Joaquin Roces, 55, a former Marine and father of three boys, has had a long varied life, with ups and tumultuous downs, which recently had him sleeping at the Nevada Cares Campus. He’s now running for mayor of Reno
“Change is the only way we move forward and I believe there needs to be some substantial change in city government, not just something superficial, like what color tie I wear or what party occupies the office. We cannot solve the problems confronting the city with the same kind of thinking that created a problem,” he said at the start of our interview at Believe Plaza, where he stood skateboard in hand, wearing a colorful campaign tee-shirt, and sporting several visible tattoos which also tell part of his life’s story.
“I don't think the city's following a master plan or any kind of strategic planning. It seems to be like Langston Hughes once said, that's the same old plan of grab the land, grab the wealth, fulfilling the satisfying need rather than … having some sort of stewardship over the community.”
As others running he points to inadequate amounts of affordable, low income and senior housing. “We're building these luxury apartments and they're actually creating more division within a community than they are unifying it,” he said. He adds the new buildings aren’t tied to alternative energy plans. “The very reason we're building … is to house employees for the largest alternative energy company in the country [Tesla]. And we have not even had any conversations with them about how to build a sustainable economy.”
As part of his unique positions, school shootings is a fear he hears among many families, and he would like to turn downtown Reno and Midtown into a gun free zone. “I don't want to see what happened in Vegas, and what recently happened in Sacramento happen here [again]. Gun violence has already impacted our community. I lost a high school friend to the Sparks middle school shooting [in 2013], and a family lost their son to it as well.”
He calls the Nevada Cares Campus where he stayed several months in late 2021, “an internment camp.” He doesn’t understand why promised wraparound services haven’t arrived sooner, and why they couldn’t have permanent bathrooms which worked and held up from the get go.
His own stay came after he says his own rent went from $900 to $1,400 and he couldn’t afford it anymore, even though he was working and earning money.
“I stayed there from the end of September until November 10th, when I was able to secure permanent housing. I spent my birthday there,” he said. “There should have been bathrooms. I can't believe the amount of city, state, and county officials that walked … through that site and reviewed the blueprints and not one of them asked the question, where are the bathrooms? 600 people there. They bring in a trailer that has four to five toilets, three sinks, and four urinals for 600 people, and still had to rent porta potties to accommodate the crowd.”
Roces got the hang of skateboarding growing up in Sun Valley where it was his main mode of transportation.
Roces says the overcrowding at Cares Campus causes tensions, and that drugs are openly sold on site. He says people are sent there when they should be getting medical care instead. “You have hospitals that are discharging clients and patients to the homeless shelter, knowing that they have nowhere else to go. But that hospital has to turn that bed over to make money there. We are running our hospitals like these are hotel rooms,” he said.
Roces believes the money funneled into the campus could have been much better spent on a new collection of tiny home villages. He’d also like to see reform at the Reno Housing Authority, including to simplify the process for the unhoused to get back into housing. For his own sake, he was able to finally find a one bedroom apartment in Midtown in his price range in late 2021.
Roces was born in the Philippines and immigrated first to California as a child, before moving to the Biggest Little City, where his mom got a job at what was then the Sahara casino.
He lived initially in a trailer in Sun Valley, where his passion for skateboarding took hold. “It was a form of transportation for a kid like me growing up Sun Valley poor, and I couldn't afford a bike,” he said.
Roces also shows his most recent tattoo, which represents 22 shell casings representing 22 veterans who commit suicide every day. He has his own battles with mental illness. He used to cut himself but switched to getting new tattoos. “It’s a reward system,” he explained. “If I go six months without self-harming or suicide ideation, I get a new tattoo.”
To conclude the interview he went back to the theme of representing change. “I don't come from some political dynasty or some legacy. I'm not backed by any party. I think I've raised a thousand dollars in my GoFundMe. Homelessness, working class, the working poor, livable wages, mental health healthcare, those aren't just talking points for me. They're just not just bullet points on my campaign PowerPoint. I speak from a position of lived experience. I know what it's like to be a single father growing, raising kids in this community and having to work and making sure that they have healthcare and that they go to school and that they stay out of trouble. I'm also a foreign born, naturalized citizen. So I know also what a minority or an immigrant family goes through when they're trying to make their dreams come true in the city. It is possible. My family did it but it has not been a golden road. There have been ups and downs. There have been financial downturns, not just for individual families, but for the entire community as well. We need to look at things outside the box because the box is breaking down.”