By Ilya Arbatman
The Reno City Council agenda on Wednesday, Aug. 14, features yet another anti-homeless ordinance, this time one that proposes trespassing for anyone who “enters or remains within 100 feet of a railroad track.”
The ordinance raises many questions, legal and otherwise. As most people intuit and as the NDOT website clearly states, “Railroads are private property. Trespassers are those who are on railroad property without permission. Trespassing along railroad rights-of-way is the leading cause of rail-related fatalities in America.”
As private property, railroads fall under trespassing guidelines set out in NRS 207.200. Why do we need a special ordinance that creates a 100-foot no-go zone around the railroad tracks? And why is it being proposed now?
Unless train technology has changed to somehow make these areas more dangerous (it hasn’t), we can assume that people illegally trespassing on the tracks have always been a safety concern and that they have been warned, cited or arrested as such.
Those of us who fondly remember Record Street Bibo — before it was demolished — might also remember taking the shortcut across Interstate 80 on the railroad bridge. It was illegal to walk that way and, if you got caught, you got in trouble. No special ordinance was needed then to address the caffeinated and impatient pedestrians who must have been a scourge on law enforcement in the area.
Can the text of the newly proposed ordinance enlighten us on the current situation? Unfortunately, not really. In fact, the ordinance as it is written is so vague as to raise a few lawyerly eyebrows — if anyone is even paying attention, that is.
It begins with a statement of the obvious: “It is illegal to access private railroad property anywhere other than a designated pedestrian or roadway crossing.” It goes on to assert that “Trespassers are most often pedestrians who walk across or along railroad tracks as a shortcut to another destination,” mentions taking photographs as a potential (and serious!) hazard, and refers to “ballast damage” and potential derailment.
Has the number of shortcut-desperate travelers become such a nuisance that we need a new ordinance just for them and their deadly cameras set on damaging and derailing our precious locomotives?
Bear with me here as things get even murkier. The meat of the text follows: “Any person who enters or remains within 100 feet of a railroad track without the permission of the owner of the land, the owner’s agent, or the person in lawful possession and whose entry, presence, or conduct upon the property interferes with, interrupts, hinders, or which, if allowed to continue would interfere with, interrupt, or hinder the safe and efficient operation of any locomotive, railway car or train is guilty of a misdemeanor.”
Within a hundred feet of a railroad track? Measured in every direction? Can we see a map of how much now de facto private property the City is claiming jurisdiction over? Doesn’t this seem a bit excessive for joggers and photographers? Have the train nerds become too unruly for existing laws to contain?
Maybe the accompanying staff report can help us understand. The report specifies that, “The ordinance also establishes the 100 feet measurement from the most outer point of the railroad track extending out in each direction.” Once again, that’s an enormous swath of land.
The report does not offer any more background or explanation beyond the text of the ordinance. On top of that, there are some notable and confusing discrepancies between staff’s original introduction of the ordinance on July 24 of this year – which focused on vandalism, fires and the obstruction of stormwater conveyances – and the ordinance itself, which makes no mention whatsoever of any these hazards and refers instead to shortcut-crazed pedestrians, joggers, tourists, bicycles and alleged recreational off-highway vehicle operators. I’ll pose the question again: specifically what concerns, behaviors and people is this ordinance actually targeting?
Please. I know we are all desperate for some honesty and directness here. In my humble view, the Reno City Council and staff don’t want people to know they are introducing yet another anti-homeless law, so they are couching it in vague references to erosion, “taking photographs” and our “unique landscape.”
The demographic in question here is obvious, however: people who are living by the tracks because they have nowhere else to go. This has been a persistent issue for the city, and the roundabout way to address it is with a sneaky, new law.
As anyone who frequents the neighborhoods near the railroad tracks downtown knows, over the past several years encampments have been bounced around this area constantly, swept and swept again, from the railroad tracks off Sutro to the railroad tracks by the former Community Assistance Center, to the railroad tracks on the other side of Record Street, to beneath the Wells underpass, and to and from many other spots in this general vicinity.
In fact, there was a sweep happening at the same time as the July 31 Council Meeting, during which the railroad ordinance was agendized for a first reading. Despite some coverage here and there, much of this activity goes unnoticed and unreported. This cycle has been repeating at god-knows-what cost to the city and other agencies, with absolutely no end in sight, really, other than ceaseless harassment of our unhoused population.
In the past few years, we have seen a slew of targeted anti-homeless ordinances make their way through our local jurisdictions. Most recently, of course, we saw the controversial passing of ordinances that make camping in public spaces and sleeping in your car criminal misdemeanors (passed Sparks and County earlier this year). Reno already has a similar ordinance on the books, outlawing using “real property of the City for living accommodation.”
The camping ordinances and a whip ban all drew significant public outcry from members of the public, advocates for the unhoused, the ACLU and other groups. That was partially due to the fact that there was no mistaking what these new rules were all about: criminalizing homelessness.
The whip ordinance took about two months to pass (introduced in August of 2021 and passed in October of 2021), Sparks’ camping ban was first introduced in August of 2023 and was finally revised and passed in February of 2024, and the County’s camping ban was discussed at length between early February and late March of 2024.
It appears as if the City of Reno has learned a PR lesson: if you want to pass an ordinance that targets poor people and thus is bound to meet resistance from advocates as well as from the general public, do it quickly and quietly.
I sit on the Ward 3 Neighborhood Advisory Board (NAB). At our August 6 meeting, I spoke with Captain Larson and Assistant Chief Jacobson of RPD about the proposed ordinance.
Tellingly, they thought it had already been passed. This illustrates, I think, the hollowness of the process and the City’s indifference to community input. Once an ordinance like this makes it onto an agenda – which is usually the first that the public hears of it – it’s as good as enacted. Council is just going through the motions (pun intended) of gathering feedback and asking us what we think.
I asked the officers if they were hopeful about this ordinance, and they responded by saying they were always hopeful, and that the ordinance would give them another “tool” they could use to “help the folks that are down there.”
This reminded me of something Commissioner Clara Andriola said earlier this year in reference to the camping ban, something I have heard many times during conversations around this issue: “It’s not about criminalization, it’s about providing law enforcement the tools necessary to help direct folks to the resources that are needed.”
A tool. There is a kind of bitter irony to this metaphor. When I think of tools, I think of hammers and nails, things that you use to make houses. If we are not able to provide housing, we cannot break the cycle of homelessness. Our reference to anti-homeless ordinances – laws that punish you for having nowhere to go – as tools makes me think our social conscience is trying to tell us something. What point is a tool if we are not building anything with it?
Finally, if I am homeless, it’s illegal for me to sleep in the park. It’s illegal for me to sleep in the street or on the sidewalk. It’s illegal for me to sleep by the river. It’s illegal for me to sleep in my car. Now it will be illegal for me to sleep within 100 feet of the railroad tracks.
But I have to sleep. I have to rest. If doing that anywhere but at the Cares Campus is illegal, what is the difference between the Cares Campus and jail? I have to sleep. Can someone lay out for me how I can exist as an unhoused person in Washoe County without breaking the law?
Ilya Arbatman is a Ward 3 resident, small business owner, and community advocate. He currently sits on the Ward 3 Neighborhood Advisory Board.
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