Eureka Pulls Property Intended for Betty Chinn Housing From Consideration

City of EurekaPress release from the City of Eureka:

On the May 15, 2018 Regular Council Agenda, the Eureka City Council set a Public Hearing to hear the Local Coastal Program Amendment for the northern section of the Crowley Site on Hilfiker Lane. The amendment was intended to change the zoning of the parcel from Coastal Dependent Industrial to Service Commercial with the intent of creating a site for the Betty Chinn Community Housing Project.

The City of Eureka has heard from a number of businesses in this area regarding the north end of the Crowley site and is removing this north end from consideration. The trailers currently located at that site will be removed once a suitable alternative site is identified.

The City will be actively pursuing alternative sites, potentially including the south end of the Crowley property located next to the Wastewater Treatment Facility. Once the preferred site is selected, staff will present to the Council and public the process necessary to execute the project in that location.

The City continues to believe in the value of the project and its partnership with the Betty Chinn Foundation.

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Guest
Guest
Guest
5 years ago

So shutting down sleazy cheap motels that act as a focus for criminal activity didn’t magically improve the homeless problem? That the businesses that are near the proposed new site objected to a new place to concentrate problems? That dealing with homeless issues has no cheap, uniform solution? Surprise, surprise.

Mental health facilities, one thing the the State and local governments should coordinate, is one thing needed but they come with long term and expensive personnel and accompanying lawsuits. The city and county supervisors are in love with the idea that Betty Chin can solve the problem with little controversy and long term cost. But realistically what one even very determined person can do is very limited. And the public needs to learn to live with the most intractable problems because it is not in anyone’s hands to fix them but the people who are the problem. Targeting money to those who can be helped and choose to be helped with medicine as it stands now is realistic. The demands of a few of the public for magical money solutions for all need to be ignored.

Obama
Guest
Obama
5 years ago
Reply to  Guest

I hope Betty Chinn gets place to support those in need she has walked A Hard Road so she knows what it’s like to need a helping hand thanks for all you do

Me
Guest
Me
5 years ago

I am pretty sure the businesses at the southern end of that property have, or will have, voiced there concerns about the potential placement of this ill-concieved “village”. The city leaders need to understand that when they allow sanctuary for the homeless, bums, tweakers, and thieves, there will be this continual downward spiral of this area. It is far too easy for them to get freebies. Take away the freebies, and I am sure the problem will take care of itself. Not overnight, but it will happen. I have worked too hard for too long paying my fair share of taxes to let the bums take over. BUT, if the city council continues to pander to the people that DON’T pay taxes, those of us that do will move on. Then when the tax base is gone, maybe the council will finally see the light.

rollin21
Guest
rollin21
5 years ago
Reply to  Me

Spot on. Unfortunately, when the tax base is gone and taxed out of existence, liberals will NOT see the light. In fact, they will blame the tax base.

No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce.
-Thomas Sowell-

superd
Guest
superd
5 years ago
Reply to  rollin21

hear hear

Guest
Guest
Guest
5 years ago
Reply to  rollin21

But isn’t it the least interesting to you that the definition of unfortunate always expands to include more? Issue food stamps to those with an income of x dollars and the people with income of x dollars plus one scream about it. A list of the screams about a human right that society needs to provide free heard just this last week- housing, medical care, college, food. All important things but never mentioned is the obligation to be drug free, productive and self reliant, also needed if society is to help those actually unable to help themselves.

The worst demand is the one that “society”, ie those who work to have, must also make those who don’t feel good about it.

JJ
Guest
JJ
5 years ago

My grandmother had a few cats. So she started to feed them. Before she died she had a bout 100 cats.
Feed them and they will come and multiply.

Me
Guest
Me
5 years ago
Reply to  JJ

Perfect analogy. Thank you!

fuckwalterwhite.com
Guest
fuckwalterwhite.com
5 years ago
Reply to  JJ

What happened to the cats?

JJ
Guest
JJ
5 years ago

They went to the homeless shelter.

s
Guest
s
5 years ago
Reply to  JJ

They were delishes !
Just being silly

Perspective
Guest
Perspective
5 years ago

People always say this problem is everywhere, but I say those people have never left Humboldt or their town. You know there are some places that dont have this problem? Why is that?

Veterans friend
Guest
Veterans friend
5 years ago
Reply to  Perspective

They have JOBS & REASONABLE rents.

local observer
Guest
local observer
5 years ago

no, its where the rich people live in states that segregate using prop tax. like comparing Bend vs La Pine in OR.

Guest
Guest
Guest
5 years ago
Reply to  local observer

Like Coronado or Santa Clara or Bell Canyon or Beverly Hills or… wherever else in California that have enough income to have gates to lock?

JW
Guest
JW
5 years ago

We have jobs here! Do you have any idea how hard it is to find an employee who shows up to work regularly, on time, sober, clean and willing to work?

superd
Guest
superd
5 years ago

…and pride, dignity, self-respect and a sense of responsibility. some people don’t need “freedom” (whatever that is), they need to be held accountable for their decisions and stop scapegoating the tax paying worker

fuckwalterwhite.com
Guest
fuckwalterwhite.com
5 years ago
Reply to  Perspective

Because in HumCo there is no shame,some places the bums aren’t on the main strip with the jail and social services in tourist areas.

Pike Mortar
Guest
Pike Mortar
5 years ago
Reply to  Perspective

An interesting question. There’s an issue of geography, weather, political leanings, local economics, and societal expectations. For example, in my conservative Midwest hometown, there are maybe a half dozen homeless, and in the winter they suddenly make nice with estranged family… because they will freeze to death if they don’t. In the summers, they stay mostly off the grid, because they know the hillbillies that live there won’t give handouts and won’t take any bullshit. The area isn’t a ” one road in” fishbowl with all social services clustered 100 miles from anything else, and there are no economic incentives to not work. Drug use is illegal and you’ll go to prison for possession of meth or heroin. Basically, it’s bizzaro Humboldt. Or, more accurately, Humboldt (and a chunk of the west coast) is “bizzaro everything else”. I laugh at this shit only because I know what reality is, and it ain’t this! I also am personally insulated from it, because unlike a lot of Humboldtians, I won’t take the BS. I conduct business based on a personal moral code that’s more…umm…biblical and karma based than any laws passed around here. But until everyone gets on board with that, the current state will remain.

local observer
Guest
local observer
5 years ago
Reply to  Pike Mortar

Dayton Ohio and other Cities in the Mid-west have serious homeless drug addict problems just like here and those States have strict drug laws. Ohio just adopted Drug Court because the problem broke the court system, so now they don’t go to jail there either. the interesting part about political leanings is that this nation wide problem mainly exists in broken and historically conservative areas of the Country. at this point we need to focus on a solution, blame is getting us nowhere.

Pike Mortar
Guest
Pike Mortar
5 years ago
Reply to  local observer

So you are from there, or have lived there, and have firsthand confirmation of this?

And the solution is maddening simple. Help those who want a hand up. Euthanize those who don’t. I propose a “5 tries, then youse dies” platform of social change. Get caught drunk in public, drugged in public, or in possession of drugs in public 4 times, and get the bullshit slap on the hand. Use those 4 times to seek out help. Because the 5th time… Well let’s just say after the fifth time, there be no sixth time…

Sam
Guest
Sam
5 years ago
Reply to  Perspective

I go down to the Bay Area and Los Angeles a few times a year. There area tent cities of hundreds to a thousand people. They are placing the homeless that are working their way back into regular lives in wooden storage sheds.

Road Weary
Guest
Road Weary
5 years ago

As Colonel Chivington famously said, “Nits make lice”. Save our property values! Set up voluntary vigilante death squads to cleanse our neighborhoods. Find God fearing people willing to kill. Take them all out to Woodly Island and be done with it. Sign up now with JJ and rollin21.

Veterans friend
Guest
Veterans friend
5 years ago
Reply to  Road Weary

You are disgusting. You are talking about human beings. Many of them Veterans who answered your country’s call to serve and are now abandoned and vilified by bastards such as yourself.

Guest
Guest
Guest
5 years ago
Reply to  Road Weary

So, you have read the history of Humboldt County!!!

local observer
Guest
local observer
5 years ago
Reply to  Guest

“captain wright and the hydesville dragoons were unemployed at the end of the salmon season and needed something to do”. still casting shadows part 2. interesting read. its crazy that the “fine citizens of Eureka” call the native tribal men and women “transients”. I can understand “diggers” because they dug clams.

local observer
Guest
local observer
5 years ago

so the south end has wetlands. the difference between this location and the new location is 800 feet. I don’t see a difference. one could also assume that the south end is heavily contaminated bringing potential liability to everyone involved.

Isa
Guest
Isa
5 years ago

I am compelled to ask these people who are totally against Betty’s help for the marginal, you know that she helps people who are unemployed to get employed.

Where is your humanity, business people? Not many people share love of humanity.

God put us on this Earth to love one another and to help one another. Have you ever thought of maybe looking into what Betty Chinn is doing for these people? Maybe there to hire someone who has a need, that would likely help to bring that person or family to know there’s still humanity in this world.

Businesses use your Humanity, like you would do for your families and friends.

Me
Guest
Me
5 years ago
Reply to  Isa

Since I am fairly sure there is a very small percentage of these folks that really want to get help to get a job, housing, etc….what do you propose for the majority of them that are here just to suck off the generous teat that is government-sponsored charity, which is being paid for by the rest off us, many who are struggling to keep a roof over their own heads? Cut the benefits that are being given to the ones who are here just for the free, free, free money, housing, cell phones, healthcare the rest of us pay for?

Guest
Guest
Guest
5 years ago
Reply to  Isa

Are you willing to pay a business the extra money they need to earn to hire someone to do a job that is really not needed? Because if it’s really needed, someone very reliable is also needed to do it. Are you willing to see worker’s comp or SDI or health insurance increase radically due to high risk employees? Liability due to injuring a customer? Loss of reputation when an employee behave badly in public?

Besides you would be surprised at the number of businesses who already do have marginally useful people on payroll, considering how much in government mandated benefit costs attach to each job. But no business can get away with hiring the active drug user or mentally ill unwilling to bear with treatment of the repeat criminal for long. One business sent out a drug addicted relative to my place who made every bad choice there was to make and the company’s liability for the mess he created was a lot more than any profit would cover.

There is some delusion propagated by social advocates that simply providing will fix the issues. It doesn’t. It just makes being a drug addict or mentally ill person easier until they screw up so badly they are tossed out. There is no “fix” for the large majority. There is only coping better.

superd
Guest
superd
5 years ago
Reply to  Isa

my family would NEVER support or condone me choosing to be a derelict drunk, drug addicted loser. and why the hell should they. they set the right example of how to live

Joe dirt
Guest
Joe dirt
5 years ago
Reply to  superd

for lack of foresight your fortunes might disappear like an illusion and a hard Road your only choice with no family to help your delusional self-pity maybe all you have left you’re only open doorway might be Bettie Chinn thank God for Angels when people are having a hard time

Guest
Guest
Guest
5 years ago
Reply to  Joe dirt

But rarely are people without resource who have not burned them through them all.. Maybe one out of a couple of hundred people have been made homeless because of circumstances . If that were the problem, then changing the circumstance would be an easy fix. And people do fix their own circumstances constantly. It’s the ones who won’t that are the visible and distressing street people that most think of as homeless.

Most people are homeless long term for two reasons- addiction and mental illness. The seeds of the reason for their situation are inside them and those problems cone with them where ever they go. As a society, we have guaranteed people the right to refuse treatment. Addicts and mentally ill do not necessary choose to be homeless although a surprising number do. But they will not conform to what will prevent it. Once and done will not fix them. They will need constant attention forever no matter what is given to them. As the jaded social worker says when given the same excuse for failure a hundred thousand times, “yeah, yeah. So you say. But you need to show up on time.”

That is a frightful burden to lay onto society whose members may be paddling has hard as they can just to keep themselves put of the same circumstances. Telling them that they are responsible for the state of those who won’t paddle at all is wrong. Instead, acknowledge they can’t fix everyone’s problems and offer small solutions that actually work and are doable. Like keeping some inferior but cheap, minimally acceptable housing where trashing the place is not such a big deal.

Clive
Guest
Clive
5 years ago

I totally agree that the Bay is a horrible place for this housing projecct. While we need to provide some form of housing or help for the homeless, they do not deserve to be housed in one of the most beautiful and valuable areas of Eureka.

BTW: I’m a liberal, and I’m not in favor of these giveaways. I believe in the humane treatment of people needing help, but I do not believe they should be allowed to turn our communities into lawless, drug infested dumps.

Eureka has so many blighted properties (like the recently boarded-up Squires’ apartment building). We need to turn those properties into well-designed apartments with attractive landscaping to house the people that need help getting their lives back on track.

Eureka should be doing all it can to improve our waterfront and restore the habitat for birds/wildlife. Why on Earth would the City even consider putting in a slummy trailer park next to our Bay/trail that would lure more drug problems, more crime, more trash, more noise and light pollution, etc.? It makes absolutely no sense to me, and I’d like to know whose idea this was in the first place.

Guest
Guest
Guest
5 years ago

https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/cities-grow-worldwide-so-do-numbers-homeless

A good article on homelessness although it fails to address the fact that even the crumbs of wealth in wealthy countries are enough that you will see every homeless camp clean up loaded with abandoned stuff and evidence of drug use, something that the truly destitute don’t have.

The other thing is that some countries at the bottom of the homeless rate graphs actually have a larger homeless population but they suppress the data because there is so little sympathy for the condition.

Road Weary
Guest
Road Weary
5 years ago

The homeless pop. exploded under R. Reagan. The 1996 Welfare Reform act passed under B. Clinton reduced welfare but not poverty. The defining characteristic of the last 40 years if that wages have not kept pace with housing costs. Since the 2008 economic crash there has been growing epidemic of alcoholism, drug addiction and suicide disproportionate of lower income, middle aged white men. This has resulted in decrease in life expectancy of this demographic. The loss of good paying mill jobs, lumber and paper, has negatively effected Hum. too. People are falling through cracks in the ‘safety net’ in an expanding spiral of poverty and despair. On the bright side- the rich are doing better than ever!

Soon-to-be Former Supervisor Ryan Dumberg
Guest
Soon-to-be Former Supervisor Ryan Dumberg
5 years ago
Reply to  Road Weary

“…On the bright side – the rich are doing better than ever!” 💰💰💰💰💰💰

And isn’t that all that really matters, said Jesus… I meant Trump. 🍊

Guest
Guest
Guest
5 years ago
Reply to  Road Weary

Historically speaking- enjoy. Believe it or not these are good times. Better than most for the American public. You just need a horizon of more than the last few years. And a much more realistic view of both then and now. In my youth I saw lots of people living in tar paper shacks with no utilities, birth control was hard to say the least, chain gangs breaking rocks a long the roads was a common sight, the Cold War, cancer was a death warrant, no one had air conditioning, women’s work opportunities were very limited and it was expected to pay them half of what a man got because “he had a family to support”, there was an active draft, there was the Korean War, the Vietnam War, McCarthyism, there were Civil Rights riots, student riots, we all expected to have nuclear war finish us off, people were dying because renal dialysis cost more than almost everyone could pay and no insurance existed for it, I stood outside to watch Sputnik pass overhead with a number of frightened adults, was in Florida for the Bay of Pigs Fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Polio Epidemics, watched Russian spy ships sail our waters, I saw a fire burn on the oil covering a river in Detroit, … Gee. And I haven’t got through the earliest 1970’s yet.

And those things don’t compare to the Great Recession of the previous generation where salaries were halved or more if you were lucky to keep a job, WWII, and more.

Every generation has it’s problems to solve and nothing you listed was a big as most in our history. Things always change. Deal with it and be grateful it’s not so bad.

shak
Guest
shak
5 years ago

When we return to the gold standard, living expenses will finally be sane again. In the meantime, we have to learn to say NO NO NO to any more taxes or tax increases, plus fight like mad to decrease the taxes we already have.
Imagine paying off every bill every month, feeding & housing your family, and not having to work 3 jobs live in a half assed life.
The good part? A buck donation to a beggar on the street will be like a ten spot to them too. I hope we’re all planning ahead for the happiness that this will bring.

Soon-to-be Former Supervisor Ryan Dumberg
Guest
Soon-to-be Former Supervisor Ryan Dumberg
5 years ago
Reply to  shak

Gold standard? LMFAO!! 😆😂😭😅😄. Stop kidding! 🤣

Good luck with that, William McKinley! By the way, I hear your stupid statue is going to be crucified upon a cross of gold by William Jennings Bryan’s ghost somewhere in Nebraska 👻. 🇺🇸 🌽

Farce
Guest
Farce
5 years ago

We just need to pass a big tax to pay for these homeless people to have opportunities to get healthy and become productive members of society!! It’s so simple. Just raise a whole bunch of money to give the homeless a place to live and feed them and give them free drugs and clothing and showers and alcohol and then they will realize that they want to give back and yeah, like that!! Let’s start anyway by taxing the working class heavily and then using that money to give free stuff to the homeless and drug addicts…and then tax more and give them more and then eventually we will see………If it doesn’t work then at least we can say we tried. And all we did was bury the working class in more taxes and debts….but we created some government jobs in taxing and grant-writing and organizing and such!! It’s a positive and compassionate and progressive idea for sure!!!

D.Fox
Guest
D.Fox
5 years ago

The COST of Living has gotten out of hand here!! Each & every month the bills go up then we get a notice saying they are raising this bill to pay for something else that don’t make a damn bit of sense. There needs to be a CAP put on UTILITY rates, RENT rates and FOOD as well!! All these effect our everyday health & well being so we have to pay it or we are homeless also, & these companies don’t care but until we put our foot down & say STOP raising TAXES, UTILITIES, RENT ETC.,ETC …THEN nothing will change for the better!! The only thing that doesn’t go up is the VALUE OF THE DOLLAR. Because it takes 5 to do what 1 used too.
Quit making it so easy for them to not have to get help slapping them & giving them needles is saying sure go do your drugs we don’t care. This is bulls..t ! Put their lazy asses to work CLEANING UP THIS CITY THEY MADE DIRTY IS A DAMN GOOD PLACE TO START. TRASH, WEEDS ALL THROUGH EUREKA NEEDS IT. THEN SEE HOW LONG BEFORE THEY BE GONE!

shak
Guest
shak
5 years ago

I’ll just leave this right here.
http://coreysdigs.com/drug-trafficking/drug-traffickers-exploit-haiti-while-amassing-10-billion-under-u-s-scrutiny/

and this
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1GJ2KH?

Surely you’ve all heard the news by now about Former California Sen. Leland Yee being sentenced to five years in prison on Wednesday for accepting bribes and trafficking in arms.

Things are looking up.

Soon-to-be Former Supervisor Ryan Dumberg
Guest
Soon-to-be Former Supervisor Ryan Dumberg
5 years ago
Reply to  shak

And of course you’ve no doubt heard about Senate Republicans calling House Republicans liars and idiots in the Senate report confirming our 17 intelligence agencies were completely correct in their unanimous determination that the Russian government aggressively intervened in the 2016 election on Traitor Trump’s behalf. 🍊 🇷🇺

M henson
Guest
M henson
5 years ago

Hit them all over the head with a big club let God figure it out there all no good junkies