Reno Homeless. (Photo: Kevin Sanders for The Nevada Globe)
OPINION: The Washoe County CARES Campus Is A Top-To-Bottom Fraud and Failure
Every year since its inception in 2021, WCCC spends more money to reduce homelessness, produces less results, and continues to hide these facts from the community
By Paul White, August 20, 2024 12:01 pm
The Washoe County CARES Campus (WCCC), is the public agency tasked with solving our county’s homeless problem. It is a top-to-bottom fraud and failure. Aiding the destruction of many lives it purports to help, it has made our county’s homeless problem exponentially worse.
From 2017 to 2024, metropolitan Reno’s general population increased 14%. During that same time period, Reno’s homeless population increased by over 2,000% (from 80 to 1,800), If this trajectory continues, Reno’s projected homeless population in 2031 would be 36,000.
Every year since its inception in 2021, WCCC spends more money to reduce homelessness, produces less results, and continues to hide these facts from the community. During a recent phone call, the City of Reno Budget and Finance Department stated that they could not even guess how much is spent on homelessness annually, because, “No one really knows what the total amount is.”
Every employee of WCCC who has lied or kept silent about this disastrous homeless situation, every non-profit organization that feeds at its trough, and every politician who has supported and praised its ineffective programs, is responsible for this disaster.
This is my opinion based on seven years of observing first-hand WCCC and its predecessor programs, and my 50+ years of working with the homeless population in numerous large cities.
My feelings have been echoed in confidential conversations with local law enforcement, firefighters, church leaders, a source within the WCCC, and by a local member of the judiciary. Also, numerous homeless clientele who utilize WCCC services – have stated without exception – that these programs have done nothing to permanently improve their lives.
Both WCCC’s failure and their clients’ dissatisfaction are easily explained.
Homeless individuals have found no lasting help with WCCC federally-funded programs, because federal regulations DO NOT allow recipient organizations to require their clients to be drug free, work a steady job, abstain from criminal behavior, accept counseling, and/or seek mental health treatment when needed.
WCCC employees and clientele have confirmed that the overwhelming majority of the residents of WCCC’s Homeless Tent and Safe Camp programs are drug addicts who refuse to work. Without any requirements or consequences forcing them to change their behaviors, hundreds of these individuals can, and do, lay around in the WCCC facilities every day – for months or even years. They sleep, loaf, continue to get high, sell fentanyl and other drugs, rob and fight with each other with deadly weapons, and pursue gang-related activity, while taking advantage of the free food, clothing, showers, laundry, bus passes, and shelter. The self-destructive behaviors that clientele are allowed to comfortably maintain, are the same ones that caused their homelessness in the first place.
Homeless individuals who warehouse themselves in WCCC programs long enough, eventually get rewarded. They are given vouchers guaranteeing them free rent for up to 10 years or longer, including utilities. There, they can continue to live with virtually no behavioral requirements of any kind regarding employment or drug use.
In several cases, these so-called “graduated” clients have turned their free apartments into dope dens for other homeless addicts, refused to take even part-time employment, and maintained their involvement in illegal activity. Their physical and mental health have deteriorated, including dying prematurely and/or becoming permanently disabled.
These are the individuals and situations WCCC is dishonestly describing when they publish stories and statistics regarding how many homeless people they’ve “successfully gotten off the streets and living independently in the community.”
What I’ve described is the truth that our local media and politicians refuse to tell you. It is almost impossible for the community to see this situation for themselves, because similar to our failing Washoe County School District, un-rehearsed tours are impossible to come by.
Our county’s homeless problem is self-inflicted and dangerously out of control. However, there’s a potentially much worse situation on Washoe County’ s horizon if we don’t get rid of WCCC’s failed programs.
San Francisco, Oakland, and Sacramento have a combined homeless population of 20,000. That’s 15 times greater than Reno’s current homeless population.
Those mayors are already offering their homeless residents one-way bus tickets to other cities just like … Reno – that are soft on crime, building lavish homeless facilities, and putting out the welcome mat nation-wide. What criminally-inclined drug addict, opportunistically identifying himself as “chronically homeless”, would not want to relocate to a community like ours, where WCCC will provide them with life-time subsidies to maintain their unrestricted lifestyles?
As a one-way bus ticket to Reno from the Bay area costs $26.99. The mayors of San Francisco, Oakland, and Sacramento could send every one of their 20,000 homeless individuals to Reno for about $500,000. The city of San Francisco has an annual homeless budget of $1.1 billion. This billion-dollar budget would easily allow them buy bus tickets for the 20,000 homeless from all 3 cities – every year – and still have $900 million left over.
What would be the impact on Washoe County if that nightmare scenario came true, and our homeless population increased within just a few weeks from 1,700 to 22,000? Our already stretched law enforcement would not be able to maintain law and order to any meaningful degree and crime would explode.Our social and emergency services would exist in name only. Reno’s downtown would become an uninhabitable wasteland, and surrounding parts of the city would move in a similar retrograde direction. Our city and county would immediately be pushed toward bankruptcy.
The worst part of Reno’s entire homeless disaster, however, is that there is a proven way to solve our homeless problem, but our county commissioners and city councils have refused to even hear a presentation about it.
Washoe County could privately fund an effective community homeless program without using federal money. Therefore, they would be free from the restrictions that accompany accepting those funds. This proven model would enable Washoe County to enforce the kind of requirements that actually motivate the homeless to change their lives.
Additionally, a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling now allows local law enforcement to arrest any illegally camped homeless individuals and hold them accountable for criminal behavior, regardless of the availability of homeless beds in a community.
If our police and sheriff’s departments would enforce this ruling, service-resistant homeless individuals would tire of getting arrested and going to jail. They would then have two clear choices: Accept the abundant support services that are available, and become sober, law-abiding, contributing, and welcomed members of our county, or relocate to other communities that are willing to tolerate their anti-social behavior and comprehensively negative impact.
The time is now to demand a complete replacement of the WCCC: the leaders, over three dozen nonprofits, and political ideologies that are responsible for our failed homeless program.
WCCC’s failure has put our community’s future at risk, and greatly lowered our quality of life. As their clients themselves will attest, WCCC’s homeless programs have not provided significant good for anyone except the growing group of individuals and organizations whom they employ and freely fund. WCCC needs to be stopped and replaced immediately, before things get much, much worse.
- Homeless Encampments: A Tale of Two Riverfronts Along The Truckee River - September 29, 2024
- OPINION: The Washoe County CARES Campus Is A Top-To-Bottom Fraud and Failure - August 20, 2024
- Opinion: Why Am I Running For School Board - April 8, 2024
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Excellent commentary and spot on. Thank you, Paul for writing it and the Globe brave enough to publish. Sure, wouldn’t read this in the local MSM paper for they are enablers of this Cares Campus boondoggle and our leaders who haven’t a clue what they are doing, except to cash their taxpayer funded paychecks. Recently I was traveling along the I-80 East corridor. Noticed a huge homeless encampment just outside Sparks near the Truckee River. Looks like those who got chased off Reno/Sparks streets and the railroad tracks are now setting up shop in this new location. Breaks my heart to see what our government has allowed to happen in our cities all because they are too afraid to set some ground rules that require personal responsibility.
I think it’s easy to blame the unhoused, but they are just trying to survive. We cannot blame them for that. We are all doing that same thing in one way or another.
One local leader pointed out to me that our systems are designed for the unhoused only to survivor, not thrive. This rings true for me. I think the larger part of the ongoing problem—some evidence says worsening—is that one misstep and an unhoused person has to start all over again. They can end up in a cycle of try-fail, try-fail because the regulations that providers put on them make it so much more likely that they can’t succeed. These organizations are well-intentioned and want to help, but few programs recognize that recovery is not linear. There will be problems—our recovery systems do not reflect that reality. It’s not IF there will be challenges; it’s WHEN and how we will RESPOND to them.
I agree with Mr. White that the CARES campus is not the answer, but neither is the kind of unsubstantiated fear mongering that he shares here. And certainly, those with the fewest resources should not be expected to fix this problem for themselves and the rest of us, too.
Permanent supportive housing. Programs that focus on helping people to endure through a nonlinear process of recovery, from so many things not the least of which is the simple trauma of living on the streets. Focus on thriving rather than simply surviving (and being grateful for the handout). Make homeless services focus on putting themselves out of business. These are the things that will make a difference.
Shelter is not housing. Housing is not a home. A home cannot stand without engagement and support—none of ours can. Let’s be reasonable about what we assert/assume and expect in return because of what we believe rather than know.
Think about these questions: what people, resources, and opportunities had to be in place for you to succeed? To get where you are? To have what you have? What could disrupt all of that? A lingering illness? Bad investments? A messy divorce? Job loss? Natural disaster? Maybe some of our blaming the victims is a deep fear that the same things that made them homeless could happen to us, too. How much do the CARES campus and local unhoused resources look like the people, resources, and opportunities you had? How much would you have been able to do without those networks? There are good hearts and minds out there doing the hard work; how can we better support them and their beneficiaries, and all get rowing in the same direction, toward a same safe harbor?
Mr. White should remember that, while he is pointing the finger, there are several pointing right back at him from the same hand.
William –
I’d encourage you and anyone else who doesn’t have a 50-year perspective on the homeless issue like I do, to attend a full, all-facts-on-the-table presentation this Friday, August 30, at 5:00 p.m. at Boomtown.
It’s the monthly Freedom Friday presentation sponsored by Robert Beadles. I will be one of 3 speakers.
You can reserve a seat (and a free buffet dinner at https://freedomfridays.com/events/
Reading through your list of possible issues that can cause homelessness, I think might just be at 100%. . A lingering illness? I am deaf and have issues on some jobsites… Bad investments? I got caught up in the “housing crisis” and lost well over half a million CASH out of pocket and uncounted in Real Estate holdings… A messy divorce? Yep. $89 bucks for a marriage certificate, WELL OVER $35K to get out of it. Job loss? Yes again,, the industry has changed and certifications are required for many occupations that I do not have.. Natural disaster? AGAIN I win,, My town was wiped out by a wildfire in 2021.. Through all of this, I have NOT accepted a single penny from anyone or any agency, I slept in my car at times. I bbq’d in parks to eat for less than a restaurant. I took jobs that I was barely qualified for and learned as I went. I did without, pulled myself by my bootstraps, got my ears back and got after it!! (as Judge Mills Lane used to say) It seems that YOU are willing to use your pointing finger to accuse the author and those other three fingers to make excuses rather than to perform labor and EARN what you have…
Free buffet dinner?? Where??? I could eat a little…
There are two ways to look at this situation:
Way 1. Bottom Line: The more liberal policies are instituted, the worse things get. Become LESS liberal, you’ll have LESS problems
Way 2. Micro-analyze it to death. Spend Millions or even Billions of tax dollars to “get to the root cause” while doing nothing to change it. Why are people homeless? The answer is simple, Because they can be. There are handouts galore available to anyone willing to give up on personal dignity and hitch a ride on the benefits bandwagon. Once they start down that path, it is next to impossible to turn back. Even if all they wanted to begin with was a little help putting food on the table, they get bombarded and pressured to accept many other handouts. Each one makes it a little easier to accept another. Before they know it, they are on a snowball to hell. There was a time when welfare and food stamps were shameful. People who were forced to accept handouts worked hard to break free from the program. Now it has become a career choice. They use fancy sounding names to make it seem more dignified. SNAP or WIC and it is an EBT card that looks like a debit card except the same people that WORK, EARN, and Deposit into their own accounts each week, are also forced to fund those who choose NOT to.. There are 2 basic ways to obtain food, A, work, earn money, and buy it. or B, get it without doing anything at all through a handout program. Rather than to work hard and try to advance in a career to get ahead, people are incentivized to NOT excel. Many would rather “wait until their house housing voucher comes through” instead of working and saving like in the olden days. Since you are on one handout program, why not take advantage of some of the other benefits.. FREE food, FREE Housing, FREE clothing, FREE utilities, FREE medical care, In CA you can even be a junkie and get FREE street drugs AND a monthly paycheck. Self Pride, Integrity, and Dignity used to mean something, Now they have little meaning at all…
Did I hear something about a free buffet dinner???
Dan – I admire your desire to not give up, persevere, and succeed.
You’re a model of how everyone would handle hard times if they government wasn’t constantly butting in and offering motivation-killing handouts in exchange for drinking their Kool-aid.
Let me know if I can help: white.pauld@gmail.com