Mayoral Candidate Judi Rought Compares Current State of Reno to a “Flipped” House and Suggests Citywide Wifi and More Transparency

40-year-old mayoral candidate Judi Rought wants to get the infrastructure, “the bones of the city” in a better place after which she says she would focus on making it “pretty”. 

“I know that Hillary Schieve has done a good job of making things pretty. She wants us to be a welcoming community,” she told Our Town Reno of the incumbent she is running against in a crowded field.

“And I completely agree with that. But I feel a little bit like Reno is a flipped house, that someone bought a house, as [cheaply as] they could, they put in substandard materials and slap some paint on it to make it look pretty. But when you walk across the floor, it bubbles and bounces. The sink is still leaking underneath the cabinet. And there's not properly grounded electrical in the house. So there's all these things like wow, it looks really pretty when you walk in. And then you start seeing all these problems.”

One of the big reasons why Rought says she wants to run for mayor is because she feels Reno is being reactive rather than proactive, which she points out on her campaign website and reiterated during our interview.  “With all of the growth that we've had the last few years, as people have finally realized we have a beautiful community, and this is a great place to live, we've had so much growth that we have not been able to keep up with it. And we probably weren't really keeping up with it beforehand,” she said.

Rought was born and raised in Reno and had been away from the city for a while to pursue her education and career.  Having initially earned an MBA at Friends University, a Christian University of Quaker heritage in Kansas, she is also now a Certified Management Accountant. She explains that’s a good certification for a mayor to have, to be able to plan better for the future of Reno. 

“Certified Management Accountants focus forward, we're looking at projections and budgets, and why didn't we meet the budget, and let's dig in and find out why we're not making the money that we thought we were going to be making or what's causing the hiccup, did we have a bad budget? Or did we have too much overtime, for example. So a lot of what I do is focusing on forward planning and the future,” she said. 

Rought handed out pink campaign garb at a recent campaign fundraising event.

Rought suggests that one of the best ways to aim for more affordable housing is probably to have higher taxes to lead to solutions. She admits this might not be popular, but explains at length this might also be common sense. 

“If the city is hurting for money and we need to be able to continue supporting the city, if the government is hurting for cash and we need to support more programs and be able to supplement landlords from an affordable housing standpoint, then we need to have the money come from somewhere.” she said. 

“And that is unfortunately the easiest fix. It is in general that Nevada has a low tax rate. Overall, we don't have income taxes. We don't pay tax on food. The property taxes and everything like that are significantly lower than a lot of other areas, which is why so many people are coming here, but do need more money so that we can do more for the community. That might be the best place to look for it. No one likes that answer. No one wants to hear more taxes. And it's weird to hear someone say someone from a financial background who claims to be responsible to say, well, we need more money. This is where we're gonna get it from. It's weird to hear it. And no one's going to want to vote for me for that concept. And I understand that, but that might be the place that we need to do it from for a long term solution.” 

An avid runner, Rought is also a running coach for girls. She also advocates for more healthy communal events.

Better internet service across the region would also be one of her priorities. 

“What if we had something like citywide wifi? Now, paying for that again, of course, is the first question. How do we pay for it? So my thought is, since we do have a moderate to low amount of debt that the city has right now, we can take out a bond like a 20-year bond, which are normally very low interest rates. And … we work with the city of Sparks and Washoe County as well. So we can get as much of the area covered as possible. And that's how we pay for the infrastructure for something like citywid wifi. And then from there, instead of asking residents to pay the $65 a month or whatever, they're paying their internet service providers, we can then charge maybe $40 a month. And that income will go to paying back the bond over the 20 years.”

She realizes some of her visions could be seen as radical, expecting initial pushback. “Now, I think that one's gonna be a big fight for me to get past a lot of places. There's gonna be a lot of red tape with that one, but it is another idea I have, because I really do believe that the internet needs to be a standard utility,” she said. 

As a mayor, Rought thinks more access to the entire community from the city’s leader is paramount. 

“I could do something like a Facebook Live where once a month, people can just talk to me and will manage it that way so they can ask me questions and I can go through and go, okay, that's a great question. Let me dig into it. And then we can go from there…. I need to be accessible for other people to come tell me, ‘Hey, have you heard about this weirdness going on over at X you know, this is something that's been a perpetual problem and we're worried about it.’

I definitely wanna be accessible and I drive a pink VW Beetle. It's pretty hard to miss me. At this point in time, I'm waiting for people to start honking at me going, ‘Hey, there's that pink chick running for mayor again.’” 

Our Town Reno photos and reporting by Kingkini Sengupta

Helping the Biggest Little City, One Community Run Pantry at a Time

Getting Started

For Claire Holden, a student at the University of Nevada, Reno, studying environmental science, searching dumpsters behind grocery stores for viable food was not an unfamiliar task. The labels would have expiration dates that had not yet come, plastic boxes remained air-tight and closed, and produce would glisten from being freshly washed, despite some dents and imperfections. 

These dumpsters were able to provide what thousands of people in Reno seek every day but are unable to find or afford: fresh food. 

This reality is not unique to Claire. Housed and unhoused people all throughout Reno have found themselves in increasingly difficult circumstances exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and recent inflation.

While the fight to end food insecurity in the Biggest Little City may sound daunting, Claire did not let that stop them from grabbing an extension cord, hooking up a mini-fridge and creating a free pantry, right in their own front yard. The message of the pantry was simple: take what you need, leave what you can. 

And the Biggest Little Free Pantry was born.

The official logo for Biggest Little Free Pantry, designed in September of 2020, made approximately two months after the Instagram for the pantries was created. Art by Reno tattoo artist and ceramicist, Summer Ester, who can be found on Instagram as @waxmouth.

Lived Experiences Lead to Initiative

Claire Holden is a university student who works with several food recovery networks and local farms to combat food insecurity in Reno. Their passion for food recovery and food waste reduction comes from their own past experiences as a financially independent student who faced barriers when it came to feeding themself.

“It comes from a very personal place. I have, at times in my life, been houseless, I have not had access to food, and I’ve seen friends go through that same thing,” says Claire.

“I view food as such a bonding experience, you know, being able to share a meal with the people you love and the people around you and it’s honestly one of my favorite parts of my day.” Claire expands that food ought to be a right rather than a privilege. “I really think everyone deserves that, I view that as a human right. Everyone to some extent should have access to some form of nourishment throughout the day.” 

After setting up a pantry in their yard, Claire made an Instagram to raise some visibility within the community. The expansion of these pantries began with simple word-of-mouth. Claire reached out to their peers and friends that they met through other food recovery projects, along with community members who had the means to help keep the pantries stocked. Claire said there was an “overwhelmingly positive response from the community” and people reached out in hopes of becoming a pantry host. 

Some offered additional supplies to build or store food- including mini-fridges- while others offered their property to set up a pantry. “So in the time span of six months, I had four hosts and four pantries for the community to use,” shares Claire. 

Biggest Little Pantry Founder Claire Holden (they/them) pictured with several bundles of kale at a local farm. They attend the University of Nevada, Reno as an undergraduate student in environmental science. Photo courtesy of Claire Holden.  

Food Without Discrimination

One of the unique things about Biggest Little Free Pantry that separates it from many other food assistance programs, is the anonymity behind its usage. 

The makeshift pantries are open to the public 24/7 and Claire and the other hosts make no attempt to monitor those utilizing the pantries.

Claire speaks as to why this privacy is a part of the mission. “There’s a really big stigma in really any form of government assistance, or getting help in any way when you are struggling. This helps make people feel a little less shame. I mean I remember when I was like 18 or 19 and I was in line at the food bank and I was terrified someone from school would recognize me or something,” Claire explains.

The stigmatization of food insecurity extends to students, parents, all community members alike. 

“Even for families, they don’t want to show their kids how much they’re struggling and parents try to put up this really strong front. I think its important to have something that works to de-stigmatize that experience and it really can be used by anyone. You don’t have to be houseless, you don’t have to be living paycheck to paycheck, you can be anyone because everyone should have a right to food,” says Claire.

Jax Hart, the pantry host for the Sixth street location, shares similar sentiments behind the shame that tends to come with food insecurity. “Food insecurity doesn’t have a specific face, anyone can be hungry,” Hart says.  

“I mean some people have the idea of ‘oh you have a house, you don’t need food’ but that’s not true, anyone can be food insecure so I really don’t like to police that usage at all,” says Jax. “I don’t care who takes food. In an ideal world food would be distributed evenly and the people that need it the most get it, but who are we to decide that and navigate that? So the food is for anyone. And if you have the means, come fill it up because there really is enough food out there and its just atrocious that people are hungry.” 

Jax Hart is involved with several food recovery networks that work to mitigate food insecurity in the Reno-Sparks area. Photo by Vanessa Ribeiro.

FIghting for Food Justice and Food Equity

Jax Hart was already involved in several food recovery networks before they became a pantry host. “I think of all the food justice and food equity work I’ve been involved in, the [Biggest Little Free Pantry] is the best example of mutual aid,” shares Jax. “It’s just purely a tool for the community to take care of itself. It’s a network of relationships, not just a one-sided thing that makes someone feel good about themselves.” 

The mutual aid framework allows the pantries to sustain itself through community contributions. Given the freedom behind who can use the pantry, it also means any person can drop food off, whether it be extra groceries after a trip to the store or spare food that restaurant has at the end of the night.

“A lot of food related work is charitable, it’s you coming from your place of privilege and money and you’re giving food to someone else, so it’s this very one-sided relationship. Whereas this is providing a space where the community can take care of itself. It’s not relying on my generosity, or someone else’s generosity, it’s reliant on the community taking care of itself. It's essential to whatever world we want for the future; we have to take care of our neighbors and each other because when it really comes down to it, who are the people you want to take care of and take care of you? It’s the people right around you.” — Jax Hart 

A Biggest Little Pantry at 1135 Wilkinson Avenue. The pantry includes a wooden structure to protect the mini-fridge from the heat, and a shelving unit that contains food and products. Photo by Vanessa Ribeiro

Challenges in Working with Others

While this anonymity is integral to the accessibility of the pantries, it does come with its hurdles.

Claire says that many grocery stores who do food recovery are unable to work with Biggest Little Pantry due to the fact they don’t track or monitor who uses the pantries.

This makes the work of the hosts and community members that much more important for sustaining the success of these pantries.

“Instead of it being a place that’s just like a handout spot, the idea is that it’s a place that enables other people to help their community too,” says Jax Hart. “If you can’t get people to care about each other, how are you going to get them to care about anything else? If you don’t care about the people around you now, how am I supposed to expect you to care about people in 30 years?”

The fridge components of these pantries are protected by wood structures built by the volunteers of Biggest Little Free Pantry. These structures were made with plywood and fabric, with its pantry counterpart utilizing old book shelves and carts to store ambient items that don’t require refrigeration.

In the time spent at these pantries, numerous community members approached with hungry stomachs and open hands. There were men and women alike, of varying levels of trepidation when asked to conduct an anonymous interview. While some individuals chose not to divulge their experiences, two different community members who use the pantry were willing to share their stories. 

The first was a 52-year-old male veteran who indicated he was unsheltered. The man had a mask around his chin and his finger nails clipped short. His face was clean but his hands were not. His clothes had a guise of professionalism- with a blue button up shirt and black khaki pants- that was betrayed by its faded print and creases that evidently came from sleeping on the ground overnight.

Sun spots littered the man’s face, and his eyebrows were so overgrown it was nearly difficult to find his eyes behind them; but they were there. Once found, his eyes shined bright blue with flecks of gold. They held many emotions, showing far more than what could be summed up in a fifteen minute interview.

An image of when Claire partnered with Reno Food Systems back in October of 2021; they allowed The Biggest Little Pantry to store donations in their walk-in freezer. Photo courtesy of Claire Holden. 

Proud of His Community

When first asked to interview, the man’s blue eyes hiding behind a curtain of hair widened, a spark ignited at the opportunity to speak about his value to his community.

“I don’t wanna be here; on the streets, relying on others for survival,” he said. “I don’t wanna prove the people right in that the people on the streets take, take, take and never give. Well, you know what? I gave my all to my community and it’s because I didn’t get that in return that I’m stuck here today.”

He said he had been using the pantry for several months now. “I don’t really feel like my family is my family anymore, so [I’m] left to make my own family,” he says. “I don’t [know] who lives there,” he pointed to the front door of the house hosting one of the pantries, “but just by giving me this, they’re my family.” 

The man spoke of the last two years being “absolute hell” due to the homeless camp sweeps Reno police officers were making in 2021. The constant relocation made it “difficult to feel safe.”

“Now? This community- my community- doesn’t expect anything from me. They’re kind and loving and fun for the sake of it, not because they want me to give [them] something in return. If people want to hate and judge me for relying on and making this community my own, then so be it,” said the man. 

As those words left his mouth, his head raised a little higher; his chest seemed to pop out and his face dared to break out in a small smile. But again, it was his eyes that truly showed the pride for his community as he looked over to the front door of the pantry host again. “That is my community, and someone would have to be crazy and downright cruel to take that away from me.”

Food and drinks stored at the Wilkinson pantry location. Photos by Vanessa Ribeiro. 

A Student on Hold

While the Biggest Little Pantries are undoubtedly used by those who are unsheltered, just like with the issue of food insecurity, these pantries’ are indiscriminate and can be a constant in any member of the Reno community’s life. 

A 29-year-old college student stood at the pantry, eyeing her options of macaroni and cheese or mashed potatoes for her dinner. She had a green Jansport backpack that she used as a vessel to hold the food; it was tattered at the bottom and the straps seemed to be near threads as they supported the weight of the bag. It was difficult finding her eyes, too, but for different reasons. Like magnets, her eyes remained glued to the drawstring of her hoodie that her fingers fiddled with throughout the interview. 

Her hair was cut, cleaned, and groomed, her nails sporting a chipped but fashionable sky blue nail polish. She had sneakers riddled with grass stains that matched the embroidered flowers on the edge of her boot-cut jeans. She looked her young age, but her words resounded as though she had lived a lifetime. 

She began her studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, about three and a half years ago, transferring to the university after earning her Associates degree at Truckee Meadows Community College. Studying Human Development and Family Studies, she says her studies had to be put on hold during the pandemic.

“I was honestly lucky to even still have my job,” she says, “I knew so many people who were already in pretty low situations that had to then lose their job on top of that… there’s really only so much one person can take.” The woman was working in food service until February of 2022, but has since moved on to an office job in order to make a more stable form of income. 

She said that after undergoing a bout of COVID, she was backed up on bills and classwork after having to take several weeks off of school and work. “I needed more money to survive, and unfortunately, the progress of my degree had to be put on hold in order to do that. A lot of my income came from tips so my job really required me being present in order to really have a sustainable wage. Having to catch up from that took a long time, and, obviously,” she gestured to the box of mac n’ cheese in her hand, “ I’m still kind [of] catching up,”

Despite the pause in her studies, the woman stressed the importance of completing her degree, “I’m not going to let the loss and tragedy of the last two years erase all the work I’ve done. I’m just as deserving of that recognition as anyone else.” 

As the woman shared her experiences, her voice was quiet but didn’t falter. Her style and clothing were youthful, but her words were sensible and articulate. She told of her past with confidence that comes with remaining grounded with the present. 

“I am so much more than my income status or the size of my home. I am a living, breathing, person and if the whole community had an ounce of the compassion that’s necessary to donate food, then maybe we wouldn’t have so many people struggling in own neighborhoods.” 

The woman, who now had tears welled up in her eyes, finished her last statement with just as much poise as the start of the interview. She was fierce as she said, “I shouldn’t have to prove why I’m deserving of the compassion and love that lets humans and neighborhoods operate. I will give back when I have the means to do so. In the meantime, I don’t think anyone should hold it against any living human for relying on their fellow humans.”

“That’s just hurting your own community.” 

This marketing logo was created to advertise the Sustainable Nevada Initiative Fund (SNIF) designed by prior ASUN Director of Sustainability Brita Romans. 

The Next Step: The Sustainable Nevada Initiative Fund

After two years of mutual contribution, Claire thought it was time for a an upgrade for these pantries. But with makeshift structures built from donated scrap wood, it was difficult to imagine what the group would even start with.

At least it was at first; then came along the SNIF (talk about a fun acronym, huh?) 

The SNIF stands for the Sustainable Nevada Initiative fund, which is awarded every year by the Associated Students of The University of Nevada, Reno (ASUN). ASUN is the student government organization that represents all undergraduate students at the university. With their near three million dollar budget of student fees, 15,000 is provided for the SNIF, with the ASUN Department of Sustainability implementing the selection process.

Claire has quite the plans to give these pantries new life, with the incorporation of full size refrigerators, external designs by local muralists and artists, and perhaps the biggest game changer: solar power.

“They’ll be solar powered, which is super cool because it takes off some weight from the host and makes it a little more autonomous,” says Claire. They also plan to built the pantries on top of large plastic pallets donated by Tesla. “It allows for more flexibility because all the hosts are actually renters, so it makes it easy for us to move the pantry in the scenario one of us has to move.” 

A copy of the visual blueprint that Claire used in their SNIF proposal of the renovations they plan to make when granted with funds. The new design includes a full sized fridge on one side, with a pantry on the other. This new design includes the incorporation of solar power. 

Getting Club Status at the University

With the expansion of and building of these pantries occurring over Summer 2022, Claire is planning on building up their volunteer base and club status at the university to create more infrastructure for The Biggest Little Pantries. 

The current members who contribute to these pantries are all volunteers or community members who don’t receive financial compensation for their time or resources. Claire hopes to change that with the eventual establishment of non-profit status, “The end goal is non profit status instead of having to work through other people to get donations. Instead we can have someone get us food directly as representatives for us, and it allows some more freedom to work with The Biggest Little Free Pantries while also balancing other life responsibilities,” shares Claire. 

Both Claire and Jax, as pantry hosts, have been able to connect and invest back into the Reno community through their involvement in the Biggest Little Free Pantry. 

A Flawed System

Jax speaks to how each step made to feed those who need it, no matter how small, is a step in the right direction. “I think our system is very flawed, people are dying, people are starving, people are unhoused, people can’t afford medical bills, it doesn’t matter what my idea of the solution is, there are real every day issues that need to solves. But when I work with food, whether it’s distributing food directly or I’m working with a pantry, or I sort food at a food bank or something, it just… has such a direct impact.”

Claire feels that with the amount of food waste that happens in food service, industrial farming, and through general wastefulness, there are insurmountable environmental impacts, which creates human impacts. “This seems like a very easy and manageable mitigation strategy not only to food waste but also food justice,” Claire explains. 

As they move forward feeding the community, one pantry at a time, the volunteers at the Biggest Little Free Pantry are seeing continued positivity and support throughout Reno’s food insecure population. 

“I know it’s improving the material conditions of other people, almost instantly,” says Jax. “If someone needs food and they get food from this pantry, I mean that a huge amount of progress. I think it’s easy to get bogged down with trying to solve the world’s problems, but no one person can do that.  But as one person I get another person food. And that’s tangible progress; even though it’s tiny tiny steps, it’s progress.” 

The Biggest Little Free Pantries are at the following locations and can be found on Instagram at @BiggestLittleFreePantry: 1135 Wilkinson Avenue, Reno / 820 G. Street, Reno / 472 East 8th Street, Reno/ 523 East 6th Street, Reno

Reporting for Our Town Reno by Vanessa Ribeiro

Sunday Reno Gatherings for International Students with the Lahtis

Every Sunday around 4pm, Kris Lahti alerts a group of international students on WhatsApp and Facebook while her husband David Lahti prepares a meal to be served to international students- “Sunday Dinner 6:30 524 Denslowe Curried Chicken soup with coconut and spinach Jalapeño popper grilled cheese Rice,” the text reads.

David prepares the dinner in their house and brings it to the community church for everyone to eat together. The menu changes weekly and they try to incorporate something from each country where the international students in Reno come from. 69-year-old David Lahti says, “ the students love it. ‘This is actually like how my mom makes it,’ some say, when I get the recipe right.”

David and his wife Kris Lahti work with a group called International Students Incorporated which operates across the nation and in different parts of the world at various colleges and universities. The Lahtis not only help arrange a Sunday dinner for international students, they also offer airport pick ups and drop offs for incoming and traveling students, grocery and retail shopping for students who do not have vehicles and also help students learn to drive and get their licenses.

David Lahti led a short prayer before a recent meal.

A True Blessing for International Students

29-year-old Merbin John from India is pursuing his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno.

“I got their contact from one of my friends who is pursuing [their] PhD in Physics,” he said of the Lahtis. “When I booked my ticket I informed Kris and David about my travel itinerary and was a little worried because the layover at San Francisco to Reno was only one hour so I was a little frightened. Since it was my first international travel I thought I wouldn't be able to make it from SFO. I informed them about this and they mentioned that they can even come to San Francisco and they can arrange an alternate travel plan. However, I somehow managed to get the flight from SFO to Reno and I met Kris at the Reno airport for the first time. They provided all the necessary furniture, coats, bed, tables, chairs. Their incessant help is always appreciable. They are such true blessings for international students.”

“I began offering rooms for rent in a house,” Kris says of how she started interacting with international students. “I rented my house out and then rented a place that was close to the university. And I had five or six girls who would live with me, we would live together and that started in 2008.” They still host five international students, all young women, in their house which is close to the university.

During the pandemic the Lahtis kept offering airport pickups though they stopped the Sunday dinner gatherings for a while.

Subin Antony Jose, another Indian student who arrived in Reno during the pandemic for his PhD, says their initial help went a long way.

“They were more than happy to pick me up from the airport and help me in settling down,” he said. “They have interacted with a lot of international students and they know our worries and concerns very well. Explaining the cultural differences, helping me with groceries, giving suggestions on what is better and not, etc…All these things, they did as a part of service and without any expectations.”

David has been doing this work as a volunteer for 11 years now, and sees his role guided by religion. Kris has been doing this for 13 years and gets paid.

A Tight Network and Leftovers

32-year-old graduate student Muhammad Ali Shahbaz from Pakistan who frequently visits Sunday dinners describes this experience as one that helped him adjust gradually in Reno.

“Being a foreigner it was not an easy task to engage with [a] new culture, language and overall social experience,” he said. “First few weeks in the US were really terrible for me as I could not pick up accents and know how to engage with people. After an invitation from Kris and David to their weekly activities, Sunday dinners and coffee talks, I am now more confident to engage with other people and have a social community where I can release my weekly stress and feel at home…every state should follow their model.”

Doing this for over a decade now, the Lahtis have built a tight network of international students where they meet each other, go on trips and share their experiences while studying or working in Reno.

“We feel like mom and dad, although nowadays we're starting to be called grandma and grandpa, so I guess we're getting older,” David said. “And so there is that kind of association as well, just like you would have with your grandparents or your parents. They may not share everything directly with us, but we know they seem to share with each other a little bit, just getting somebody that's their peer, the same age, they may share, sharing with mom and dad or grandpa, grandma, there's still that, that love, that's kind of there. And yes, it's sad to see them go. But through social media, we can keep [in] touch with them, which is still good.”

The Lahtis also follow up and check in on their students whose families might be facing a difficult situation back home, such as an earthquake or war or any other calamities, political or natural. They have also helped to transfer money to student families in remote areas during peak pandemic times. No matter what the world situation is, or conflicts elsewhere, the Lahtis say they have never seen any student conflicts at their dinner table. 

The homemade dinner often ends with sweet treats and board games. At a gathering’s conclusion, the Lahtis pack leftover dinner items in small boxes for the students to take home.

Our Town Reno reporting by Kingkini Sengupta

Hawah Ahmad, A County Commission Candidate with Ideas to Keep Locals Here, Finding a Balance with Newcomers

Hawah Ahmad, a “Reno born, Washoe raised” 29-year-old candidate for Washoe County Commission District 3, recently hosted an Our Community, Our Culture event at the Holland Project, which was supposed to have a public discussion on homelessness.

However, expected representatives from mutual aid groups didn’t show up, so instead our reporter Matthew Berrey caught up with her to get a variety of insights from the candidate directly, from her young age as a candidate, to her ideas on the affordability crisis and passion for helping.

A comedy and live music show did go ahead as planned. “It’s just to celebrate some comedy and some music and just to kinda let off some steam, just because the election cycle's been pretty rough already,” she said.

Another motivating factor was to reach out to younger voters.

“I am a millennial, I'm 29, but I'm on the older side of the spectrum now, regardless of what people try to say. When it comes down to it, [millennials] they don't normally vote in midterm elections and we have a lot of seats, not just mine, but, you know, we have the governor and we also have the Senator up, so we have to get people out and get them excited.”

She was willing to talk about the unhoused situation as well, saying District 3 encompasses many of the motels now being torn down.

“One of the biggest things that has happened is with the development of the Cares Campus, we have homeless people that don't want to necessarily use it, and we don't have the services to be able to provide to the people that need them. So we have kind of a mass diaspora … everyone's spreading out kind of into the neighborhoods and into the suburbs. It's making our situation, especially like in Sparks, surrounding the university and just around where the shelters are not as safe as it could be. So we want to make sure that we can support the people in our community, right. Because we are putting money into it, but it's clear that our money is not having a return on our investment, but we also want to make sure that we support the needs of the residents, the homeless population, and just really like even our public safety infrastructure. So the farther out you have homeless people go, I mean, like who's going to respond. It's going to be cops and I have nothing against cops, but they're not social workers. “

She says getting everyone immediately off the streets is not realistic and that another frame of mind, where emphasis is on empowering people, could make for better results. Ahmad also sees too much of a gap between different groups helping the unhoused and authorities. “No one's actually talking to each other, but that's definitely a statewide issue where we silo ourselves off very easily and we don't actually work together and strategically plan our problems,” she said. 

She also prefers the term attainable housing as part of the solution than the more common term affordable housing. 

“I am the chair of the Washoe County Senior Advisory Board. I have a lot of seniors that are renters that, you know, they're on fixed incomes and same with the folks on disability. That stuff does not change, but their housing prices are increasing and we're seeing trends where they're increasing every six months.”

More work on reducing rising rents would be part of her strategy. 

“We have to incentivize the good landlords that are not increasing rents. We have to hire case managers to negotiate long-term leases. If you can't force a developer or a landlord to do a certain behavior, we have to incentivize it because we're trying to change a culture.”

Ahmad says she started volunteering on the Fourth Street corridor as a teenager, and has continued to do so, as helping others is part of her DNA. 

“I’ve done everything from running school buses to, from motel to motel, to pick up kids, to take them to a free lunch program, to delivering soap to single parent transient households. And when it comes down to this area is just so important to me. I feel like it's been really forgotten. There are parts of it that haven't, but there are parts of it that have. You have this mass development where you have the folks that live there that are not happy. And so we have to find that magical balance and I do believe it's possible just whether or not we're willing to put in the elbow grease to do it.”

Ahmad loves her hometown, and understands many others are starting to appreciate it, while others who grew up here have had to move because of higher and higher prices. “If we have the audacity to continue to seek out companies to move here, then we have to make sure that we have the services and infrastructure necessary to support our current residents. Absolutely. I just love this place and grew up here and I want to see this place really just do well. We have to make sure that we make this place a good place for all young people for every background. And that's also something that we have not done.”

Ahmad sees her background going to a local mosque and Indian stores as a strength of needed diversity, as well as her youth.  

“If we as young people, don't stand up now, then it's going to be too late. We have to talk about sustainability. We have to talk about public transportation, we have to talk about supporting our unions.”

Our Town Reno Interview by Matthew Berrey

Melissa Garcia, a Local Librarian Helping Bridge the Growing Digital Divide

Inside the Reno Town Mall on S. Virginia Street sits the Sierra View Library. While many may know it for the books and library services they offer, it also provides a community resource program to help with the growing digital divide.

Melissa Garcia, a 46-year-old librarian at Sierra View library can often be seen helping patrons in a small room at the end of the library. Garcia and other librarians will sit at one of four computers with visitors who need help with anything from setting up an email address to having a Zoom call with a lawyer.

“For a long time, we had noticed that the digital divide is growing a lot in certain demographics,” Garcia said. Some of the patrons who use the service are the elderly, and those facing housing insecurity.

After the Washoe County Library system shut down at the beginning of the pandemic, the lack of digital access and literacy was exacerbated. Without warning, everything shifted online and those on the lower side of the digital divide felt that impact.

“Folks felt very lost and it reinforced to us here that we needed to to change things up a bit to better meet our patrons needs,” Garcia said. Before the pandemic, the service they offered was just a librarian helping a patron get onto a website, and then patrons were essentially on their own.

While services vary between libraries, the Sierra View Library offers Spanish-speaking services and 90 minute appointments to further help patrons.

As one of the only Spanish-speaking librarians at Sierra View Library, Garcia is proud of the services she can provide.

“I saw a gentleman last week who, you know, he's the only member of his family here,” Garcia said in regards to an appointment with a Spanish-speaker. “So oftentimes someone with a language barrier, they can rely on a family member, a younger family member to maybe bring them in and translate all of that. [Then] there are folks out there that don't have anybody.”

Other services that the library offers are English acquisition classes, citizenship classes, and a family estate planning series. 

Garcia has learned a lot about who typically needs help. Some patrons don’t know how to type, are uncomfortable with computers, or need to make important Zoom calls.

The space in the library is semi-private, so when patrons have Zoom calls with lawyers or doctors, Garcia makes sure that they are aware of it. However, many are just grateful that they are able to access a computer.

“I mean all those things that most of us digital natives would take for granted … people can do for free here,” Garcia said.

Aside from computer access, the library offers iPad services, and webcams for those who may need to verify their identity online. ID.me is a common website used to verify online identity, and Garcia has helped patrons navigate it for unemployment.

Garcia emphasizes that the librarians can’t really give advice since their main role is as a digital navigator for patrons. However, through the website Brainfuse they can give patrons access to interview and resume coaches.

“We’ve helped people get jobs,” Garcia said. “We get a lot of fulfillment from it.”

Garcia doesn’t take thank yous from patrons lightly. She, and other librarians understand that what they do has a huge impact for those who are scraping by.

“When you’re helping someone seek housing- I mean that’s such a crucial life need for survival,” Garcia said. “From a human to human perspective, it does feel really good to help.”

Our Town Reno reporting by Lynn Lazaro

Tabitha Schneider, Running for Mayor to Move Forward as a Community

Since first moving to the the Biggest Little City in 2006, just when the Great Recession hit, Tabitha Schneider, 53, kept being pulled back, and is now running for mayor. She says Reno could be so much better than it already is.

Schneider has had first hand experience helping over a 100 businesses incubating as part of her work with the Reno Hive. While growth is happening in several pockets, she says overall business can’t continue as usual.

Schneider raised a daughter as a single mother and was on welfare when her daughter’s father first left her so she says she also has first hand experience of understanding the pleas of those struggling in our community. 

“I feel like a lot of people want to do something, want to see change, but they just don't know where to start. So I feel like I can bring the leadership to the city and bring collaboration to our city council that you don't see… I want to be the mayor for all the zip codes here, the houseless people, the people that live in the five million dollar houses and everybody in between,” she told Our Town Reno during a recent interview. 

Schneider says she already has a wide range of people she interacts with. “I talk to mothers that need day care, I talk to businesses that are still suffering from COVID and aren't sure if they're going to make it, you have to go out and talk to people to see what they feel the issues are... I also want to hear what they think the solution is because it's easy to complain about the issues, but we also have to come up with solutions that work.”

Accessible housing, a sense of a lack of fairness and bad City Council decisions are at the forefront of her preoccupations.  

What she views as a lack of transparency at City Council particularly irks her. “We have a lot of things that the council, our supposed leadership is voting on without public process. And that's very problematic. Democracy … is very fragile. So when you take public process out of that, that is very scary. Everybody in Reno should be standing up for that one. We absolutely have to listen to the public when when they have concerns about development going on in the city or issues in general.”

For one, she says the millions of dollars being spent on the Cares Campus could have been better managed.

“A lot of people in Reno will echo this, [that it’s] not a safe place for people to go. It looks like a concentration camp. There's barbed wire around it and people do not feel safe. So the 17 million that we spent on that could have gone a long way with building a couple towers in some of the vacant towers that are existing, that the city's looking at those towers right now to purchase. I just hope they don't purchase them and give them to Jacobs Entertainment where they get torn down…. There went another tower that could have had a possibility of being something for workforce housing or low income housing… So you have to get out of your office and go talk to people on the streets about what they need and then come up with a solution.” 

Washoe County is now in charge of the campus, but Schneider said there could be more pressure on county officials.

“We have barbed wire around it who wants to go sleep at a place with barbed wire every night. We need to make it safe. You know, women don't want to go there and have a sexual assault at night. We could have gardening. We have tons of gardening groups in town. Why don't we have a bunch of people out there so they could do something constructive with their time during the day, you know, we need to have day programs out there,” she said of some of her immediate ideas to make that compound better.

Even though she has a donation page on her campaign website, Schneider says she isn’t for sale.

Schneider says she’s been passionate about change since high school, and that she’s often tried to make ends meet working for other campaigns. 

“I feel like with the right leader, with the right person saying, all right, guys, let's come together. Let's make this change. Let's not talk about it anymore. Let's do it. You know?  I've just always been that person and I've always been a leader. When I'm passionate about something, I feel like with people coming together, we can move mountains,” she said. 

She says there’s a craving for change which explains the high number of opponents she is facing in the June primary to make it to the November run-off. 

“People need to get out there and vote. I had a bunch of campaign managers come to me and say, ‘oh, you know, to beat the existing, you're gonna have to raise a quarter million dollars.’ And I keep saying, but why I don't want people's money. I want their vote. And May 28th is when early voting starts. And June 14th is the primary. If we want to see change, if people don't get out there and vote, then we're not going to have a change. We're going to get another dose of the same old, same old. And almost everybody in this world is sick of the same old, same old with politics. I don't want somebody's money. I want their vote.”

Schneider says people keep telling her she won’t win without more fundraising.  “I want them to know who I am, and I'm not for sale,” she said in defense of her strategy. “You know, I'm not gonna have somebody give me 10 grand or five grand and say here, you know, but make sure when we bring this development project in front of you and I'm for development, I don't want to sound like I am not for development. I am for smart development and change and growth, but I don't want to be in somebody's pocket, where at the end of the day, they're not going on my door saying you owe me, you owe your vote to me because, you know, I gave you five grand for your campaign. I'm not for sale for any price, not for a dollar, not for a million dollars. I've worked hard for every single thing I have. I have an undergraduate degree. I have a master's degree. I'm a successful business owner. I still work a full-time day job beyond that. I want to be there to serve the people and that's not going to change.”

Schneider loves the uniqueness of Reno and feel it could slip away. “I post pictures all the time. If you go on my Instagram or my Facebook, it's covered with pictures of nature and people are always like, where are you on vacation? And I'm like, this is my backyard. You know, we live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. I never felt like I ever belonged anywhere or wanted to put down roots until I moved out here because we just live in the most amazing place,” she said.

She says as a steward she would fine comb the city’s budget to better prioritize. “I want Reno to be a model of how you do things, how you do things different, how you do them right. I hope I can be that one person, that one leader that brings that perspective to people that brings people a path forward, that we feel like we're together. We're not divisive, we're a community and we want to tackle these problems together.” 

Note: A more complete version of our interview with more of this candidate’s ideas for change will be included in an upcoming Our Town Reno podcast episode so stay tuned. 

Interview by Kingkini Sengupta for Our Town Reno

Part 3, The Last Motel Residents of Reno, A Retired Post Office Worker Who Lost His Daughter

Motel resident John Earls, who turns 80 in June, has been living at the Desert Rose Inn for the last seven years. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Earls came to Reno with his daughter from Las Vegas.

“She talked to different people at different motels. And then she talked to [the manager at Desert Rose Inn] and she really liked Lacey. And so we decided we would move here but it was considered a temporary thing until we found some housing.” 

Earls had retired from a job at the post office while his daughter used to manage a limousine company in Vegas. After moving into the Reno motel on West 4th street, Earls lost his daughter. “She had a heart problem. And it was very sudden. In fact, I still live in the same room where she died.”

After his daughter's death, Earls did not feel the need to move from the motel anymore. He also had to put their dog down. “ She got diabetes. I didn't even know dogs could get diabetes…my daughter got her at the pound in Las Vegas.”

Earls remembers that his daughter adopted Scarlett when she was really tiny and was identified as a Chihuahua but then something unusual happened when she took Scarlett to the vet. “The vet said, ‘Where did you get this animal? You're not supposed to have an animal like this.’ It seems that my daughter had adopted a coyote.” But they kept Scarlett for a while as he says she was a very sweet animal.  

Earls faces a number of health problems of his own, especially with his gut and digestion.

“The healthcare situation is not so great in this country, but I belong to a union at the post office, and I have really good health insurance. And so anyway, I'm being taken care of. I go to St. Mary's, I go to Renown, have good doctors taking care of me,” he said.

Earls says he has no complaints about the motel so far, and that it’s convenient and affordable for him.

“On the first of every month, I get a direct deposit from from the government for my…I say they call it an annuity, not a pension, because every year they tell you, you get a letter in December, tells you the exact amount of money you will get every month for the following 12 months. This is for life and I also get a little Social Security from other jobs that I've worked.” 

Earls says he likes staying in the motel because of the helpful management. He worries that “they want to knock this place down. This outfit called Jacobs Entertainment … they're coming in here, they're gonna suck as much money as they can out of Nevada. And they're gonna go back to where they're from, I think from Colorado. They're just all investment stuff. But they had no sense of, they are not part of the community, they're here to just grab whatever they can.” 

Earls said he’s not impressed by the outside developer buying up property all around the Desert Rose Inn, with many lots now vacant. Across from the motel he lives in is the so-called Glow Plaza where a few concerts have been held.

“I don't know why they're not building apartments…But, and to build an amphitheater, which is like an extra thumb. Reno doesn't need this. And you cannot you can't use it in the you know, most of the year. I mean, you can just use it in the summer…  why don't they build more housing?...everybody has headphones, everyone has stereo. They don't need to go over here and listen to music. They are building something that nobody needs.”

Our Town Reno reporting by KIngkini Sengupta

Part 1 of this series can be found here or https://www.ourtownreno.com/our-stories-1/2022/4/5/the-last-motel-residents-of-reno-shawn-losing-his-job-during-pandemic

Part 2 of this series can be found here or https://www.ourtownreno.com/our-stories-1/2022/4/14/the-last-motel-residents-of-reno-part-2-skyler-on-parole-and-recovering-from-a-stroke

The Last Motel Residents of Reno, Part 2: Skyler, On Parole and Recovering from a Stroke

“My name is Jeff. My last name is King. I was a skydiver in the military. So in the military, you always get a nickname. I did crazy crap up there in the air… So they started calling me Sky King. My nickname became Skyler,” Jeff King, 54, explains by way of introduction.

Skyler came to the West 4th Street motel Desert Rose Inn as part of his parole about a year ago. He has been residing there since then. “This was my parole location,” he said. “And I started working down at Tesla. And I can catch the bus for Tesla right over here. So, it was real convenient. And this way, I don't have to buy a car.” 

His life has had some unfortunate twists and turns, including a nasty divorce, losing his temper with family, high diabetes and a stroke.

“I had a really bad divorce. And I blamed my brother in law for it,” he told Our Town Reno on a recent Spring day at the motel, which has resisted being sold off to Jacobs Entertainment for years.

“And I went over to his house and kicked the door in and he and I got into a big fight. They kept inviting me over to see my kids and then laughing at me from the other side of the back door. And one day I lost my temper, kicked the door in and he and I got into a big fight. So, I got assault and a few other charges thrown at me. And like I said, it wasn't my best moment. But, did my time, took my anger management classes, started working at Tesla. But unfortunately, about six months ago, I had a stroke.”

He fell near the office area of the motel while talking to the manager who immediately called the hospital for him. Since his stroke, he says he’s recovered 95 percent of his sight back in his left eye. 

Skyler has different mobility options in a corner of his room, while he waits to get his driver’s license back.

Though Skyler does not have a job anymore, he is a property owner which helps pay his rent at the motel. “Luckily, I didn't lose everything in the divorce, I have some property up in Oregon that I rent, and that I make roughly about $800 a month on that,” he said of his current financial predicament.

“And that pays for my expenses like my bill here… So and with what little bit of food stamps and disability I get because of my stroke, I'm able to live quite adequately. I don't get to go see movies, I don't get to go eat out, any of that. But like I say I'm a diabetic. So I have a very particular diet, and I'm able to keep up that diet. So, there's a lot of people that are worse off than me. But I do because of my investments earlier in life. And because I'm a little bit older. I have just a little bit of funds that come in that allow me… [to] sustain a living.”

Skyler gets his internet, electricity and water paid for at a flat fee of $800 a month at the motel and considers this as good living situation for himself where everything is ‘convenient’ for him.

“I just got out of prison living so this is comfortable for me,” he said. “I can see where a lot of people would think down about living in a place like this, but this is kind of a step up. So yes it has like any motel living, it has bad nights [with close by neighbors] …we get troubled people from time to time, but a lot of the people that live here permanently are good people.” 

Desert Rose Inn is one of the few motels still standing on 4th street, but its rooms remain full.

Though Skyler says he’s not very close with his neighbors, he says they watch out for each other’s vehicles, respect one another and have a decent living arrangement. Like others at the Desert Rose Inn, he feels just a few steps from being unhoused.

“What I've seen in the past year is more and more homeless. And being like, a month away from (being) homeless myself, if my renters ever quit on me, I'd be in serious trouble,” he said.

The ongoing Ukraine war, inflation, COVID and supply chain issues at supermarkets is affecting all of us, he says, and he relies on donations to get by.

“So our whole economic system is fragile. And to me…every morning, I take a trip down to the Catholic center down here, and I take about eight cans of food and bring it back home,” he said. “And I've been building up a couple of boxes, because you just don't know, in three months, what it's gonna look like.” 

He plans to live in the motel until his parole is over and he gets his driving license back, after which he would work to make enough money to travel and meet the friends that he made during his time in the military. He also plans to revive contact with his children and see his parents and siblings soon after. 
His main hope for now at the very least is, “ we're still surviving” in a few months.

Part One of this Series, The Last Motel Residents of Reno: Shawn can be found here: http://www.ourtownreno.com/our-stories-1/2022/4/5/the-last-motel-residents-of-reno-shawn-losing-his-job-during-pandemic

Our Town Reno reporting by Kingkini Sengupta

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