said of his help for that relatively new group. “But I always try to go for the sorting which is on Monday nights just to help them and figure out like okay this box is like sweaters. This box is pants or whatever…”

Banda also actively helps out at the Northern Nevada International Center (NNIC), in terms of helping newly arrived refugees.

“Last year around the time that Kabul in Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, [I] realized like, oh, there's gonna be a lot of people, like who need to leave that country and come here. And I have a lot of privileges. I have a working car, for example. I have a little bit of extra money, I have time. So I was like, anything I can give to people to get situated in a situation that is really terrible in so many different and unique ways for each person and each family,” he said of helping with the resettlement process. “So for them, I am just a part of a bunch of just group chats, where they send out a message and say, ‘Hey, such and such a family needs to go grocery shopping, such and such a family to go get clothes such and such a family needs somebody to help them walk their kids to school.’ Just any conceivable thing that you could imagine, somebody who came here for the first time, often doesn't speak much English could need that NNIC tries to have volunteers help out with that, even, even to the point of like English tutoring and stuff which I'm signed up for, but hasn't quite started because there's a lot of logistics in that involved in that that haven't been sorted out yet.” 

Born in South Dakota to an American mother and a father of Zambian origin, Banda has a unique perspective of the problems that are existing in today’s society, including what’s helping and what’s compounding struggles.

“There's a kind of commitment to not solving the problem, but mitigating the negative effects, which ends up in a lot of times being very dehumanizing toward a lot of people in all sorts of areas and again, this is something that is not unique at all to the way that we treat  houselessness and extreme poverty,” he said.

“I think it's similar to the way we treat things like immigration from Central America where there's a lot of issues that American demand for drugs is causing in some of these countries that is causing people to flee. And we only care about making sure that people from Mexico or Honduras or Guatemala don't get over the border. We don't care about making or reversing some of the damage that our policies have done to their home countries so that they don't ever have to leave if they don't want to. So yeah, again, I think that's just something that we have made a normal part of our political discourse is just an aversion to talking about root causes. And instead, just focusing on whatever we can do to stop whatever negative effects that have the same with the way we do policing.”

Banda realizes that there are various reasons which can lead a person into the situation of becoming houseless, but he points to a broken health care system and high costs as a leading cause of bankruptcy.

“There's people who have written books about these topics,” he said. “I think addressing a lot of the underlying issues these material conditions that people are living in, what causes them to react in the way they do, whether that's by committing quote unquote crime or ending up on the street or ending up abusing substances. It doesn't come out of a vacuum. There's not just a type of human that just wants to be constantly impoverished. It's a situation that you find yourself in, and maybe you get to the point where you're okay with it and you get to the point where you're like, yeah, I'm fine living on the streets.” 

The instant solution according to Banda is to take part in giving and helping inside the immediate community through mutual aid and activism by utilizing the different kinds of strengths people have.

“Just write down a day that you want to do something, find out who's doing something that day and then just join them,” he said to inspire others. “They always like to see new faces. I can say that from personal experience, we always love to see new people. We love to see old people who we saw 10 months ago, but who haven't been able to show up for that much time, but who show up again. So much of this space I think is very appreciative of anybody who's able to give any of their time. And there won't be at least I haven't seen a case where people are being shamed for not doing enough, because we all understand that we're all living under the same system. A lot of us are not necessarily too far from being houseless ourselves or in, just in abject poverty, whether it's houseless or not. So we're understanding, we know that it's hard and that you can't always show up, but when you can and when you want to, I think just do it.”

Our Town Reno reporting by Kingkini Sengupta

Griffin Peralta, A Slam Champ Brings Love for Poetry into the Classroom

Griffin Peralta is a self-described “crier”. He is Reno’s local poetry slam champion, and he cries on stage. Despite this, he considers himself a feel-good poet.

As an English teacher at Wooster High School, he’s found that poetry is generally heavy-hearted.

“I work really hard to write stuff that is meant to uplift people … or to like, make it easier for them to get up in the morning,” Peralta said of his own style as a poet trying to bring hope instead.

Peralta has always known that he wanted to help people in the career he chose as an adult. He joked about wanting to be a scientist when he was younger, but decided that he wanted to work directly with people. He’s been teaching at Wooster High School for the past four years and just received tenure last year.

Peralta will teach a poetry unit in his classroom with an emphasis on spoken word. He performs for his students, and gives them opportunities to do the same.

During his poetry unit he allows students to split themselves into two groups: those who want to present, and those who would prefer not to. Each group will receive different instructions, and the class is more catered to student needs.

“It’s a bell curve,” Peralta said, referring to how many students are interested in spoken word. Out of all of his students he believes about 15% are very interested in poetry.

His goal, regardless of who wants to do spoken word or not, is to make poetry more relevant to students. He shows students recent poetry from people their age.

Peralta performs at the monthly open-mic hosted by the Spoken Views Collective in The Holland Project.

His own journey into poetry started after high school.

“I really felt like I’d crack open the old poetry books and be like, [John] Keats [a poet of the early 1800s], and just like, check out immediately,” Peralta laughed about his own journey.

He didn’t feel much love for poetry initially, but found it with Hank Sosnowski, a former TMCC professor who taught poetry at the community college.

Peralta took Sosnowki’s class in 2008 as a “generic” prerequisite for his degree, but the class became so much more when he found that the professor was all about spoken word. Since then Peralta has been frequenting poetry slam competitions in Reno and Lake Tahoe, and looks for them when he travels during the summer.

Peralta earned his poetry slam champion title in 2019, at the Sierra Nevada College’s Annual Tahoe Slam. 

When Peralta isn’t competing in competitions, he performs at open mic events in town. As a member of the Spoken Views Collective, he often attends their events at the Holland Project every third Wednesday of the month.
Peralta has made it his goal to write one new poem a month for the open mic. It’s helped him write more regularly, and has opened up more opportunities to explore the art further.

“Setting consistent goals for myself has made me like, look for more prompts or more methods to make the process of producing a little bit easier,” Peralta said.

According to Peralta, another great tool that inspires consistency is having a designated notebook to write in. In his classroom, he has a small tan journal, with a golden sun engraved on the cover.

“I have this one student who will show me the stuff he’s written sometimes, and next time he does something-,” Peralta paused to lift the journal as if giving it to someone, “This is your book.”

Our Town Reno reporting by Lynn Lazaro

Aaron Sims, A Candidate for Education, Health and Housing as Human Rights

In 2020, Sims, an openly gay policy wonk, Episcopalian, accountant for an employers insurance company in Reno and a frequent volunteer for the unhoused in northern Nevada, lost a race for Carson City’s mayoral position. That didn’t deter him from trying again during this current election cycle, although at times he wasn’t sure what elected position he should go for.

Sims initially launched a campaign for Congress, but then as the puzzle for 2022 became clearer, he decided Nevada’s 16th district for Senate was a better race for him.  

The district now incorporates all of Carson City, Storey County, Washoe Valley and south Reno, as well as USA Parkway to the east and Verdi to the west.  “It is a little bit wonky,” he told Our Town Reno during a recent interview in our podcast studios, “but it's almost like a multi-prong star in a way.”

The seat is currently held by Republican Don Tatro, who was handpicked by Washoe County and Carson City officials to replace Ben Kieckhefer, after his resignation in October.  Tatro who initially said he wouldn’t run is now a candidate to keep the seat on the Republican side. 

Sims who grew up in a conservative household and was previously a part of the Republican Party has shifted his views economically, and feels the GOP has become too extreme in recent years. 

He now describes himself as a progressive within American mainstream politics.

“It is true that my platform is overall very progressive, but I believe it is also a kind of platform that reaches out to moderate Democrats that reaches out to centrists that also reaches out to certain disaffected Republicans as well,” he said during our interview. “These are issues that we all agree on. We agree that there's a housing crisis. We agree that something needs to be done to correct our education. And we agree that our healthcare currently sucks for lack of a better term. So I believe that as a progressive of course you can win because if you focus on running on those specific issues and kind of get away from just the labels and the silliness of it all, you absolutely have a chance of winning.”

Sims believes the state senator’s responsibility is important, but he wants Nevada’s state legislature to start working full time. “I think Nevada's big enough now,” he said. “With as many problems that we're facing today versus 150 years ago, I really do think that we need to work towards having a full-time legislature that can be there and that could, you know, make laws and also amend laws and make good changes for the people in Nevada.” 

His own priority would be housing and addressing the “massive housing crisis here,” which he says began about seven years ago.  “For many people, both rent and property have just skyrocketed, 250, 300% … just insane. I want to work on legislation that helps alleviate renters costs, also helping to alleviate homeowners or new perspective home buyers who want to buy a house, but, you know, maybe can't afford it in this current market,” he said.

Sims wants to introduce a housing first approach to helping the unhoused.   “You know, traditionally we think that a person must graduate high school, graduate college, then get a job, then eventually get into a home of their own. Now that just doesn't work. So I want to, I want to change that narrative and I want it to be to where people are put into a home first and foremost. And if all people are housed, think about homelessness. For example, if all of those people are housed, then they would have access to a shower daily. They would have a safe place to keep their items. They would be able to sleep and have a full night's rest and not be bothered by anyone else. Then they can be productive members of society. They can get a good job, they can get an education, and so on and so forth.”

To those skeptical this could work or be paid for, he says he would start small with incentives for rental management companies, so that they would allocate parts of their availabilities to a housing first plan. He also envisions using foreclosed homes to also house the unhoused.  

Education, including reducing class sizes, and pushing for health care as a human right would be other priorities.  “It doesn't make sense to me to live in the richest nation in the world and … not offer a centralized healthcare plan,” he said. “So since the federal government has failed to do it, it's now the state's responsibility to come up with something. And I'd like to see an alternative either by expanding the Nevada health exchange or by creating a health insurance for the state of Nevada over time, you know, implement that, so that Nevadans will always be insured no matter what.” 

Sims recognizes the 16th district will be hard to win for a Democrat, but remains optimistic. “We know that the key to winning this race is by winning over nonpartisans. And we do have a very strong ground campaign already set up and established and put into place for the general election that we'll be hitting every door.”

He says he learned from his mayoral run in Carson City which is a smaller sample size of the entire district. He said he also understands all too well that in the current climate of hateful politics he does face personal risks. 

“The amount of non-mainstream far right, radical people who are getting involved in this election, it's very concerning,” he said of 2022. “You know, we're not talking about typical voters. We're talking about people who are part of militias. We're talking about people who are violent and have violent histories, people who want even ethnic genocide, in some cases, these are people who are getting involved in this election more than before.” 

Sims says this extremism offers an opportunity for a reset though, what he calls being on “a precipice of change.”  He speaks of the potential for “long term substantial change, social change, where people are realizing that things like criminal justice reform needs to happen, that maybe we've been too harsh on people, maybe having a system of punitive justice isn’t as good as understanding that certain people might need rehab or might need mental health. We're waking up to understand that healthcare is a human right, and that all people deserve it regardless. We're waking up and realizing that housing should be a human right. And all people deserve some kind of a home if they want to survive in this world. I think that having more progressive candidates or having more candidates as a whole, who understand these issues will create a more gentler world, at least in our state and in our country.”  

Our Town Reno reporting, March 2022

Doctorate Student By Day, Gogo Dancer By Night, Constantly Worried about Ukraine

The music was loud and a hue of green, blue and red spotlights took turns to highlight parts of her face and body as Taissa Lytchenko grooved with the music and danced the night away. She was on a podium in a race-car outfit that consisted of a checkered crop top and violet high-waisted thong to match the theme of the night. 

“Hey, do you accept tips?” a couple called out to her. She bent down to them, politely said yes through her face mask and accepted the dollar notes that they placed on the podium, picking it up and carefully tucking the money in her sock. Those few dollar bills remained placed in the sock half peeping behind it for the rest of the night as she would go dancing for twenty minutes on the podium and also while she came down to take a break as her other colleagues would fill the spot for the rest of the time. 

Taissa, 31, came to America from Ukraine when she was nine. She is pursuing her Doctorate and is a research assistant at the Cognitive Brain Sciences Program at the University of Nevada, Reno under Dr. Gideon P. Caplovitz. Her research focus is attention and how humans pay attention to various objects. However, research, though primary, is not the only aspect of her life that she pays close attention to.

Lately in addition to dealing with paying for rising rents, her high level of studies, her nighttime job, Taissa is dealing with the war in Ukraine, with family on both sides of the conflict. “My heart is with Ukraine,” she told Our Town Reno. “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin is a ticking time bomb, his ruthlessness knows no bounds. He will stop at nothing to make my people suffer, and it is up to the world to decide whether they are bold enough to save a country and president who [has been] fearless enough to stand up to Putin.”

While concerned about the state of the world, Taissa also needs to take care of herself and her journey, and here in Reno on weekends, for her, that includes being a Gogo performer with an entertainment production company called BLV productions.

She dresses up in different costumes and performs in bars around the city. “When I started…one of the initial jobs in the Reno area was bartending,” she remembers.

“So once I got into bartending, I transitioned to working as a bartender … at the local nightclubs. And I loved being around music and dancing so much that I foresaw myself as eventually transitioning out of the bartending and cocktail serving into the dancing role, because I saw something, a part of it when I'm up there on the podium and  honestly, for the most part, I close my eyes and nothing in the world exists except for the music and myself. And I just get to express myself and be free. And it just feels so beautiful and serene. And especially when the DJ has the music just right, you just see the biggest smile on my face and I'm just like, that's, I live for that. I love it. And it's my four hour shift that goes by like nothing happened and I  get to leave and it's like a workout plus I got to do exactly what my soul just really wanted to do for the week. It's my stress relief.”

Taissa was raised in a strict household, so it’s maybe not exactly what was expected of her initially. “Growing up was a little difficult because my dad was a very authentic Russian man,” she says. “So for him, it's his word inside the house and nothing else mattered. So, he had this saying, while we were growing up that children are better seen and not heard. We did not get to share our opinion no matter what it was…after a while our life in the house got kind of difficult and he was a very emotionally and physically abusive man. So …my sister and I did not get to live with him for very long,  so  she came here when she was 12 and at 16, she got emancipated out of the house. And then when I came here when I was nine and at 16, I also got taken out of the house by Child Protective Services”

Though her mother focussed a great deal on creativity and enrolled them (she and her sister) to dancing classes where they learnt everything from gymnastics to ballet, her father ensured that they would not participate in anything other than academics. Her initial years in America went by assimilating into the culture, learning the language and speaking without an accent. Her father wanted to make sure they could ‘blend in’ and do not look like ‘immigrants’ here. 

“I lived in a group home at the time for about six months while we were getting the process done, for my sister to adopt me. So it was an interesting time, but it really taught me that no matter how scary a situation may seem, that you can get out of it and there's ways of progressing and moving forward. It was nice that my sister when she adopted me at 17, she raised me for that final year and she helped me to calm down emotionally. She was my biggest support system through growing up and just realizing that I am my own human, that I get to make my own decisions and I get to have the final say in my life, and I didn't have to do what other people's opinion of me was.”

Having spent a lot of her American childhood in Sacramento, before coming to Reno, it was quite a drastic move as Taissa explains. She worked many odd hours to be able to go to school again.

She says since the age of 17 surviving came down “to lack of sleep and a lot of coffee.” But as a Gogo dancer she says the production company pays her well. “Not only do I get paid, which by the way BLV is very good at, I also get tips and sometimes they come questionably because of course, you'll have somebody that comes up and they'll want to make it rain on you at the same time for you to dance more provocatively but you do make tips. And that is a really nice way to not go hungry in the middle of a housing crisis that a lot of graduate students are experiencing right now,” she said.

Taissa started as a Gogo dancer in 2019 right before the pandemic. She describes it as a fantasy because, “when you're up there and you're in a costume and especially for any kind of theme night, you get to dress up as, as a whole different person, as an avatar, as somebody else. And you get to be up on that stage or that platform, and you get to really, really connect yourself to this other personality that you may not express in your academic or your professional life…you're also looked down on in many ways, because again, as a Gogo you're, most of the time, your outfits are…are pretty minimal.”

Taissa has specific ways to deal with patrons who make aggressive advances. “The best way to handle this is at least with all of the security guards that are in the nightclubs,” she explained. “They're very good about having a signal where there is, if somebody is making any kind of unwanted comments, if somebody's trying to touch you, for example, anything like that in some of these you throw up some peace signs and that security guard is over there at all times. In terms of tips, they're not allowed to touch you at any time. So basically we have tip jars, they can put the tip in the tip jar or give you the tip in your hand, but you are not allowed to be touched at any time…That is not the kind of industry or the kind of, behavior that anybody wants to promote there.”

Taissa as a Gogo performer wants to break the stereotypical notions that people have towards this particular entertainment industry. “In academia and professional life, you don’t really share that part of you, [they might say] ‘oh  well now I can't take this person seriously.’ And that's something that I want to break. Nobody should be judged on their personal life, like that kind of personal life. They should never be judged like that. And that should never undermine what they know, what their credentials are, what kind of education they finished or anything like that. And I think, especially in the recent years with the me too movement, that's been really instrumental to say that I can be a professional and I can be a Gogo dancer and I don't have to pick one or the other. I, I can do both. And that's okay.”

Apart from being a researcher and a Gogo artist, she has been a part of the Graduate Student Association for four years and serves as an Internal Vice President this academic year overlooking the work and functions of all the team members in the Council. She loves being a part of the local community, and teaching young minds about the brain. Her outreach program has made her receive the Next Generation Award from the Society of Neuroscience in 2020. She also shared that she is “beyond fortunate” to receive a Nevada Women’s Fund scholarship for three years in a row.  

She says choosing an entertainment company to work for is almost similar to choosing an academic job. She insists on doing thorough “research” and background checks on the company in question. ‘Is this the company that you wanna work for? Do they pay you on time? What are your hours?...really do your research on the company before you sign up and don’t sign on just anything and make sure that that company has a contract that you can read through at all times. So don't just automatically go for the first thing, really find out like you would do in an academic job.”

Our Town Reno reporting and photos by Kingkini Sengupta

Nnedi Stephens: Campaigning for Community, Diversity and Visibility

Nnedi Stephens is a community activist looking to fill the Senate District 13 seat left vacated by Julia Ratti, who resigned in November as she prepared to move outside the district.

“Throughout their teens and into adulthood, Nnedi’s desire for community betterment only grew, becoming involved in over ten community organizations, including Nevada Women’s Lobby, Human Rights Campaign, and Nevada Democratic Black Caucus,” the About page of their campaign website indicates. “Before transitioning to a full-time role as an advocate for progress, Nnedi worked as a full-time caregiver and served as a public servant on both state and federal levels.”

The kickoff campaign event last night was also about diversity. District 13 is 35% Hispanic, and as someone who holds a degree in Spanish and Spanish translation, Stephens makes sure that their campaign website, and press releases already have Spanish translations included.

As a Reno-born Nevadan, Stephens has seen how the region’s growth has created more diversity.

“It’s been a really humbling and fascinating experience to see … the different folks who have come in- different cultures that have become kind of enmeshed,” Stephens told Our Town Reno during a one on one interview in between speeches and mingling with dozens of supporters. “And [that’s] what keeps Reno … just so ultimately unique.”

As a board member for the Community Health Alliance, they say they have been able to get a sense for what lower-income residents need. Part of that, they said is getting more Nevadans access to mental health care.

This is included in their “3 Changes for a Better Nevada,” which also list support for small businesses, and Improved Compensation for Teachers / Increased Representation for Students. Other issues they want to make a difference on if elected is augmenting affordable housing and reducing food deserts.

Campaign masks were laid out on tables at Thursday night’s event.

Stephens is a unique candidate not only because it is their first time campaigning, but because they are a non-binary candidate as well doing so.

As a non-binary person, they understand that figuring out one’s identity is a process, and that process should be met with empathy and respect. They hope that their presence as a Senate candidate will provide more visibility for the trans and non-binary community.

“I want to show folks that yes, you can live your authentic self, and you can be who you are, and you can still run for office,” Stephens said. “You can do all the things, and that in itself is such a powerful message that I am so honored to be able to convey.”

Stephens, who is running as a Democrat is expected to face off against ex-assemblyman Skip Daly, who served twice, from 2010 until 2014 and again from 2016 to 2020, with the primary election set for June 14, and the winner favored to win the general in November.

Our Town Reno reporting by Lynn Lazaro

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