New Branding after a Financial Supporter Dies
Paul White, who previously ran Quality of Life-Reno and the Stronghold Institute, getting attention when he called for citizen’s arrests of people camping in parks and along the Truckee River, is now back on the scene, after a failed bid to win a seat on the Washoe County School District, with a new group called Reno on Record.
“It is just kind of picking up where QOL-Reno and Stronghold Institute left off,” White told Our Town Reno in a recent interview. “Our goal is to inform the community of Reno about the really big issues going on, that frankly are not getting honestly and fully reported on and to motivate the people to get involved in being a part of the solution and to help organize activities that would enable them to do that.”
He said the Irvine, CA-based organization called Scientific Being Research Foundation previously sponsored both QOL-Reno and the Stronghold Institute and when the head of it died a few months ago, White wrote to us in an email, the board decided to step back from its financial support. According to 2018 tax returns published via the Grantmakers website, White received a $90,000 salary from the Foundation and Valerie White, his wife, a regular commenter of Our Town Reno reporting, got an $80,000 yearly salary.
One of the primary issues Reno on Record aims to address, White says, is the growing homeless population on the city’s streets and along the river.
Reaching out after an Our Town Reno Story
White’s approach to addressing homelessness lies in motivating the homeless population to find work and get back on their feet by taking advantage of the resources available to them in the community. White said this derives from his own brief experience with homelessness.
“I just hit a rough, unexpected patch regarding marriage and some work. I was living in a garden shed in an alley in Vallejo (California),” he said. After being offered and accepting a job, he says he was able to get back on his feet.
Many of those living on the streets that Our Town Reno has interviewed over the past several years, include people who have fled extremely abusive relationships, endured trauma, got severely injured at work and prefer to live quietly and as unobtrusively as possible in their tents. They also can’t afford rising rents in the area. They also include teenagers fleeing violence at home and seniors in their 70s with severe disabilities and health problems.
“The problem is not with a community that don't care about [the homeless population],” White said of his own approach, which he opposes to those being “too compassionate”. “The problem is that they've let this vagrant-by-choice population hide behind a homeless label. The ones out there are simply scamming the community and the system. It’s bankrupting the city,” he said.
A New Yorker article in 2006 which coined the term “Million Dollar Murray” was about Murray Barr, who was homeless in Reno, and over the course of 10 years of being arrested and cycling through jails and hospitals cost Nevada taxpayers an estimated one million dollars.
White approached Our Town Reno for an interview after we wrote about a man in a wheelchair called Matt who became homeless after a divorce and a job accident. Below is part of his query:
To prove to the community how misdiagnosed the homeless problem is - that it's only a "vagrant-by-choice" problem, why doesn't Our T'own Reno get in touch with me and arrange a meeting with OTR, me, and Matt. Our organization can get Matt's life together almost immediately IF.........Matt is willing to be clean and sober, work, and obey the law. OTR can chronicle the entire experience which would be a great benefit to the entire community.
Based on our interview there was no indication Matt, whose hands are pictured above, had any addiction issues. Our article here: http://www.ourtownreno.com/our-stories-1/2020/9/29/matt-comparing-different-shelters-and-fearing-being-homeless-over-winter
The Cover of Court Rulings
Last year, the Supreme Court let stand the recent 9th Circuit Court Boise vs. Martin ruling that the homeless cannot be punished for sleeping outside on public property in the absence of adequate alternatives, which Bruce Parks, who attended our recent interview next to the Truckee River, views as a cover for a misguided Reno City Council.
“I can look right over here and I see a homeless guy curled up in a sleeping bag laying on the rocks there and believe me, I served in the military. I saw humanity at its worst,” Parks said. “That we would allow an individual to exist [in a state like that] is absolutely reprehensible to me. Our city council is hiding behind the Boise v. Martin's decision and not taking positive, impactful steps to fix that problem and just disgusts me in the extreme.”
Parks wants members of the city council to walk along the river and see these living conditions themselves, to accept the gravity of the situation and do something about it.
“It might wake them up and help them realize that this is inhumane,” Parks said. “We can't allow this in our community. The fact that we even have a homeless shelter to me is ludicrous. We don't need a facility like that because there's not a single one of these individuals that's not redeemable and could not become a vital member of our community. If they don't want to take responsibility for themselves, we need to incentivize them to take responsibility,” he said.
If individuals don’t want to get a job and want to live outside, White says, they have that right. But only if they can do so without infringing on the rights of the rest of the community’s population.
“Oliver Wendell Holmes, a Supreme Court Justice said, ‘My right to make a fist and throw a punch stops where your nose begins.’” White said. “The homeless have a right to be a vagrant-by-choice out on the street as long as there’s a property that's legal for them to camp on and if they're not dumping excrement and toxic waste everywhere.”
Many Reno residents complain of waste along camps of the Truckee River, while others say there should be more garbage facilities and portable toilets.
Cyclical Sweeps, New Shelter Space and Oncoming Evictions
For White, the fact that very rarely ticketing, citations or court appearances follow sweeps of homeless camps along the river and railroad tracks, is part of the reason camps continue moving to new places until they get swept out again, making it a cyclical problem.
When asked about the city council’s ongoing discussion to construct a new super shelter at Governor’s Bowl Park, White says he believes it would just be another waste of government funds.
“[The city] is acting like we've got all kinds of money to just throw around … We don't need to have anything, anywhere. You've got tons of property owners with apartments for rent. There's tons of homeless guys out there clearing over $1000 a month on their checks, but let's say rent is $1100 [a month]. With the cheapest job we can find, which would be about $12 an hour, we're going to engross around $500 a week each and we're going to take home about $400.”
Our reporting indicates many living along the river receive just over $700, or are out of the system entirely, and face health challenges which make it difficult for them to seek immediate employment, as well as housing. COVID-19 has also put a huge damper on the local job market. With the eviction moratorium expected to expire at the end of the year with seemingly no extension to come in the near future, many are also concerned that the houseless population will increase substantially when more tenants can’t afford to make rent.
A counter-protest to White’s call for citizen’s arrest of the homeless took part at Pickett Park last year.
Informational Walks Along Encampments and Opposition to his Ideas
Part of Reno on Record’s approach will be to have informational walks along encampments, a tactic also used by QOL-Reno which attracted media attention, most notably from Monica Jaye now with 99.1 FM, and counter-protesters.
“We wouldn't even say the obscenities [yelled at us],” White said. “We couldn't believe that there were guys down there hiding behind masks. Not because of COVID, but because they were trying to pretend to be Antifa.”
White doesn’t agree with anti-police rhetoric and laissez-faire attitude held by many who try to be “too compassionate” for those without stable shelter. “Somehow people equate enforcing the law with being harsh and hateful,” White said. “Enforcing law on the freeways keeps people alive and enforcing the law in the stores keeps everything from being stolen. [So we should be] enforcing the law with that man [sleeping on the river] and saying, ‘Come on, we can't let you just sit out here and live in your own filth. You're either going to jail or let's go get you in a program. But there is no option in staying there.’”
Ultimately, however, White says he believes the problem in addressing homelessness doesn’t lie fully with the city of Reno’s leadership.
“The problem lies with a miseducated and uninformed populace that won't speak up,” White said. “How is it compassionate to move [this sleeping man on the river] to the Governor’s Bowl and give him a bologna sandwich and some old socks? The minute you stop propping him up, he's going to fall over. Why don't you care enough? Why don't you love the man enough to not let him harm himself?”
Some so-called “compassionate” advocates call for a different kind of no questions asked, trust building, reconstructive, supportive, we are here for you love, such as the “Bring Some Love” 2019 counter-protest to one of White’s most publicized actions, threatening to conduct citizen’s arrests of the homeless at Pickett Park last year.
In our interview with one of those taking part in that counter protest, Olivia Piccirilli, who has helped with Washoe Food not Bombs weekly community meals, an opposite approach to what White is pushing for, also had questions as her closing statements. “But what are you going to do tomorrow? And what are you going to do the day after that? I think that it's important for organizations like us to come here and be like, here's an outlet for this feeling that you're having. You're feeling things are wrong and you're feeling you want to do something to help. Like here's an outlet for that so that tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that, you're still continuing to do this work.”