Allegation of a Sexual Assault, with Poor Staffing and Safety
In her email (referred above in photo caption), County spokeswoman Bethany Drysdale confirmed information we received through a source working inside the campus that a new women’s dorm section has been set up with 85 beds. “It … allows us to keep women separate from men, in addition to the beds available for women at Our Place,” Drysdale wrote.
Our source told us a sexual assault recently took place inside the Campus, information that Drysdale did not confirm or deny. The county official pointed us to a recent This is Reno article, which quotes the county’s head of security Ben West confirming crime is an ongoing problem at the campus, without going into specific crimes, while saying getting witnesses has been difficult. We also couldn’t confirm the sexual assault.
Our source for this story chose to maintain their anonymity due to their ongoing employment with VOA.
“The Cares campus is just kind of warehousing people,” the employee said. “We’ve even admitted it on the VOA side. It’s way too many people, it’s way too packed. From the VOA perspective, we aren’t able to provide the level of care we would want to … It never should have been built that big.”
In recent years, Our Town Reno has sent multiple emails to Pat Cashell, the VOA regional director and son of former mayor Bob Cashell, who has been thinking of a mayoral run himself, perhaps in 2026, but we’ve never once heard back from him.
The VOA employee we spoke to expressed alarm at how the Cares Campus has been set up with so many people packed into one space, a fear many advocates voiced from the inception of the plan. The current county shelter dashboard indicates there are 603 available beds, often nearly all filled.
“I do know that basically every VOA employee does not support it,” the employee said. “We all know that it goes against best practices of homelessness issues. You don’t want shelters that big.”
Staffing and safety have been the main challenges. “I think we can increase safety especially with more staff. We’ve been low-staffed basically since it opened,” the employee said. Advocates have pleaded for higher salaries for regular staff.
One rare photo we’ve been able to get from inside the campus.
Challenges of So Many People in a Low-Barrier Setting
Being a “low-barrier” shelter makes it especially challenging, our source said.
“It’s easier to run a great shelter when you’re turning people away who are substance abusers or extremely mentally ill or extremely disabled. Ultimately when you have [over 600] people in one tent, many of which may struggle from substance abuse disorders or severe mental illness, it’s really hard to make it a one-hundred percent safe place,” the employee said.
“We hadn’t operated a shelter this big. I think the recent move for the women to have their own dorm, that’s been an improvement. Our staffing has gotten a little bit better but we need roughly 25-30 more staff, but other than that there hasn’t been much improvement,” the VOA worker said.
The employee also noted services which used to be available at the Record street shelter, such as picking up mail, using a phone or computer or having many options to ask for assistance, aren’t available yet, even though the campus opened last year. The employee said easy access to organizations such as the Community Health Alliance and Washoe County School District as was the case at Record street is also now lacking.
Storage is also an issue. “There’s no space there even for storage,” the employee said. “Which means no place for people to take donations, no place to store donations really. For example, Our Place, the women’s and family shelter opened a boutique at their shelter. They have clothes racks and all these clothes where people can come and get clothes when they need it. There’s no space like that at the Cares Campus.”
For people staying on the campus, the only things allowed in their small locker or on their bed, the employee said, are essentials. Non-essentials are stored somewhere else on the campus and the employee said theft does occur. For months, the worker said locks weren’t even provided for the lockers.
There have been concerns about unhealthy food being served on the Campus.
Tensions Between VOA and County, with Very Few People Getting Housed
There has been growing tension as well the employee said between VOA employees and the County now in charge of homeless services, replacing Reno, including over the purchase of needed items, such as the locks.
The employee said VOA case managers are gradually being replaced by County case managers. At the recent CHAB meeting, county officials said less than 6% of the hundreds and hundreds of people who have slept at the campus received housing, despite that being the stated goal of the shelter.
In addition to our own lack of access, volunteers, who helped set up a small library with books and games, haven’t been allowed on campus either, the employee said, even though some wanted to offer free classes and workshops.
A tent city has occasionally popped up just outside the Cares Campus.
Advocates Kept off Premises
“They are not being let onto campus,” the worker said. “The county is being incredibly strict about who they let onto campus, even for volunteer groups or church groups they are now requiring a Memorandum of Understanding for anyone who comes onto the grounds.” The worker said it’s a question of liability if a volunteer were to get injured and describe it as counter-productive in trying to help streamline the efficiency of the facility.
“There are a lot of community advocates and mutual aid groups and a lot of people who want to support the unhoused community and are finding their own ways to do it. I think they need to be let onto campus… I don’t think we can just overlook the importance of the volunteers and advocates and the work that they are doing, they can be a huge help for us I think,” the worker said.
“I think we’re doing our best given all of the circumstances from having a shelter that’s too big to not having enough staff…We make mistakes, we have made a lot of mistakes, but I wish people understood that this is a really hard thing to do,” the employee said at the conclusion of our interview. “Managing a huge shelter where there are so many different people with different traumas and different disabilities or different issues of whatever kind, is just a lot.”