Moriah Stovall, 19, stands in the center of a set of Union Pacific railroad tracks near downtown Reno and lights a hand rolled paper cigarette.

Police and city of Reno employees filter by her. Those people she calls her family — people she’s learned to trust in her time living on the streets — hastily pack up their belongings between some fences just next to the tracks where they’ve been living since November 2019.

She wants a place to go, she says. A place to stay safely and steadily while she tries to break the cycle of poverty that’s kept her homeless since she was 15.

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“It’s definitely a struggle out here, you know,” the ex-foster child says, taking a drag from the cigarette.

Stovall and her “family” are among hundreds who have been living since the fall in the mile-long encampment along the railroad tracks that stretches from the downtown homeless shelter to the Wells Avenue overpass.

On Wednesday morning, they were forced to leave.

Nowhere else to go

Reno employees clad in orange vests, dozens of police and other city services filtered into the camp at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday.

City officials say the people living here are trespassing on railroad property and pose an extreme fire danger. The Washoe County Health District also says the city of Reno is violating health code and must dismantle the encampments.

The people here say there’s nowhere else to go.

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The Community Assistance Center, not 100 feet from the camp, simply does not have the capacity for the people living here. Jon Humbert, a city spokesman, estimates there are about 130 people and tents in the encampment.

Humbert said notice of the cleanup was given about a week ago. It was more notice than they had to give under state law, which requires just 24 hours.

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"These are real citizens in our community who need help and assistance," Humbert said. "But it's also one of the largest safety concerns that we've had in the past because fire danger and concern that you have in this very thin and narrow gap that goes for a mile."

Art Gillespie, a mobile outreach employee with the Foundation For Recovery, said he’d already tried to walk someone from the camp to the downtown homeless shelter to help them find a bed, but they were already full.

They were told the person could put their name on a waiting list.

Unpacked personal property to soon be trash

An hour after the cleanup began, the tracks were still lined with the remains of camps and personal property.

Gillespie said almost all of it — anything that can’t be picked up and carried — would soon be trash.

Close by, near where the tracks cross fourth street, was a flatbed truck. Employees with pitchforks and orange vests were loading it with the contents of the camps.

PHOTOS FROM EARLIER THIS YEAR(Story continues below)

“I would like a place to go,” Stovall said, but she and her “family” will likely scatter after the cleanup is done Wednesday.

They’ll try to regroup somewhere safe, a likely plan for most people here at the camp.

Stovall says she understands the city’s concerns over safety and health, but these cleanups are not the answer. This camp started after a similar camp was cleaned out along the Truckee River, and it’s likely another camp will start again after this — there’s simply just nowhere for these people to go, she says.

She’s tired of this cycle.

“I’m looked at like I’m the lowest of the low,” she said.