by Jeri Davis
Homing in
UNR Director of Admissions Steve Maples discussed the Nevada Guarantee alongside recipients and recent graduates Perla Gonzalez Roman and Martha Aguilar.
On Monday Dec. 9, Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve gathered together media and local developers to discuss her 1,000 Homes in 120 Days initiative, now just past its halfway point. “I am so incredibly thrilled,” Schieve said. “This program—we never thought that we would get to this point. We have put almost 1,600 units into the market. Sixteen-hundred, and our goal was 1,000. … Now, I think we’ve got to up it. You know how competitive I am. I want 2,000—2,000, did you hear me?” After asking for a round of applause for the developers, the mayor asked several of them to speak about their projects. Blake Smith S3 Development was the first of the developers to speak about a 302-unit project his company is working on.
Mayor Hillary schieve gathered with developers on Dec. 9 for an update on her 1,000 Homes in 120 Days initiative.
“We have an exciting project that’s located on Keystone and Fifth,” he said. “We are actually in PHOTO/JERI DAVIS the design stage of it at this point, design schematics. We are actually struggling quite a bit, and this program, I have to to give kudos to it. … It is helping us move the project forward at this point. … The pricing and the cost in this marketplace is really stymieing so many projects at this point. And this program that you’ve introduced is really allowing us to get over these hurdles.” Projects approved under the program will receive deferred impact fees for costs they normally pay upfront, including sewer connection and traffic impact fees. Other approved projects include a 208unit senior housing complex and a housing complex attached to the Freight House District at the Reno Aces ballpark. According to Assistant City Manager Bill Thomas, about 120 units of the 1,600 that have been proposed and approved under the project, 120 qualify as affordable housing. “This is absolutely incredible. As many of you know, my initiative was really to create infill in opportunity zones—to build up and not out,” Schieve said. “We know, we’re facing such a huge challenge when it comes to housing. We have to create housing of all types. That’s why I’m very proud of it, because a lot of people come to me and say, ‘Mayor Schieve, why not just affordable housing?’ But we know that that doesn’t work. You have to create all kinds of housing when it comes to economics.” The Reno City Council will vote next week on whether or not to continue accepting proposed projects despite the fact that the program has exceeded its original goal of 1,000 housing units.
—Jeri Davis
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Paid in full University unveils rebranding of tuition-free program According to the website debt.org, student loan debt “soared from $260 billion in 2004 to $1.4 trillion in 2017.” And average debt rose from $18,650 to $38,000 over that same period. Additionally, the number of people over $60,000 in loan debt “has quadrupled in the last decade from 700,000 to 2.8 million” people. But at the University of Nevada, Reno, officials are working to change the narrative about student loan debt—at least on a local level. On Thursday Dec. 5, UNR officials held a press conference to unveil the rebranding of a free tuition program they’re now calling the Nevada Guarantee—a program that completely covers tuition, books and fees for those who qualify for it. “The most important thing to start off with is to talk about the Nevada Guarantee and how you qualify,” said Director of Admissions Steve Maples during the press conference. “It’s pretty
straightforward, as far as the qualifications. If you have a family income of $50,000 or less, and if you’re a Nevada resident, and as long as you apply to the university by February 1 … you’ll qualify for the Nevada Guarantee. It’s the only program in the state of Nevada that allows you to start at the university and complete your degree at the university and have your books, your fees and your tuition covered—all in four years or less.” The program has actually been around for about a decade now and was formally called Pack Advantage. In that time, more than 10,000 UNR students have participated in it. “So why are we telling you about this now?” said Melisa Choroszy, associate vice president of university enrollment services. “We’re a landgrant university, and our mission is to support student access—and we want to make sure that Nevada residents have access to a quality, tier-one
education. … We want students to know that they are welcome here, and we’re here to support them.” The other goal of the press conference was to provide the university an opportunity to make the argument that it’s not such a big part of the student loan debt crisis people so often hear about in media reports these days. “You will see in the reports, as we have, about students graduating with record amounts of debt from college,” Choroszy said. “We want to share some information with you about our students. Over 50 percent of our students graduate without debt, debt free. Eighty-one percent of our students receive some kind of scholarship and financial aid. We give out over $87 million dollars [annually] in financial aid to our students.” Two of those students who’ve graduated debt-free from the university were on hand to share their experiences during the press conference—Perla Gonzalez Roman and Martha Aguilar. “Before I knew about the Nevada Guarantee, I was attending TMCC and paying out-of-pocket for the two classes [per semester] that I could afford while I was working for the Washoe County School District as a lunch lady,” said Gonzalez Roman. “After three years at TMCC, I transferred to the university where I continued to pay for the two classes a semester, as that was what I could afford.” She also started working at North Valleys High School as a career center facilitator, where she met a UNR admissions counselor who told her about the Nevada Guarantee, but, at first, thought she was ineligible because of her citizenship status. Gonzalez Roman is a DACA recipient. She was pleased to learn that UNR offered the program to students like her, too, by having an alternative to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), for which non-citizens do not qualify. “Once I got the Nevada Guarantee, I immediately enrolled in a full course load of classes—and I was so thrilled that I could do so and that I would be able to graduate in two years,” she said. “I made sure that my two younger siblings knew about the program and enrolled when their time came. This program is truly life-changing.”
