Reno Street Audio

“I took money out of my retirement and kind of bet on myself that I could do it... Since then, I've had the ability to gather a couple of investors who believe in the cause ... And everything now is self funded. And we do that by charging fees to live with us. So the idea of someone living with us isn't to have a handout. It's a hand up." Stacey Payne explains how she established Lyfe Recovery Services in northern Nevada and how her own journey led her to this entrepreneurial vision.

Jackson, 43, was an operations manager for a hazardous waste facility, married with a daughter, when he ran into burnout, and started self-medicating with alcohol, sending his life into what he himself calls a downward spiral. “I kind of had a nervous breakdown about six years ago and kind of got out of the circle of life so to speak. I just haven't been able to pick myself back up,” he said.

Ace says he’s newly homeless again after he said he had family problems back on the East Coast with his older brother and mother, who both siblings depend on.

He says he didn’t agree with his mother taking his formerly jailed brother in. He says he had been a caretaker, cooking for his mom. He’d been to Reno before and felt people didn’t bother him here, so he came back. He says he’s also had periods of homelessness in St. Louis, Missouri and Portland, Oregon, among other places, but he feels safer in the Biggest Little City.

Grant Denton, a survivor of childhood abuse who become a deadbeat Dad junkie trapped in homelessness in Las Vegas and repeated incarceration, now helps other recovering addicts in Reno on a path he himself has taken, with discipline, exercise, meditation and a resolve to survive and do good in society.

Legendary Baby Bleu was homeless when we met her and had recently survived winter on the streets. She described how she started being a prostitute as a high school student and how a bad relationship left her fending for herself 24/7.

“I've been on the streets for about six months, but (soon) when I get my check, I am going to have a room. I'm on the streets because there were a lot of bills I had to pay so I couldn't pay rent and everything, so I just did the only thing that I could do.” It's terrible that in our society elders among us who worked hard their whole lives face moments without shelter here in Reno during this cold, raw winter. Joanne tells her story to Our Town Reno reporters Jordan Blevins and Prince Nesta.

Wendy Wiglesworth who lived along the Truckee River for years explains how she got in that situation, how the shelter just didn't work for her and how the riverside community protects each other.

"The fact that the university doesn't keep any record of it is partially explained by the fact that if they did, then they would recognize that there is a problem and once you recognize that there's a problem, you have to start to fix it. And I don't think homelessness is a priority for the university right now" We know extremely little about student homelessness but our guest Leann Silvia is trying to change that through her research at the University of Nevada, Reno.

In our first episode, Donald Griffin records part of a spoken word poem he wrote for an Our Town Reno #localorelive live journalism event at the Desert Rose Inn in downtown Reno, where more and more motels are being demolished, worsening an affordable housing crisis and increasing homelessness.