Reno’s homeless shelter is under new management, and that makes people nervous BY GEORGIA FISHER
On Thanksgiving Day, a well-liked volunteer group served dinner outside Reno’s homeless shelter on Record Street for what many thought was the last time. They got a reprieve, but beginning next week, We Care Volunteers will be dishing out hot meals to hundreds of hungry people four times a week in the back parking lot of the Burner Hotel.
Food recipient/ facility user Todd Price
Photo/Eric Marks
OPINION
The volunteers say they have no choice but to disappear, thanks to a new policy—a newly enforced one, anyway—that requires them to clear out of the Community Assistance Center parking lot by 6 p.m. Their usual start time is around 7:15, more than an hour after the center closes, which shelter officials say is a safety threat and a breach of their operating contract. Drug use, prostitution and fighting are more rampant after dark, they’ve explained, and the facility’s meager security presence can’t withstand nighttime crowds. This isn’t going over well. In order to wrap by 6 p.m., “we’d basically have to take the entire afternoon off, and we all have daytime jobs, so it doesn’t work,” said volunteer Kelley Shewmaker. “We work to earn the money to buy the food to feed the homeless.” He figures the new rule is more about territorialism than good faith. After all, Pat Cashell has been heading the local branch of Volunteers of America—which is basically a faith-based managing body for the CAC’s biggest programs—for just two months. And he’s the one who opted to enforce a 6 p.m. cutoff that had otherwise been forgotten. “I think it’s [all because of] the new guy on the block,” Shewmaker said of Cashell, the son of former mayor Bob Cashell. “He’s rolled up his sleeves and wants to make some changes. I’ve seen it in business time and time again.”
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“They really want us out,” he added. “That’s the feeling I get. If they say they want to close down the food service because of crime, well, it’s been going on in that location for five years. If it wasn’t a concern a year ago, why is it a concern now?”
Meet the new boss Cashell is an affable guy. He comes across as a straight shooter, connects with his homeless clients in a relaxed and authentic way, and wears hoodies and jeans like everyone else. He even cusses like a normal person, which’ll put your average journalist at ease. He’s fun. Walk the grounds with him, and you’ll meet his public—the woman who runs up to give him a side hug, the teenage kid who jokingly gives him hell and then delivers a sincere thank-you, and the quieter types who pull him aside to say the same. There are many. The man hates to sit at his desk. Milling and talking with everyone is the best part of the job, he’ll tell you, and he pushes hard to enroll people in the assistance programs they need. Resources at hand include case-managed mental health services; shelters for men, women and families; housing assistance; school-district liaisons and a detox clinic. They’re all on campus. Apart from the closing-time deal, Cashell has also tightened up the center’s “day area”—a no-frills, fenced yard that many refer to as the Pit. Until recently it was known
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DECEMBER 4, 2014
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