7/11s and Jacobsville or Jacobstown?

The 7/11 Motor Lodge destruction happened in earnest today, so we’re writing this weekly Substack on a Thursday night.

It’s been rapid gentrification, with the 2nd Street downtown Reno motel boarded up just a few days ago. What is gentrification? Succinctly, it’s when entire neighborhoods renovate due to new development, most often, pushing poorer populations out. When those poorer populations are a majority, it’s been shown, time and time again, public concerns such as sidewalk repair are less of a priority than in more affluent neighborhoods.

Who are the poor these days? It’s not just motel residents and those relegated to being in the credit underclass anymore. It’s most of us facing dire choices.

Apartment buildings have now been caught up in the buying spree as well, leaving its current residents in total uncertainty. These include a UNR student we featured, Savannah, who works full time at a downtown Reno hotel, and has been spending about half of her income, or in the $900 range a month, to afford to live at the conveniently located Gibson Apartments. But now caught up in the Jacobs buying spree, she might be evicted soon with a change of ownership, and has no idea where and what exactly she will be able to afford going forward.

Savannah was hoping there would be discussions on agenda items concerning her surrounding area in the last pre-holiday break Reno City Council meeting, but all Jacobs Entertainment related items have now been pushed back to after a public forum concerning their projects on January 10th. Where Savannah will be living at that point remains to be seen. She saw her neighbors at the Castaway Inn motel across the street from her apartment recently go through this cycle of increased precarity.

“The Castaway Inn seems like it was just kind of a place where people lived,” she said. “I mean, it was pretty packed and then just like randomly one day it was like closed up, nobody's there and everybody got kicked out. So that's kind of what I'm worried about happening here. I don't want it to be like one day we have a house then the next day it's just, everybody's kicked out, and I'm gone.”

Our most commented social media post this week was a repost of this screengrab above from a local Twitter account about another 7/11, this one the convenience store in the McCarran and Kietzke area. The Instagram post on our Biggest Little Streets account got over 200 comments, with many debating how we should help the unhoused among us.

“And how do you know they're homeless? Are you checking their homeless card? Maybe they should all wear armbands so we know they're homeless? 😢” wrote intheblc, expressing outrage, which was sadly not shared by all.

Classism, growing inequalities between the very rich and the rest of us, vile hatred towards those without stable shelter, often circulated on the Reno WTF Moments Facebook page, and poverty discrimination, in our stores, in our laws, in our economic and punitive systems are all too real.

Our other articles this week highlighted #heroesofreno fighting against this lack of compassion. These include Perla Gomez, above, many times evicted as a child, helping her hard working father who was unhoused, now organizing her workplace to give gifts to kids at the Our Place family and women’s shelter.

We also featured Black Wall Street Reno co-founder RoMar Tolliver giving back what he didn’t have as a kid, after surviving the Nevada Youth Training Center, a harsh youth correctional facility in Elko, Nevada.

As part of our #keeprenorad boosting of local artists, we started a new Sunday Reads feature, with a profile of local author Thomas Lloyd Qualls, fighting against the Amazon tide. Every Sunday, on our channels, we will be either showcasing local authors or recommending books in areas we report about: poverty, gentrification, the disappearance of public space, growing inequalities, worker rights and the like.

Our podcast episode, fittingly, was about one of her favorite #sheroesofreno Reverend Karen Foster pleading for more empathy from local developers.