A higher up within the county recently walked through a construction site at the Cares Campus without a construction hat or vest, while everyone else was wearing these, showing disrespect, according to a security guard who reached out to Our Town Reno, wanting to share ideas on how operations at the massive shelter and adjacent safe camp could be improved upon.
These include better arrival pat downs, better allocation of where available money is spent, better food, more communication on rule changes, more transparency for local media, and more showers, laundry rooms and computers for people staying at the massive shelter.
Shifts can be long, often difficult and tense for pay starting at $20.50 an hour, the guard said.
The new Welcome Center (above) is beautiful and extremely expensive and "pretty useless" for the unhoused sleeping at the Cares Campus, according to the guard who wished to remain anonymous for fear of losing their job.
"It looks pretty, but there's a lot more they could have done with that money for the participants for sure," the guard said.
One idea would be to have the Safe Camp have its own shower and laundry area rather than having to walk five minutes every time to the Cares Campus facilities. For one woman missing a leg and using a wheelchair, the guard says, the trek takes half an hour.
"She has to roll across the construction stuff they have there, an asphalt parking lot, up another asphalt ramp until she gets to concrete that's flat," the guard explained on the lack of help for the disabled going to and from the Safe Camp. "It breaks my heart," they said.
The guard stressed better internal and external communications with those sleeping inside as well as the community and media, about what exactly is going on.
"So during their intake, they're being told how our security works, how their bed works, how they can lose it, what programs they have to help or to help get them out of there," the guard explained.
Media is invited on special occasions, but Our Town Reno hasn’t been able to visit on a regular day to see conditions inside. The most recent time we tried, we were kicked out.
Several weeks ago, the guard said a policy was changed not allowing food to be brought in from the outside anymore, resulting in hundreds of dollars worth of food being thrown out.
"We need signage inside. We need posting," the guard explained. "We needed to say when they changed the rule about the food, there should have been a sign no perishable foods, and they should have written in big, bright colors, slap there right on the front of the Welcome Center so that everybody knows coming in, when they change the rules. That is something that I feel like absolutely needs to be done."
Dinner is quite early in the evening, with food which could also be improved, according to the guard.
"I've heard prison food mentioned many times," the guard said.
A Facebook comment indicated this was an example of food being served at the Cares Campus.
Better security such as more stringent pat downs to prevent drugs from getting inside would be helpful as well the guard said.
"We do non-invasive pat downs where it's just the front pants pockets and if somebody has something being detected in the metal detector, we just ask them to remove the stuff. So we try to not search them as much as possible. And I think because of that reason, stuff is still getting in because, they should honestly treat it like, probably like TSA does, take it a little more seriously... Our metal detector, I do not trust that thing at all," the guard said.
Weapons are detected with the current system the guard said, but well hidden drugs aren't.
Some employees were suspected of bringing in drugs previously, which is why they now go through the same lines of security at the entrance as those sleeping there, the guard said.
Disruptions happen from outside as well, including by people shooting guns or launching grenades by the safe camp or recently ramming an entrance gate with a vehicle.
"So all of our guards are on edge all the time and trying to do our best to, like, focus on the security more than anything," the guard said.
The most difficult position is the solitary unarmed guard at the Resource Center, the guard said.
"I think they should get paid at least $5 more an hour than us because it's quite more intense than the rest of the campus. When we have no beds available, they'll send them over to the Resource Center. Before it was closing at 8 o'clock, but now that it's cold, they opened up the overflow. So now pretty much anybody who can't get a bed on the campus will be sent over to the Resource Center to just pretty much sit around and wait for a bed," they told Our Town Reno.
The guard says overall they don't think the training was adequate enough, such as using X-Ray machines, or dealing with different situations which come up.
A basketball court is being built they said, but they would like to see more access to WiFi and clean computers, so people could apply for jobs and resources.
"There's just a couple of computer spots in the Welcome Center, which I think maybe that was the idea that they're going for," the guard said, explaining more rooms like that are needed to get more people staying at the Cares Campus actively working on improving their plight.
When walking around downtown, the guard says they see a lot of people who were kicked out of the Cares Campus or no longer liked being there, and that it makes them sad they weren't able to get more help and that their overall situation hasn't improved. Too few, too slowly, and too rarely do people get housed, they concluded.
Our Town Reno reporting, November 2024