The Last Motel Residents of Reno, Shawn: Losing His Job during the Pandemic

Shawn Patrick Jamie has been living at Desert Rose Inn motel on West 4th street since November 2021. He was a line cook who worked in different restaurants pre-Covid but lost his job when the initial lockdown and shutdowns took place. Complicating matters for him, he’s been dealing with a painful kidney stone for a while now, while he looks for a new job.

As others though, he’s been more selective and patient while re-entering the workforce, looking for kitchen jobs at $19 an hour. Still he figures, he won’t be able to find a place elsewhere even with that kind of salary.

Shawn pays $900 per month to rent a room here and describes getting a room in the motel as a-not-so-easy at it seems task.

“So we hopped around for a couple of different places,” he remembers. “And then luckily got up here. But it's kind of difficult to get in here, vacancies are not like… they don't come up that often.” 

He says the $900 payment is cheaper than what he paid at a local Motel 6 for a while: “...that was like 1600 bucks a month for a motel room. And that's just ridiculous.”

He lives in this motel with his girlfriend and a dog and says they barely “squeak by” when it comes to monthly expenses.

The Desert Rose Inn has resisted repeated attempts until now from Jacobs Entertainment which has been buying up other motels and properties, mostly tearing them down and replacing them with fenced off dirt lots. The Colorado-based company says it wants to create a new entertainment district, and has established a usually locked off Glow Plaza, with a row of animal sculptures, green lights and replicas of old motel signs.

“I sell art on the side…I had unemployment that just ran out… I won best mural and best muralist out here or whatever, a couple years ago. I paint pretty good,” he said as he showed us the tattoo he got on his neck after his pitbull Jasmine’s death. 

Shawn says there were a couple of times where he did not know where to go and walked around all night. Some of his friends lived in tent last year before the sweeps.

“That was brutal,” he said. “That was bad, as long as gentrification [is] around here, Jacobs Entertainment buying up all the property, downtown Reno doesn't even look like downtown Reno [any]more. You can't push all these people into these areas. And then they go and they wipe out all the places where people are like the broke people are supposed to live, a lot of these motels, where are they supposed to go? People got to go somewhere. You can't go tear down all the low income housing and not replace it with something,” he said.

Shawn says he is pretty happy about living at the Desert Rose Inn. “This one's pretty clean for as far as most of them goes,” he said of the motel experience. “We got no bugs here, mice, nothing like that.” 

He says it takes getting used to to wash utensils in a bathroom instead of a sink but says, “ I'm just grateful to have a roof.”

While he’s finally feeling some relief with the pandemic easing, he’s worried about the war between Russia and Ukraine.

“I read the news every day. So I'm like, ‘ oh, man, this kind of looks like the impending threat of World War Three.’ I worry about stuff like that. I'm gonna add to our little family. So I worry about stuff like that and probably shouldn't watch the news. It's not very cheerful.”

He’s concerned about Reno’s direction as well. “I've been here forever and it used to kind of be a nice town. It's gotten real dirty and grimy, especially downtown. Like Jacobs Entertainment and their big jazz, classic textbook gentrification! I used to think gentrification was a myth until it happened in my own community. Like I'd read about it in Chicago or San Francisco or something like that… And then it started happening to us, like around here. So yeah, it's real. They're tearing down places where poor people could be living indoors… like the park across the street. Like we really need a big 40 foot tall polar bear. People probably need places to live better than that.”

Our Town Reno reporting by Kingkini Sengupta

Cotter C. Conway, a Believer in Rehabilitation, Running for Reno Justice of the Peace

Cotter C. Conway has an extensive resume, with 30 years practicing law, and recently serving as a judge pro tem and as a part-time Court Referee in Reno Justice court for traffic cases and small claims. He’s now running for Reno Justice of the Peace Department 2, a seat that’s been vacant since the late 2020 retirement of Pete Sferrazza, who had been in the position for 13 years, after serving as Washoe County Commissioner and Reno mayor.

The Reno Justice Court has six judges on six year terms, with four of those positions currently up for election, including Department 2.  “What they do is they handle everything from misdemeanors, preliminary hearings, small claims actions, and other matters as well,”  Conway explained to us during a recent podcast interview, seeing it as a natural continuation of what he’s currently doing.  

He explains running for judicial office is different than competing for other offices though. “We don't have the ability to start,campaigning on a policy ground or what we would do if we made it to the bench. So I think the important thing for a judicial candidate is to highlight what their experience is both on the bench and what they've done in practice.”

In this race against Kendra Bertschy and Bruce Hahn he views himself as having the most experience of the three candidates, having also been recently assigned to a specialty court in Reno Municipal Court for younger offenders.  

“I think judge campaigns are often a little nicer … there's not a lot of dirt being brought up. We kind of focus on what our experience is, or lack thereof. I think in this case I have the experience and the qualifications to do the job.”

Conway sees the legal process in lower courts as trying to help people, and more rehabilitative than punitive, especially when drug use is part of the equation. 

“It’s all misdemeanors and there we're really trying to help these individuals. We're trying to get them the treatment they need. We're trying to get them into either mental health situations where they can get counseling and therapy. We're trying to get them to break the cycle of addiction … I like dealing with the people that have misdemeanors because I think we can do more for them and try to, to get them on the right track before they become felons,” he said.

Having more speciality courts of late in Reno, he says, has helped people including the unhoused. “People that were living on our streets because they would just continue to commit similar crimes, whether it be trespassing, whether it be, drunk and disorderly, whether it be other things related to their homelessness, petty theft, things like this. And I believe that allowing these specialty courts to seek ways to treat these people because a lot of times, it's not really their fault and to find ways to treat the underlying symptoms that are causing the homelessness are causing the petty crime is a huge change in the practice of law over my last 30 years,” he said.

The primary like for other elections ends June 14th, with the top two vote getters going to the November runoff.

Conway has a website and is working on posting to social media.  He has run in elections before but lost twice, so he’s not taking anything for granted in 2022. 

“The first one I really kind of didn't do a lot, because I didn't know what I was doing. It was more to just have the experience. The second time I learned that I need to do more with social media. That's what I really kind of learned. I learned that I really need to highlight what my qualities are and what my experiences are.”

He says his family is fully behind him as well as he spends more of his time boosting his campaign.  His wife April Conway works for the Reno Housing Authority as a Public Information Officer, his son just graduated from a Marine Corps bootcamp and his daughter attends a local high school. Conway sees himself very much part of the community, and sees a judge’s role as helping it become a better, safer place for all.

Our Town Reno reporting, April 2022

Native Ukrainian Dealing With Terrible Conflict Back Home From Reno

The Ukrainian-Russian war rages on, and for people like Olena Nekrasova, a native Ukrainian living here in Reno, it’s a nerve wracking time for the present and what the future holds. 

“The Russians are not keeping their words, so the talks that they had the day before, means nothing I think,” Nekrasova said of current peace talks and battlefield strategies. “Everybody in Ukraine thinks they just want to move the army to different places and make harder attacks from different places. So I don’t know, and I really don’t think it will stop very fast,” she said. 

Nekrasova came to the United States two years ago from Kharkiv and has described the war in her native country as horrible. After feeling helpless being so far from the situation, she was the driving force in putting a rally together in Reno in support of Ukraine on Feb. 27th. 

“I was sure a lot of people here from Ukraine had the same feeling so I decided maybe if we combine and say ‘Support Ukraine’ it would be better for everybody. So, I just decided it, and I made a post in Russian groups [on Facebook] and everybody said yes, let's do it. So it was just one and a half days to organize everything and I didn’t realize so many people would follow us, not just Ukrainians and Russians but Polish people and Americans, there were over 100 people there at the rally,” she said. 

Nekrasova also put together a donation drive to help get food and clothing to the citizens in Ukraine. While it was incredibly warming to see the outpouring of support from the community, she explains that the logistics of getting donations to the country right now are extremely difficult. 

“We helped a lot of people, and people ask me to do it again but there are so many obstacles for now and I’m not sure if I can do it,” she said.

She explained that the company that ships the donations over to specific cities and places within those cities, is expensive. Without the help of a non-profit organization, the cost to pack, move and ship the items falls to her. Once the donations are received by the country, because she is an individual and not a non-profit the taxes are around 30 percent of the whole amount to get them across the border. 

“It's not free to send to Ukraine to ship it… [people] can just donate money and we have a lot of fundraisers in Ukraine. The government made some, so [people] can just donate money and I think that's the best way for now,” she said. 

The most difficult part of the conflict is worrying about her family back home. She described her daily life as continually checking in with them, making sure they’re okay and have food to eat. 

“All day I just wait for any information from Ukraine, what is going on. And you think about it all the time… Like the first two weeks when it just started it was the most hard I think, and now it is better because you understand that you can do nothing, you cannot control this situation. I just want my family alive and nothing to happen to them. You can make more money, you can buy everything, you just cannot buy life and that is the one thing I care about right now,” she said.

The city where she is from, Kharkiv, has been one of the hardest hit during the war.

“My mama she had to move in Ukraine, she is in the middle of Ukraine because right now there are no bombs there yet and she cannot leave Ukraine because her parents are there and they are pretty old so they cannot leave them… The most horrible thing is that my mom she has no place to live right now because a missile destroyed her apartment. It burned it down so there is nothing there. So if it’s done, if the war is over, she has no place to go back to,” she said.

Nekrasova said it’s difficult to think about the future because everything can change in just two minutes. However, she is grateful for the positive response from the community and feels Ukraine will succeed in its opposition to Russia. 

“I just want to say thank you so much to all the Americans who really support Ukraine… I see very clear[ly] that everybody really wants to help somehow and there is support. We need it really really really,” she said. 

Our Town Reno reporting by Matthew Berrey

Community Homelessness Advisory Board Decides to Meet Quarterly Instead of Monthly

The Community Homelessness Advisory Board voted to move their monthly meetings to once every quarter today. This change comes on as construction of new buildings on the CARES Campus is set to begin in the coming weeks, as part of an overall vision to have more services directly on the compound.

Sparks Council member Kristopher Dahir was the lone holdout saying the region has yet to provide a “path into housing,” for the hundreds and hundreds of unhoused community members.

“We’re missing a component on why this came together, so if this is what we're going to do, I would challenge us to make sure we find another component… We started bringing everyone together to make sure we can … work together, and with that said I think some of that comes with accountability.”

In rebuttal, Washoe County Commissioner Bob Lucey expressed that originally the CHAB meetings were not open to the public and if what Dahir was referring to was adequate communication happening, there were alternative avenues.

“I would say the component you feel is missing is not necessarily having individuals come to a public meeting but having their ability to address it at any time they need, not a set meeting but being able to reach staff immediately to address a situation,” Lucey said. 

Earlier in the meeting, Lucey asked Dana Searcy, the Washoe County Housing and Homeless Services Manager, about the ability to address issues to the county via the Washoe County website or other methods to bring up any kind of situation related to the unhoused.

Searcy suggested using the homeless services email address (RegionalHomelessServices@washoecounty.gov) and calling 311, the central hub to access a variety of Washoe County services

Searcy’s presentation on the Cares Campus prior to the vote referred to the compound as a “gigantic ship.” One year in, she said there had been “wear and tear a lot sooner than we thought,” including showers collapsing. Temporary structures are now being bought as replacements. She also admitted to difficulties in finding mental health counsellors to work there.

Reno Council member Neoma Jardon put forth an idea of a possible bulletin that Washoe County could work on for alerting the community about updates on information ranging from the shower situation to the food distribution happening on the campus. 

“Those are things that the community at large is interested in, not just this body,” Jardon said. “So I think if there’s a level of understanding and commitment to those sorts of points of interest that are global in nature that get updated and we can all share that with the community, I’m okay with a quarterly meeting,” she said. 

Jardon asked about who had applied for the new contract to manage the Cares Campus, but Searcy refused to give any information beyond that there was more than one applicant, and that a decision would be made public soon. People working with the unhoused have told Our Town Reno they believe Karma Box Project will get the new contract to replace Volunteers of America. Karma Box already manages the safe camp component of the compound where people are now moving into ModPods, after tents that were being used were found to be too flimsy for local weather conditions.

Our Town Reno reporting by Matthew Berrey

William Mantle, An Unapologetic Progressive Running for Affordability

William Mantle, 35, who moved to Reno for college in 2005, and has since worked as a victims advocate and at the District Attorney’s office as a Family Support Specialist, is at it again, running for mayor, after finishing fourth in 2018.  

“I really care about our people here and I want them to have as good a life as possible, as high quality of life as they can get. I think we haven't been getting the best deals that we could for our city in terms of planning, transportation, and certainly affordable housing,” he told Our Town Reno during a recent interview.

He says since his run four years ago, he’s been dismayed to see motels torn down and the number of unhoused grow. Like others, he says he’s been “appalled that our city is engaged in a development agreement with Jacobs Entertainment, a multi-billion dollar national corporation that wasn't held to any standard other than I think it was a 64-unit condominium. Like you would give over an entire swath of a city to a corporation and millions of dollars of our financial support for some condos. I mean talk about a bad deal.”

Mantle views the Cares Campus response to help the unhoused as a failure. “We're only addressing symptoms here. You know … a massive shelter … it doesn't help anyone actually transition from that life into a solid, steady life. The only way we can do that is by having enough places for people to be in a home.”

Contrary to popular opinion, he says there should be checks on unbridled growth.  “Everyone thinks more companies is better for a location, but you have to allow time for infrastructure and for the resources that support a community to grow before you solicit more people to come here. And that seems to be a completely foreign concept to our leadership,” he said.

He says current Mayor Hillary Schieve who is running again “is passionate about improving the city economically,” as a small business owner, but he believes she’s “missing” some of the human element. “I don't think she's uncaring or heartless or anything negative like that, I just think she's missing it. I think maybe because I've been on the front lines, helping people as an advocate, I've seen it firsthand and it's so personally affected me, that it's a singular driving force for me. I just really would like to get someone in there who would prioritize people first instead of economy, because the economy is not doing well for the people.”

He says he recently heard of security guards saying that after their rent increased by several hundred dollars they couldn’t afford to live within city limits anymore.  Mantle says more aggressive policy could be pursued at the local level, including limiting rent gouging to prevent this from happening over and over to working class citizens.

“How can we allow these things to happen to our own citizens? I mean the people have lived here for decades,” Mantle said. “Like what is Reno, but its people. So my push is to really use the legislation that we have available to us. I completely disagree with the city manager and the city attorney that we can't actually address rent gouging. That's their position, but I read the exact same laws that they have. And I see no exception. I even reached out to legislative consultants at Carson City at the Capitol and asked them questions that, you know, they can't give legal advice because they're not attorneys, but enough to make me feel very certain that we should at least give it a go.”

He says his run in 2018 was a “real David versus Goliath” scenario, where he ran a “bare bones, grassroots campaign.”  He laments that so much money is spent even on local elections.

He says he spent just $250 on his last campaign and still finished fourth in the primary, with over 1,500 votes, behind Schieve who got about 20,000 votes, Eddie Lorton with about 6.000 votes and Azzi Shirazi who only got about 70 more votes than Mantle, even though candidates ahead of him spent in the six figure range.  

“I’ve got, you know, people signing up to be a volunteer now with me, which is fantastic,” he said of his current run, which includes a website called Mantle for Reno [above], with a tagline of “Clarity. Accountability. Transparency.”

“So I can have more people, more boots on the ground to knock doors and direct people to my website where hopefully they can convince themselves. I’m not going to over promise and hopefully not under promise, what I hope to do for the city,” he said.  “I think we definitely need a change because I don't know anyone who's enjoyed the trajectory of the city in the last 10 years. And I haven't heard anyone arguing that it's better for the average citizen today than it was 10 years ago.”

This mayoral election has 11 filed candidates, including Lorton and councilwoman Jenny Brekhus, often at odds with Schieve and the rest of the City Council.

“A lot of individuals  say that they would like to support me because you know, I'm not a part of that organization right now,” Mantle said. “I haven't been a part of the failed years that have created this rental crisis and this affordability crisis. I'm not a part of the status quo. I'm not beholden to anyone period.”

Mantle calls him “unabashedly, unapologetically, absolutely” progressive, even if that can create challenges. “I think there are some misconceptions about what progressivism is and means. I’m pushing for whatever policy can lead to the most benefit for the most people, simple to say, not easy to execute. I would urge everyone to really examine their reality in this city and see if they like what has happened to them over the last 10 years. If it's not gotten better for you, then I would strongly consider them to look at my website, see if they like what I've got to say and think about supporting me. Because that's what I'm pushing for. I'm pushing for a very different Reno than what we've gotten and what we can expect to get from the exact same people that have given us this reality. I really encourage people to think about what they want instead of what they have and that's the kind of candidate I'm hoping to be,” he concluded. 

Our Town Reno reporting by Lynn Lazaro

Wendy Wiglesworth, Reaching Out and Helping Others Reach Out with More Compassion

In 2016, Our Town Reno first met Wendy Wiglesworth holding court and making warm drinks for neighbors along the Truckee River. While sharing her story she provided different solutions about how she thought the city could help the houseless. Six years later, we found her at Rock Park, hosting a vigil to remember friends who recently passed away.

Wiglesworth is now an Outreach Director for The Reno Initiative for Shelter and Equality.

“Well, like on a normal day, I wake up and I have lots of messages and calls,” she explains of her new paid role, which she used to fulfill previously ad hoc to help others. “I do a lot of crisis calls, like overnight emergency things lately, especially with cold weather. I'll go out to someone if they need immediate things. Like, are you okay right now? Are you okay for the evening? Then I go, are you hungry? Are you cold? Do you have an ID? Do you need disability? Do you wanna move inside? Do you wanna go to a group home? Do you wanna go to the shelter? Do you wanna stay out here? If someone wants to stay out here, that's the one I'm gonna look out after more. Because like with RISE our whole thing is like who's ever the most vulnerable in the room. That's who we're going for straight.” 

She tries to connect people with resources, but the most important she says is that human connection and building trust — becoming a friend. “This last year, I've spent a lot of time with the people I already have, building it better so that they're not stubborn,” she said. “So, when they're cold, they can get over pride and call me anyways. And I think it has worked.” 

She says there is no one size fits all solution when helping. “One program isn't gonna work for everybody,” she said. “So the more options and the more ways we have to get inside and be stable, I think the better.”

Wiglesworth threw out flowers at a recent gathering to honor friends who recently died, many while living on the streets.

Wiglesworth does not live in tents anymore. After the initial Our Town Reno article, she says she was lucky to come across the right people at the right time.

“I met this girl, Jen, she used to be with RISE, Jen Cassady, I'll throw her name everywhere. She's my favorite. She came down to the end of the world where I was living. When I came back from Carson City, I called her after meeting her only once. And it just proves the RISE thing over and over to me… I had that trust. I was in a bad spot in Carson and I called her and she answered and she was like, ‘ Yeah, I can get you to Reno. No problem.’ And then the next week, when she came out to the end of the world, I was, I realized I was done and now she gave me that trust and there was someone who lived out there that way as well, that was in an apartment and they passed away and I took over the lease and it just kind of worked out.”

She says every story for getting off the street is different and that hers felt scripted.

“It's almost like the universe just kind of parted and said, walk here,” she said. “They gave me bumper boards. And then when [RISE] had grants and I got hired on for like a part-time gig. And then I just kept busting my *** doing the same thing cuz they just kept telling me to do what you're doing. Just keep doing it. I'm like, okay. And I just put blind faith and trust in that. And it's worked out. I mean I've worked my *** off and I went from one apartment. They gave me an eviction notice because the building got sold for new developers by UNR.”

For a while, she tried to have jobs which came with housing. She tried being a house manager for a recovery house, for example, but after that didn’t work out, she was finally able to find a room, no strings attached, at the Desert Rose Inn, a motel which has refused to be sold to the Jacobs Entertainment expansion.

“I've stayed there cuz it's, I don't wanna say easier, but it's hard to find a place, it's just hard to find a place,” she said. “There isn't really anything available. So I've just kept doing the same thing.”

Even though she is now working closer with government officials than before, Wiglesworth says she remains her true self, always fighting for the interests of those less fortunate.

RISE is now partnering with Washoe County both in terms of managing the Our Place shelter for women and families, as well as for outreach efforts. Even while working within the county’s system, she says she can keep her free, critical thinking, including criticizing how the Cares Campus was conceived.

“I don't think we should have gone with a super shelter,” she said. “It's like people tell me it's a FEMA camp and it is, and yeah, it's some place warm, but when you can be out here with family versus being inside and like a concentration camp is what it's been compared to, I wouldn't go there either. But here I just had a woman who said she preferred it there over Our Place, which confused me, but for her it's a better fit.”

She says more staff helping with the unhoused should spend more time with those living in encampments, to get a better sense of who they are. “Like everybody out there on the other side, they don't see this side, but just to keep staff and train them to make 'em safe and then have them stay and build that to have that camaraderie to have your guests believe in you is hard work…I just think it was too big, too much too quick.”

She also has plenty of tips to give out for those doing outreach, from police officers to downtown Reno ambassadors.

“The first thing is when you drive by or walk by, don't give them that look. Just say hi, like diamonds are dirt. It shouldn't matter what you're wearing. I think the most important thing is to remember what your mom taught you and practice it. You don't judge a book by its cover. Don't stare. It's not polite. If you're gonna stare, say something nice, or don't say it at all. Treat someone like you wanna be treated…Don't put demands on your dollar. Like if they wanna buy beer, so what you gave 'em a dollar, let 'em do their thing. I'm not trying to promote beer, I'm just saying, it's not your business. If you share, just share because you want to, not because you're gonna put restraints over it.”

At the vigil, Wiglesworth broke down when a friend she thought had also passed away showed up.

For Wiglesworth, the recent ceremony was especially for her friend Fuzz, who died after a stroke in the summer of 2021.

“He's my guardian ogre,” she said of her friend, a former skateboarder who was known for his big beard and generosity. “He was my compass and I tell people like, he loves me here by myself. I know I'm not alone, but he was my person. He is missed so much. And I get really possessive when people say he is my best friend. I'm like, ‘no, he wasn't’, I'm the wiggle, wiggle the song! But Fuzz was so amazing that he made everybody feel like that. If someone didn't know, I'm almost like, I'm so sorry you missed out dear. My dear, me and Dofu, you know, I mean, everybody's got their close name, you know that's how great Fuzz was. I'm not dealing with it. I miss him bad. I see him everywhere. I hear him. Like it sucks, but he was super tired and it's okay.”

Our Town Reno reporting by Kingkini Sengupta

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