Our Community's Generosity and Support Shine Through
While there are many disagreements over structural and systemic policies to ease the affordable and accessible housing crisis, there is no denying our community has amazing generosity for helping struggling individuals, from mutual aid groups we highlight who volunteer hours on end to help others to local elected officials and administrators who are stepping up to respond to social media requests in a caring and constructive manner.
In this past week, a story on Our Town Reno about a mother of two facing eviction led readers to directly Venmoing and also contributing to an existing GoFundMe account she had started so that for now her family has avoided eviction and can try to find better financial health in 2022.
Another only on Our Town Reno feature about Danielle, a mother of three schoolkids fleeing abuse and transferred to Safe Embrace due to her ties in Reno, facing waiting lists at the end of her stay and no options for housing, led to the shelter paying for a few extra days at a hotel until the middle of next week. After our story was published, Our Town Reno also received messages from a city official and the Domestic Violence Resource Center to get in contact with Danielle. After a reader tagged Mayor Hillary Schieve on Twitter, she immediately got in contact and called Danielle as well during a City Council break. Danielle said the support has meant a lot, and that city officials, Mayor Schieve and the DVRC are all helping her find transitional housing as soon as possible.
After the article was published, the program manager at Safe Embrace Michelle Brister also got back to us explaining getting people they help into housing after their stays can be delayed: “Unfortunately, due to high demand, the waitlist can be quite lengthy as our assistance is available to survivors in the community in addition to our shelter residents,” she wrote as part of an email. “Often times individuals will be on this community waitlist for several months because of funding and space limitations.”
There are more examples of this outpouring of support and concern reflected in our multimedia coverage from this past week. After hearing about heartbreaking data that there were four suicides among the unhoused in 2021, a new mental health expert in town immediately asked us where she could help. Hear Dr. Sherilyn Duckworth in her own voice on our latest podcast episode, which can also be heard weekly on KWNK.
Another story we published this week was about one of our favorite #sheroesofreno Mary Gilbert setting up a new boutique at Our Place.
These examples of that kind of help and initiative from across our community is what makes us the Biggest Little City and gives us hope we can figure out a way to all help each other in an effective way without all the trolling, shaming, toxicity and hate we too often experience on social media.