We all know Reno has been coming out of the recession and with redevelopment on the rise, the city is changing. Some are concerned with the potential impacts of gentrification, especially on homeless people. KUNR’sAnh Gray sat down with two Reno-based journalists to get their take on what they’ve learned while reporting on this topic.
They include the Reno Gazette-Journal’s City Life Reporter Mike Higdon, who covers stories about life, culture and development in Reno, and Nico Colombant, who is a cofounder of Our Town Reno, a collective new multimedia street reporting project focusing on issues relating to homelessness and gentrification.
Colombant says his reporting method is to give people an opportunity to share their first-person accounts of what’s going on.
“Our approach at Our Town Reno is to look at the people affected by this whole rebrand of Reno, these potential changes coming, and we like to do it in their own words, perspective, where we give people the mic, and we let them tell their own stories,” Colombant explains.
Colombant says that gentrification is a “loaded term” and the process can have both positive and negative consequences, but he’s concerned that as the city redevelops and makes way for new businesses, some people in the community, like the homeless, will be shut out as rent and home prices spike. Reno is losing some cheaper housing options as city officials have been working to remove what is deemed as blight, like run-down homes and motels, to make way for new structures.
RGJ’s Higdon says inadequate housing does pose a big challenge for people living in poverty but he adds that some of the current options available are not truly livable.
“A lot of the choices for housing in downtown Reno whether it’s weekly motels or dilapidated houses, those are not good choices,” Higdon says. “You have trade-offs of you want to get rid of certain places like that that are probably unhealthy and are actually public health risks, but then you have a hundred, 250 people, who need somewhere to go.”
Higdon says redevelopment has trade-offs with multiple consequences. But, he doesn’t view gentrification as necessarily causing homelessness.
“I don’t necessarily see gentrification as causing homelessness; I see it as causing a lot of movement and change, but homelessness is really caused more by a lack of social safety nets.” Higdon explains that issues like mental illness, poverty and addiction problems are the underlying root causes of homelessness.
Colombant disagrees with Higdon's perspective that gentrification doesn't cause homelessness. Colombant says new developments causing the removal of affordable housing force individuals into homelessness.
“One less place in downtown Reno, makes one less person who can live there, makes one more life which will become much more complicated and the life of a person who might become homeless,” Colombant explains. “I’ve talked to people who’ve been push out by the rising prices into homelessness.”
Colombant and Higdon both say that as the city continues to redevelop, policymakers and developers should consider affordable housing needs in Reno.
