Anger prevailed around Reno this morning, from an encampment at N Edison and Mill Street, to public comments at a city council meeting, to a protest outside, where passersby were encouraged to sign a petition to stop ongoing sweeps.
“Where’s left to go after that?” asked Dwight George, a Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe member, who went inside City Hall to make a public comment. He said City Council was “failing us.” His brother Everett George said enforcement “shouldn’t be the baseline” for people with nowhere else to go. He said the Nevada Cares Campus was not the solution. Meagan O’Farrell read out a petition asking to stop sweeps until the safe camp component of the new Nevada Cares Campus opens and has spots. She said there would be an occupy protest in front of City Hall until sweeps end. The petition had nearly 800 signatures as of Wednesday morning.
One of the protesters who goes by Cowboy called it “warehousing.” Disabled and elderly, and formerly living in a tent, he was swept recently along railroad tracks and has been staying at the new mega shelter.
Cowboy is trying to get housing at the Village on Sage Street after being several years on the waiting list of the Reno Housing Authority. He said he wasn’t allowed to leave his cat more than 30 minutes inside the shelter, wasn’t allowed to use a pillow he had brought with him, didn’t like the food being served, and was cold and feels crammed in with others at night. He said he was in the couples and pets section where some of the couples yelled at each other. Toilets have clogged up so hundreds and hundreds of people have been using just a few portable toilets.
“The men's restroom has been out since Thursday, it's been locked up and they don't have sufficient amount of porta-potties for the people that are there now,” he said.
Advocates have been wondering when the safe camp would eventually open, who will run it, how many spots there will be, how these will be allocated, and whether Washoe County might eventually change management operations to different organizations.
There have been growing complaints over operations at the Nevada Cares Campus from clogged up toilets to unhealthy food.
Over at the N Edison and Mill Street encampment, people were packing up as City of Reno officials took photos and drove up and down the winding road there.
Advocates had been hoping this could be converted into a legal camp until the Cares Camp safe camp opens.
Wraith was helping people pack up and making sure they had rides to leave and go hide elsewhere. She calls herself a street mom. “It's runaway kids and it's people that don't fit in your world,” she said of those at the encampment. “And we do. We take them in, we make them family. We make sure they're fed. We make sure they don't overdose and die and kill themselves.”
She said she would be open to a legal safe parking area. “If you provide us a place to park our cars, that it won't be towed, vandalized or broken into, we'd be willing to,” she said. But she was angry too about feeling discarded and ignored by community leaders.
