Reno Street Audio

Chris Fegert, who does community communications for Northern Nevada Hopes, takes us on a tour of HopeSprings, a tiny home village already built up but which still needs operational money. What is causing these delays? What will future residents get from living in this so-called village in downtown Reno? Our reporter for this episode is Scott King.

“I think the act of scooping rice and beans onto a plate is gratifying." After testing positive for COVID-19 and quarantining, UNR student Stephen Zipkin has been back out on Saturday mornings with Washoe Food Not Bombs, who also now distribute blankets, jackets and tarps at Barbara Bennett Park where there is a small encampment. Our latest #heroesofreno #humansofreno story on why people help people in need is by Richie Bednarski.

In part two of our series about River Stewards in Reno, Scott King interviews Byron, who lives in a tent along the Truckee River, but has joined the new program with One Truckee River, where he gets paid daily to help clean up the trash. “I know that you know, all this garbage out here, it looks really, really bad for our community, but I'm working on the inside to try to change that for you guys, just for our image and for Reno's image, Nevada's image,” he said.

Grant Denton, well known locally already for his Karma Box project of neighborhood donations, and morning workouts for women in recovery, now coordinates the River Stewards program to help keep the Truckee River clean.

As we pass tents, Denton stops to talk with the person inside and offers them a trash bag and the opportunity to join his crew. The River Stewards have already collected and disposed of over 350 bags of trash. Denton has a group of four regular homeless workers who come out five days a week to clean up trash left behind by the homeless community. He gives them a $50 daily gift card for them to use for food, clothing, or other essentials. At the end of each week, Denton takes the group out to eat at a local restaurant giving them a sense of what life is like outside of the homelessness bubble.

Our reporter for this episode is Richie Bednarski.

Marcus Stewart, 25, who has albinism and is legally blind, had been sleeping at the big tent shelter on East Fourth Street about a week when we met him. He said he moved from Winnemucca to Reno in August, but he says the sun here makes it hard for him, and he’s not sure what to do next. He’s originally from Oklahoma City, where he says he might try to get back to. He was living with family in rural Nevada, and when it wasn't working out, he says, they bought him a train ticket and told him to try his luck in the Biggest Little City despite the raging pandemic.

Zach Cannady is the driving force behind Prema Farm, overseeing a small organic farm in Long Valley just twenty minutes north of Reno.

Along with four employees, he cultivates just over an acre of farmland along with three greenhouses. He estimates his team produce senough food to feed 600 to 800 families in the summer. “I hope to be a hub for inspiration,” Cannady said on a recent Fall day, inside one of his 3,000 square feet greenhouses filled with several hundred seedlings, almost ready to go into the ground for the winter growing season.

As a pillar of the community, Cannady has been donating food to a local chapter of Food Not Bombs since early April. Food Not Bombs is a group of community members using direct action to build community networks and civilian solidarity through the preparation and donation of nutritious food.

Cannady feels the mission of Food Not Bombs aligns with the driving philosophy of Prema Farms.

“I think that working with them as people and just seeing them in action does a wonderful amount of good. It's really about getting food directly to people that need it and that's why we choose to work with them,” Cannady said

On Saturdays, Cannady can be found at the Riverside market in downtown Reno. Find out more in our latest podcast episode with reporter Richard Bednarski.

Matt doesn't understand why shelters kick people out every morning in the dark when it's still freezing cold. While we all await for election results in Nevada and elsewhere, he struggles every morning with this stark reality. On this podcast, we ask can't we do better as a society. And we give the microphone to people like Matt, recently divorced, in a bad accident, having lost his retail job, in a wheelchair, now on the streets of Reno. Our reporter for this episode is Scott King.

In this episode, we hear from Lily Baran who recently helped organize the People's Summit at Miguel Ribera park in Reno, to gather forward thinking, solutions oriented progressives. Our reporter Gracie Gordon also interviews several participants, including RoMarTolliver, representing the Black Wall Street non profit in Reno, a new group helping the community’s youth, reaching out to the homeless and working toward a better, more just society. Two members of the Reno Initiative for Shelter and Equality, Jen Cassady and Mary Gilbert, also join her to detail the evolution of RISE which now also manages the new shelter for women, families and elderly called Our Place.

Seth Bradley, 23, a head server at Liberty Food and Wine Exchange in downtown Reno, is proud of how well the restaurant responded to help its staff when the pandemic shutdown began.

“When Covid first hit, we had everybody come in, this was like pre quarantine, obviously and we had everybody come in like the whole staff, and we have a pretty large staff, and they (Liberty) gave us a bunch of food, like a lot of meats that were probably going to be going to waste and like pastas and just whatever they could. And we all got to just kind of take whatever we wanted, essentially. They were trying to just give us some kind of security because we weren't going to have work for who knows how long.”

In this episode, our reporter Gracie Gordon interviews Bradley about how the pandemic unfolded and affected his livelihood from the initial shutdown up to today.

“Love seems pretty radical to me,” Nightingale said of joining PERCh several months ago, and taking part in solidarity crosswalks and other actions. The group plans to broaden its efforts and help those without stable shelter with their laundry. The group is also organizing a special Halloween event in downtown Reno for kids who live in motels and in other precarious situations. Reporter Richie Bednarski witnesses a recent crosswalk and finds out more about this selfless group in the Biggest Little City.