The "No Fixed Address" City Profile: Reno, NV

CITY PROFILE: RENO, NV

"The Value Is Gone"

by Ryan Vagabundo

Photo courtesy of Sharon Rong

QUICK HISTORY OF RENO

Reno grew side-by-side as one of the country's major gambling destinations along with Las Vegas when Nevada legalized wagering in 1931. Obviously, Las Vegas won that particular rivalry, but Reno has had enduring popularity as a regional getaway destination for Northern Californians and Pacific Northwesterners who don't want to make the much longer trip to Vegas.

Up until very recently, Reno relied primarily on casino tourism as the centerpiece of its economy, and that has been slowly but steadily on the wane since the late 1990s, mostly due to Native American casinos in California and Washington taking a deep bite out of their primary tourism base.

Photo courtesy of Prayitno Photography

WHY IS IT A "NO FIXED ADDRESS" DESTINATION?

To be blunt, what was bad for Reno's local economy was good for those capable of setting up shop and working from anywhere (or just coasting on their accumulated lucre). Reno is a nice area that has a Northern California-like moderate climate (even better than Sacramento and points north in the summer) and is a quick drive from Lake Tahoe and a variety of other great outdoor areas. Yet the cost of living was depressed for a long time thanks to the weak local economy, and also probably decades of being the butt of "Vegas's ratty younger brother" jokes (culminating with the show Reno 911 in the 2000s while the city was experiencing a particularly rough economic stretch). Combined with a decent public transit system and food and art scene, it was an interesting hidden gem for those brave enough to disregard its rep.

Despite the weak economy and bad reputation, most of Reno is actually very nice (and always has been). The two "bad areas" are the downtown core (around most of the casinos), and some of the neighborhoods between the airport and S. Virginia St. where there's a bunch of beat-down old apartments that gang activity has taken hold in. These are relatively small areas, but a lot of outsiders probably judged Reno solely on the crappy parts of downtown since that's where the majority of the hotel rooms are.

Reno has always had a significant transient population due to the casino economy, and going farther back due to its placement along the major rail line between San Francisco/Oakland/Sacramento and Salt Lake City. So for a while there it was a very inexpensive place to live temporarily, especially with the casino-hotels slashing room rates to the bone to get more traffic.

But ...

RENO'S CURRENT SITUATION

... that's not the case anymore.

Reno is experiencing major economic growth. Not to begrudge it to the city, it was desperately needed.

The problem is, it isn't smart and steady measured growth that includes everyone and lifts all boats. It's California-style tech bubble growth that's happening way too fast for the infrastructure and housing stock to keep up, and it's disproportionately benefiting outsiders who already had lots of money at the expense of less fortunate residents.

It's also awful for visitors. To give you a general idea, I remember back in 2013 it was easy to get a decent casino-hotel room for $25 on any given weeknight (this was before "resort fees" migrated up from Vegas), and an equally decent chain hotel room for $45 on Friday-Saturday, all this on pretty much a day's notice. Less than four years later, you might get a crappy room for $40 in the depths of winter on a weeknight IF nothing special is going on. Try around $65 for that crappy room any other weeknight. Weekends you're always looking at $100 and up for anything but Motel 6 ... and sometimes even AT Motel 6 (I've seen the one in nearby Carson City asking $150 on weekends in the middle of summer). That, and as of 2014 or so the practice of "resort fees" migrated up to Reno from Las Vegas.

So what happened? Well, there's been a small uptick in tourism since 2014, but that's not the main reason. The main development was Tesla moving in and building a battery factory that created 65,000 jobs. For reference, the previous largest employer in the area was the local school district, which employed 8,000.

So, lots of jobs, great, right? Yeah, not so much for much of the city. Most of those jobs are skilled jobs, and while Reno had lots of unemployed people on hand, it had virtually nobody with those very specialized technical skills. Cue a bunch of middle- and upper-class job seekers from outside Reno, cue real estate speculators a step ahead of them buying up the housing stock to flip it for big profits, cue a housing crisis complicated greatly by the fact that the city government is failing to issue permits for new housing construction in a timely fashion (possibly intentionally). And even the minimally-skilled construction jobs have largely been filled by out-of-region teams as many local construction workers fled the city due to sustained lack of work during the earlier part of the 2000s.

Tesla's presence also led to a ripple effect at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center where the factory is located. A bunch of tech companies including Switch, Apple and Google decided to build large data centers out there after Tesla set up shop. So, basically a bunch more Silicon Valley back office jobs that the residents of Reno who need work aren't equipped for, ergo a bunch of people with money from somewhere else coming in and displacing them.

Anyway, housing costs spiked, and that spills over into any "four walls and a roof" market including hotels and all forms of temporary lodging.

HOUSING STOCK FOR VISITORS & TEMPORARY RESIDENTS

Even during the more affordable times, Reno always had a problem with a lot of its housing stock being "undesirable" ... popcorn ceiling and toilet paper thin wall construction thrown up quickly as a response to previous boom cycles and then struggling to attract tenants during the bust periods. That and old "motor courts" from the 1950s/1960s that attract the usual crowd of druggies, dealers and pimps.

Even these places are slammed full at the moment, and it's reasonable to expect that if/when Reno's city government gets their housing construction situation sorted out, it's going to be more of the same sorts of property thrown up for quick profits.

Here's an overview of the current options:

• Weeklies / Monthlies

There are a lot of these in Reno, by and large the aforementioned old "motor court" motels from the 1950s-60s that are in various states of disrepair. You'll find them right in the downtown core near the casinos, extending west out from downtown along W. 4th Street, north up toward the University of Nevada Reno (UNR) along N. Virginia, south along the length of S. Virginia and east primarily along E. 6th St. and E. 2nd St.

Even in more affordable times you wanted to avoid these places at all costs. Reno has more than its share of drug traffic and prostitution and all that goes along with it, and these are the only places that whole scene can usually get housing. The local police even have a special "Motel Interdiction Team" since so many criminal operations and gangbangers try to set up shop in these places. I know they were as little as $100 a week for the nastiest ones out on E. 6th a couple years ago, but I would guess the housing crunch is even pressuring these places and I would expect them to be full / pricier these days, though no less nasty. Probably expect a bunch to get bought up and razed to make proper housing for the tech workers.

As far as weekly motels and month-to-month rentals go, here's the only ones I've ever heard anything decent about.

- The Town House Motor Lodge (near the Sands Regency downtown) got a nice profile piece in the local paper back in 2015 about how new ownership was making a concerted effort to keep drug traffic and violent criminals out.

- I heard from a traveling nurse friend that The Loft Apartments is OK. They rent fully furnished units on a month-to-month basis and ask around $700 for a studio or $900 for a one bedroom. She said the property was well managed and the units were well maintained and clean (and in a decent neighborhood), the only issue was that the walls are paper thin and a noisy idiot next door can wreck the whole experience (also zero privacy for couples).

- The Days Inn / Super 8 near Meadowood Mall (one property split into two chains for who knows what reason) has OK rooms with a micro-fridge, they advertise a weekly rate sometimes in the local Penny Saver. It was around $220 when I was last there years ago, I would guess it's more now. It's a step up from the druggie weeklies. May not be available from June-September due to the tourist traffic though.

• AirBnB

AirBnB used to have almost nothing in Reno a couple years ago, but taking a cursory look at it now it seems like they have a good handful of rooms in the $25-45 per night range, which means you can probably do even better on weekly or monthly stays. Surprisingly reasonable for how hot the housing market is there.

• Casino-Hotels

As mentioned earlier, time was the casino-hotels had amazing room deals here and even gave freebies away liberally, but that time ended around 2015. You might still see some OK pricing in the slow months (winter weekdays) but expect like $50 a night absolute best unless you're losing tons of money on slots at one of the casinos.

- Most of the casinos with hotel rooms are downtown. Cal-Neva used to be the cheapest, but they sold their hotel towers off to Seigel Suites a couple years ago (would NOT recommend any Seigels in this area). Sands Regency is usually the cheapest. Their rooms are basic, but OK -- just check the bed carefully for bedbug signs as they do have bouts of them. Harrahs would be the next cheapest, during slow times they compete with the Sands for the cheapest casino rooms at around $50 per night. Their rooms are OK, particularly the West Tower, and one of the few in Reno that come with a mini-fridge. Circus Circus can also be similarly cheap and their rooms are OK, though I put them behind the others as it'll be rowdy kids everywhere. I find the El Dorado and Silver Legacy are generally overpriced for what they offer. Likewise, the Ramada at Diamonds just off of downtown used to be a decent budget choice but now seems to charge too much for how old and beat-up it is.

- The "nicer" casinos are actually all a few miles out of downtown. The Peppermill and Atlantis are located along S. Virginia not far from each other. Expect more like $75 a night at absolute best, but the rooms and properties are definitely nicer than the downtown casinos. I like the Atlantis better as all the rooms at the Peppermill have conjoining doors. Grand Sierra Resort is kinda out on an island by itself, with nothing really close to it but a Walmart Supercenter across the street. It's about the same price but the rooms aren't quite as nice.

• Chain Hotels

The chain hotels in Reno suck and are overpriced almost universally across the board. Older, crappier properties and almost none give you a fridge or microwave. Some of the midscale chains like Best Western and the Comfort Inn are decent, otherwise they're emergency use only. They have an Extended Stay America which used to be around $350 a week before the local economy went batshit, it's probably twice that now.

TOURIST PILE-ONS

Like Vegas, expect prices to shoot through the roof every single Friday and Saturday night as wealthy California tourists stream across the mountains for their weekend debauchery.

Things get even worse when certain special events are in town, though. Weekend prices normally double, but event prices will be 3x-5x normal (if everything isn't sold completely out). The biggest one is Hot August Nights. Thursday-Sunday of that week will be sold out all over town, and usually the weekend preceding it too.

The whole month of September is also really bad. There's a big event drawing huge crowds every weekend. The first weekend sees all the Burners streaming back through town from the desert, stopping in Reno Friday and Saturday to "recuperate" from their challenging week of partying and getting high. The second weekend is the Balloon Race. The third weekend is the Air Races. Then the final weekend is Street Vibrations.

Then, of course, the usual long holiday weekends are bad - New Years, Valentines Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, July 4, Thanksgiving. Surprisingly, Halloween usually isn't that bad even though there's tons of pub crawls and such.

FINAL THOUGHTS

What happens to Reno going forward hinges entirely on Tesla. They gambled a lot of public money on this company specifically changing the whole region's fortunes. Yeah, other tech companies are coming in, but those data centers bring maybe 100 jobs each at best ... nothing even close to the 65,000 Tesla is claiming when they are fully spun up.

So if you're betting big on Reno for some reason, I'd be REAL concerned about news like this. Even if you do establish a nice foothold in the area, be sure it isn't one that leans on Tesla somehow, because if Tesla falls apart Reno is sliding right back into another bigly bust cycle.

For the NFA traveler, the value just isn't there anymore. Honestly, Vegas on a typical Sun-Thu is a way better value at this point. With the hotel prices so seriously jacked up and short-term apartments slammed by immigrating workers, you're pretty much at the mercy of AirBnb listings at this point.