Reporting About Neighbors Trying to Rebound
A recap of recent original reporting plus bonus content.
Above a photo of the late Joyce Kay Cowdin who lived at the Hawk View Apartments with a Reno Housing Authority voucher before passing away last year.
We first met Joyce after she had gone from homelessness to living in a motel on 4th street, trying as best she could to have a healthier lifestyle after years of addiction and trauma.
We then caught up with her while she relaxed in her new subsidized apartment she fought so hard to obtain and loved so much to live in.
Joyce was always generous with others, and quick to share ideas and thoughts on social media about how to better help neighbors in need, trying, as she did, to get back onto better tracks.
Our Town Reno started in 2016 with a documentary film about a young woman who had gone to UNR while unhoused, before helping set up the Eddy House, for at-risk youths. We then continued our initiative as an ongoing social media and journalism hybrid chronicling the early destruction of motels, and interviewing those who ran them and those who lived there.
We are often associated with reporting about local homelessness, but our efforts go much further than that, trying to report about what works and what doesn’t, where the corners are dark and where the cracks are in trying to help some of our neighbors in need.
A story we’ve been pursuing lately, which other media have not looked into, is how all units at the Hawk View Apartments are being demolished to be reconstructed double the units and safer, but, in the meantime, resulting in many current residents not knowing where they will be living in just a few weeks.
The tip for the story came to us from a concerned citizen Ilya Arbatman, who has been a tireless advocate for those struggling in our community.
With a deadline of less than two weeks to go, and despite promises they would get helped to be easily relocated to a similar subsidized apartment of their liking, several of them are panicking right now.
Our pledge to the community is that we will keep telling the stories of these neighbors, far from tightly constructed PR campaigns and statements, because these people matter, and we should all lift each other up, and never let someone who has fought so hard to rebound, and find a way forward, to be abandoned.
Our Recent Reporting
As Clock Ticks on Demolition, Yet to Be Relocated Reno Housing Authority Tenants Stress
Washoe County Certification Redo Passes 4-1
Sahara and GSR Casinos Shower Reno City Council Incumbents with New Contributions
Locals Thinking of Going Solar Face Minefields and Confusion
