Emily Elyse remembers their last day working within the county to help our unhoused neighbors all too well.
It was April, and they had a meeting scheduled with Ryan Gustafson, the Director of the Washoe County Human Services Agency, following their repeated complaints of having to deal with an allegedly toxic workplace.
“I knew that it was sort of like I'm either going to quit or get fired because I have a lot to say. And so I did. And so I went off on them really, and I mean, to a certain extent, you know, it wasn't necessarily professional at the end, but there was just so much really that went down with H.R. in particular in their handling of everything,” Elyse remembers.
After the conversation, which took place during the lunch hour, they say they submitted their letter of resignation with two weeks notice. When they returned from their lunch, they say a box was ready for them in their office and they were told they would be put on administrative leave effective immediately.
Elyse had been recruited from the Bay Area where they had earned a master’s in public administration and had worked during the pandemic with supportive housing programs in the Tenderloin neighborhood.
They were interested in helping shape new efforts in northern Nevada, where they had family ties, but soon became frustrated, describing county leadership as rejecting any type of constructive criticism or new ideas.
Dana Searcy giving a tour to media of the Nevada Cares Campus.
Elyse worked as the so-called Northern Nevada Matchmaker from October 2022 until that fateful day in April 2024, with a role of trying to get the unhoused in a direction toward being housed
In a letter sent to Washoe County commissioners in June, they alleged “workplace bullying” from her then direct supervisor and the current Continuum of Care coordinator Catrina Peters. We emailed county leadership, Peters and communications director Bethany Drysdale about this, but only heard back from Drysdale who wrote: “We can’t comment on personnel matters.”
Our Town Reno had its own difficult experience with Peters who when she agreed to give us a tour of the safe camp three years ago, cut our visit short after we asked more details about its funding and contract with the Karma Box project. Her LinkedIn describes herself as Homeless Services Coordinator at Washoe County, while her last Transparent Nevada has her in that role already in 2022 earning over $160,000 in pay and benefits.
Peters on the left and Grant Denton from Karma Box in the middle when they gave Our Town Reno a tour of the safe camp, which was cut short by Peters after we asked about the contract to run it.
Elyse, who has since moved out of the county and started working for a non profit, wrote in the letter that superiors within the county structure were aware of ongoing issues but failed to intervene.
After they pursued their first code of conduct complaint against Peters in October 2023 they allege Peters became increasingly more aggressive and undermining.
“Between October to November, she just kind of like got more passive aggressive with me, which is sort of like how she operates and so the actual code of conduct was about me asking for access to training that I needed and her telling me I was behind on my work essentially, and I couldn’t,” they told us in our phone interview.
“And so, they tend to shut people out entirely, including the public. I felt coming into the county that, you know, that something was amiss and I just like got to see over time that there is this really subtle sort of cycle of bullying that happens under Catrina [Peters]. And I just really hate to see folks subjected to that. It was obviously really hard for me to deal with as well,” they told Our Town Reno.
“I know that their behavior is wrong and that there is a profoundly negative impact on the folks who are on the ground doing the work.”
The complaints were also sent to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development amid a planned audit of Washoe County of the northern Nevada Continuum of Care.
Per the HUD website “The Continuum of Care (CoC) Program is designed to promote communitywide commitment to the goal of ending homelessness; provide funding for efforts by nonprofit providers, and State and local governments to quickly rehouse homeless individuals and families while minimizing the trauma and dislocation caused to homeless individuals, families, and communities by homelessness; promote access to and effect utilization of mainstream programs by homeless individuals and families; and optimize self-sufficiency among individuals and families experiencing homelessness.”
These responsibilities were shifted from the city of Reno to Washoe County in September 2021, as part of a new post pandemic era with the Cares Campus starting operations.
In both the letter and phone interview, Elyse also pointed out to shortcomings in local homeless services, including the need for better help for those fleeing domestic violence, interacting more with Indigenous communities, discomfort in dealing with racial disparities, failure to properly spend grant money by required deadlines and missed opportunities with the federally-mandated point in time counts, which they were asked to lead in both 2023 and 2024.
One idea they wanted was to include more local registered nurses, to which Elyse writes Peters “passive-aggressively questioned me about whether or not nurses serve the unsheltered population,” and then allegedly failed to provide support for their participation in the motel portion of the count.
“I think nurses being involved is so important. And just the fact that they reached out to us to participate like that is just sort of to me was an obvious yes and yeah, because of their experience and because of the huge overlap that exists, like folks being admitted into our hospitals and emergency rooms at very high rates, who are experiencing homelessness and that kind of like not really getting the care that they need at those places and not having a place to return to,” they explained of their own willingness to include nurses.
Another idea they had was to keep counters out longer into the morning hours, to which they allege all street counters were instructed to return to the PIT command center by 7 a.m. rather the suggested 9 a.m..
“I would say it seems like there is a pressure to manage the numbers,” they said of not keeping the count going a few more hours.
Minutes from a NEVADA INTERAGENCY COUNCIL ON HOMELESSNESS SUBCOMMITTEE FOR TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE meeting in September 2023.
“She habitually stifles generative conversation and ideas, not just with her direct reports, but with the Northern Nevada CoC Leadership Council and its subcommittees,” Elyse wrote in more detail in their letter concerning Peters as part of her allegations. “She has been visibly uncomfortable talking about racial equity in the past, and shut down conversations with community members accordingly, essentially cutting public meetings short while making community members feel small. No part of me is ok with this.”
The letter concludes by asking for Peters as well as Dana Searcy to no longer be in positions to oversee the management of the Northern Nevada Continuum of Care. Searcy lists herself on her LinkedIn as Division Director of Housing and Homeless Services for the County.
In her phone interview, Elyse wanted to underline that workers within the local homelessness and recovery sectors show passion and commitment, but that it’s the leadership that has been toxic, stifling and unwilling to improve their conduct.
“It's really such a wellspring that I hate to see stifled,” they said. “There are so many passionate and skilled folks who work there and who are capable of carrying this mission forward. And I hate to implicate them and their work and their passion in all of this, or just want to make it clear that not everyone that is in the county or in that base or even in the office is operating in this way.”
For their part, they are still working to help the unhoused, just in a different part of the country.