Letter Writer Worries That the Loss of Even Shoddy Shelter Will Increase Suffering

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Homeless man facing eviction from his camp

Homeless man being moved from Palco lot in 2016 [Photo by Bobby Kroeker]

Last week the Royal Inn Motel in Eureka was shut down and boarded up. The residents were all evicted on the spot. The pretext for this sudden action was a warrant made out for someone alleged to have drugs and firearms. He turned out not to be there. But the police saw a blocked staircase and called in Code Enforcement, and violations were found.Caltrans is currently poised to sweep away five camps of people who have established long-term camps near Sprowl Creek Road in Garberville. And the residents of Yeehaw, an idyllic community which has thrived for 40 years among ancient tree stumps, living happily with a near-non-existent carbon footprint and a cooperative culture, await, in fear and trembling, the imminent appearance of a court-ordered excavator which will smash their code-violating homes into a dumpster.

I probably know many of the people who were evicted from the Royal Inn: they came to Open Door Clinic, where I worked for years. I also knew people who had their homes in the similarly-emptied Budget Motel and Blue Heron. The rents they paid amounted to extortion, but they paid it, since they could find nothing else. And although the conditions were dismal, compared to a middle-class hotel, they had a roof over their heads, and a comforting camaraderie.

If there were guns, drugs, feces and blood all over their homes, as media reports of evictions invariably stress, our patients did not dwell on it. They were regular people: some brilliant, some tired, some bitter, some visionary. And this was where they lived.

Although some of the former inhabitants of the Royal Inn were given approximately one months’ rent for temporary shelter, their security is shattered and the prospect of life on the street looms. There are 40 applicants for every affordable housing vacancy. 900 people were recently taken off officialdom’s waiting list for housing. Some had been waiting 5 years.

Homelessness in Humboldt is five times the national average, and chronic homelessness, ten times. Statistically, not having a home takes 25 years off a person’s life.

Humboldt has a record scarred by cruelty, through its entire history, concerning populations it doesn’t want. I reflected on this, decades ago, when Eureka had separators put on park benches, so people couldn’t sleep. The bedding and food supplies of the unhoused are routinely confiscated. At Open Door Clinic there are hundreds of stories. An elderly, disabled woman having to make a deal with a night watchman so she could sleep for a few hours parked behind the theater. People living on rafts in running ditches so they won’t be discovered. Sleeplessness as torture. Jail, fines. Then, the assault on Palco Marsh, and the resultant pitiful phalanxes of people marching from site to site, at dawn, with whittled-down belongings, like concentration camp victims marching to the trains.

Eureka just added an ordinance which bans sleeping in parks.

The philanthropist Betty Chinn, laments, “Eureka is a ghost town: you cannot run, you cannot hide, you cannot protect anything.” And from Bryan Hall, who manages Eureka’s Rescue Mission, “There’s a terrible influx of people who end up living in their cars, who were at one time business owners, simply because they were mandated to shut down, or limit themselves so much they can’t survive”.

I listened to an interview, with Shakti Norrsi, on KMUD, with Planning Director John Ford recently, regarding the above-mentioned Yeehaw. He stated that he “didn’t want to be heartless” but Yeehaw had to go because “Public Health issued an order in 2017 to have all (these) places not lived in”.

Of course, John Ford doesn’t want to be heartless. Inhumanity is a matter for bureaucracy,

which stands as a mighty fortress between people and their officials. It’s the “just following orders” mentality, only there’s a tangle of regulations instead of a general who takes responsibility for the atrocity, not a human being. It can apply cruelty, and the hearts of the individuals who implement it cannot be blamed. It can force us through labyrinths of absurdity. And its rules, regulations, permits, fees, forms, waiting lines, ordinances, applications and procedures are as barbarous as the briars around the Sleeping Beauty.

Director Ford says the housing problems are enormous. He is “always willing to explore options” but they “still don’t have answers.” They are “inching toward more flexibility.”

Inching indeed. In these times, people need roofs over their heads, not fastidious puritanical code enforcement. Anything. Tiny houses. Repairs and maintenance in these motels, without throwing people to the street. Parking places for sleeping and tents. Now.

Before another drop of rain falls.Ellen E Taylor

 

 

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Steve Koch
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Steve Koch
2 years ago

Powerful letter.

VMG
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VMG
2 years ago

Amazing apology for the homeless…

In San Francisco, there are people in sleeping bags, passed out on the sidewalk. Tents pitched everywhere, randomly. On Potrero Ave on the Guerrero St exit, is a man in a chair, daily building his own private garbage dump…

Meanwhile, the State of California took over some vacant Motels, bought some Travel Trailers, and attempted to take thousands off the streets.

Nobody occupied these places.

There is a 100 room Brick Hotel for sale, in Ukiah, boarded up for years, right there on State Street, only $900,000… There’s another one in Marysville…

There are places for folks to live, but the folks need to want to live there, and that’s the problem…

One of my Daughters has an apartment in the Mission, that she paid almost a million dollars for. Two blocks down the street, there are persons living in Motor Homes, pissing in the street, and other persons squatting in tents on the sidewalk…

It is unbelievable, the conditions permitted in cities from San Diego to Seattle, and the worst part of it all, is we as a country waste enormous resources “supporting” houseless people already! In San Francisco, tech businesses are taxed extra, so that homeless spending by the city can reach $100,000/year for each homeless person… No wonder the industry is moving to Austin, SLC, Phoenix, Lehi…

There are modern and progressive solutions to this problem, just not in California… The latest CA plan: Buy up all the defunct malls, and start big camps! Sacramento and Stockton, Merced, Modesto and Bako are perfect places to dump the homeless…

For everyone who works, pays the bills, invests and lives a “normal” life, you have a right to be disgusted, not only with the homeless but with the government that focuses on making the wealthy richer, while ignoring the suffering of everyone else…

For my part, “there but for fortune, go you and I”, apologies to Phil Ochs, and at least, we got planes and Border Patrol to “remove the Haitians”, as Biden put it, and that is REAL pathos…

This writer, above, is a magnificent apologist for homelessness, but in a long career, I only earned over $100,000 in 2 years. I always worked and paid my way, and, right there is the solution to the entire problem.

So, Ellen Taylor, what is YOUR answer? How would you fix the problem? How much more should we give?

Last edited 2 years ago
Willow Creeker
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Willow Creeker
2 years ago
Reply to  VMG

Well said- I’m with you on this one VMG. Ellen means well, but she and many others are speaking from the compassion viewpoint. Which is fine, but it doesn’t address your question, and the question I have: what is there to do about it all? I am convinced that the only answer is to deal with the mental health side of it with institutions for the mentally ill, and for the drug addicts, either treatment or prison, I’m not an expert on what’s better but leaving them to roam the streets for their next fix is not working.

Nichole Norris
Guest
Nichole Norris
2 years ago
Reply to  Willow Creeker

Why do you assume people living in these places are mentally ill and drug addicts? This is one local small business owner who lives at yeehaw and says her family couldn’t afford the cost of living elsewhere. https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/LKDGtZPHYHJVNtD29

Willow Creeker
Guest
Willow Creeker
2 years ago
Reply to  Nichole Norris

I said in another post here, that yeehaw is a totally different situation. Yeehaw should be left alone (IMO)- they are not hurting anyone. Nice folks, actually.

Local
Guest
Local
2 years ago

That was great.

Vato 369
Guest
Vato 369
2 years ago

There’s

Last edited 2 years ago
Alf
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Alf
2 years ago

The problem is simply that the population this letter is talking about needs to come halfway. The Royal didn’t get to be the way it was because the tenants took care of their place. Maybe the landlord didn’t do property maintenance as well as they should have, but it turned into a dump because of the lack of care and respect by those who lived there. This is true across this population. If they don’t want be “Populations it doesn’t want” it’s up to them to show it. Trashing the streets, wetlands, and every place they go is not helpful to their cause. If you want people to care, take a little pride in where you live. Your space may be a car, a tent, or a small campsite. If you keep it clean it goes miles toward being accepted, instead of unwanted.

Gavin'sComb
Guest
Gavin'sComb
2 years ago
Reply to  Alf

Well there you go, and once again the great truth rears its head. Somebody has to do the work. They don’t and never will, because they’re lazy drunks and drug addicts. Twenty years ago Santa Barbara built a facility to house these folks. The rules; no alcohol or drugs. No takers, because sitting under the fig tree stoned to the toes was preferable to doing a day’s work. I worked at a cabinet shop in Santa Barbara, and one evening we got a late delivery of plywood and the forklift was down. Offered the bums under the fig tree to help us unload for 50 bucks an hour. Not a single one wanted anything to do with it, and in fact, responded as though we offered to kill their first born. Homeless advocates, heh don’t get me stared.

Scooter
Guest
Scooter
2 years ago

There is an argument that could be made about “code enforcement.” That it exists to commoditize human dwellings for financial institutions, NOT to ensure health and safety for the residents and owners.

Lynn H
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Lynn H
2 years ago
Reply to  Scooter

+1

Willow Creeker
Guest
Willow Creeker
2 years ago

Maybe it’s a sign that they should apply for a job. Lots of jobs out there. I support Betty Chinn and the work she does, but the end result *should* be that people get back into the real world. Or get mental health help, which is terribly lacking here.

Willow Creeker
Guest
Willow Creeker
2 years ago
Reply to  Willow Creeker

These clunky moves by the county might be needed to clean up the disaster that is eureka. There might not be a ‘nice’ way to do it. Yeehaw is different- they live on their own and don’t hurt anyone. They are a functioning part of the community. The homeless culture in eureka, arcata and garberville is, in my experience, a growing cancer that needs to be addressed. I’m not sure what the solution is, but I know this for sure- what we are doing is not working. Time to try something else? Maybe.

truth is . . .
Guest
truth is . . .
2 years ago
Reply to  Willow Creeker

Most jobs do not pay a living wage. That is why people lose hope and start using drugs. No one wants to work their life away and get nowhere. Living in a shitty apartment and scraping by doesn’t allow you to have any more pride than sleeping in the gutter for many, especially when they know that the profits they work to generate go almost entirely to the top.

Last edited 2 years ago
Willow Creeker
Guest
Willow Creeker
2 years ago
Reply to  truth is . . .

Might be some truth to that, but mostly that’s life- you work, pay your bills and live your life. Most people don’t ‘get anywhere’… that’s not always the point. Just surviving is not that bad. Better than the life these people are living!

lol
Guest
lol
2 years ago
Reply to  Willow Creeker

Just surviving is a form of living hell. The majority of your waking hours spent at an unfulfilling job so that you can barely scrape by is technically better than being homeless that’s true.

That doesn’t mean that the human mind isn’t likely to break down under such conditions, and choose any alternative path out of complete desperation.

Charlie
Guest
Charlie
2 years ago
Reply to  truth is . . .

It’s not what you make, it’s what you don’t spend.

Mariahgirl
Guest
2 years ago

If Ford is inching towards more flexibility maybe he needs to train his inspectors to act a little more human and not be pompous jerks. I guess they forget that they are just a county employee and we pay their wages.

Elaine
Guest
Elaine
2 years ago

For the past few months I have been residing in a small cottage (that is part of a local boutique hotel) directly across from said motel. My primary residence is undergoing renovations and it is very difficult to find temporary housing My daughter and young grandchildren have had to walk past daily drug usage when coming to visit me. The blatant drug use scared my adult children. ( I am originally from a high crime Southern California urban area and simply ignored them, however my children are born and raised in Humboldt are not as jaded as I am,) however one Saturday afternoon, IT WAS TOO MUCH FOR EVEN ME WHEN they eveobserved an individual parked in front of my cottage injecting drugs into their toes! We could observe the customers walking up the alley behind the motel, score their preferred substance and return to their rundown cars/motorhomes. I even began to recognize the red run down dealer”s car with the broken window, and the redheaded prostitute who for some reason left with her customer rather than using her motorhome for financial transactions. She would then also go up the back alley of the Royal Motel to score. The raven haired haired man who would yell to himself before and after scoring, then duck behind anything in the vicinity after visiting the motel. Since closing down the motel, there has been such a marked difference in this neighborhood. I can leave my front door open to get fresh air, the daily empty chocolate milk container is no longer in my front bushes. The alley and street is no longer littered with trash, used needles and human feces. The change in one week is so striking! Of course the problems have simply gone down several blocks to another seedy motel.
The problems with lack of adequate housing for the poor is a significant problem, forcing the poor to live with the seedy drug scene. It started to become a serious problem when Reagan cut so many programs to assist the poor and the mentally ill, forcing their worlds to be forever linked. Take the stigma out of drug use and legalize all personal use. Set up clean and safe places to use recreational drugs.

cutommorrow
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cutommorrow
2 years ago
Reply to  Elaine

^ this post

truth is . . .
Guest
truth is . . .
2 years ago
Reply to  Elaine

Upvote

Entering a world of pain
Guest
Entering a world of pain
2 years ago
Reply to  truth is . . .

So this is how we’re doing it now since nobody want/knows how to log in lol.
Upvote!

Kathleen Hire
Member
Kathleen Hire
2 years ago

If you have a facebook account you can log in through it!

Entering a world of pain
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Entering a world of pain
2 years ago
Reply to  Kathleen Hire

Facebook is the devil!!!
I invented the internet!

Last edited 2 years ago
Lynn H
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Lynn H
2 years ago

+1

Guest
Guest
Guest
2 years ago
Reply to  Lynn H

🤔,🧐,👍,😁.

Last edited 2 years ago
NorCalNative
Guest
NorCalNative
2 years ago
Reply to  Elaine

Elaine, well said. I wish harm reduction strategies weren’t so difficult to implement in this country. Harm reduction done correctly improves communities and benefits those who may be opposed.

Guest
Guest
Guest
2 years ago
Reply to  NorCalNative

Harm reduction, for which advocates tend to see no limit and ignore the bad results, tends to just shift the harm from those who cause it to those who just are in the way. And that only temporarily.

not a slum lord
Guest
not a slum lord
2 years ago

There are so many slumlords in the hills with a half dozen “tenants” paying rent where the zoning allows only 1 house. As bad planning as rentals at the end of long dirt roads are, the residents are glad to have housing. Incentivizing landlords to profit from making the hills into slums, however, is bad.
All un- permitted rentals should be managed by the County with them getting the rents. Don’t kick out the people, stop the shady landlords from profiting off them instead. Use the profit to build more housing in rational places.

Guest
Guest
Guest
2 years ago

This is a Dumb solution.

Guest
Guest
Guest
2 years ago

Public housing? Like that’s been a perfect solution.

truth is . . .
Guest
truth is . . .
2 years ago

There is no will to solve this issue on the part of conservatives.

Americas conservatives are so rabidly pro-corporation and anti-community that they reject the notion of publicly funding long-term in-patient drug and mental health care systems.Meanwhile they have no problem accepting tax exempt status and government funding for their own charitable efforts, which are often polluted with indoctrination, homophobia, and misogyny.

On the other hand, liberals removed law enforcements ability to incarcerate criminals with drug and mental health issues, without first getting alternative paths in place. It was never the right thing to do but it was at least a way to protect the rest of the community.

I fear that out citizens knowing that the police cant help them with issues created by the homeless will result in vigilantism.

Last edited 2 years ago
Lynn H
Guest
Lynn H
2 years ago
Reply to  truth is . . .

.

Last edited 2 years ago
Sam
Guest
Sam
2 years ago
Reply to  truth is . . .

Interesting discussion/letter, and not so sure about this comment about conservatism. That is a bogus excuse.

Was born and raised here over 60 years ago. My folks arrived after my father got home from WWII.

I remember as a child there were more than one flop house or boarding house that helped low income folks including families. The City had a work/live program that allowed the men to sleep one one floor and the women and children slept on a different floor. The men worked in the Mills, or weeded the gutters in neighborhoods, painted and built fences, repaired potholes, or cut firewood in exchange for roof over their heads and daily sustenance. The women cared for the kids, cooked and cleaned in the facility and the buses took kids to local schools. All work that was done was recorded, so when a job opening happened, these folks would have credible work history to help them qualify.

There were no issues of ‘what happens if someone gets hurt’ whilst working in a City program – no “hold harmless” issues to halt good programs in their tracks.

Now, there sit many buildings public and private that sit empty – where people could sleep. Those same people could work to help repair and maintain those buildings in exchange for meals and a roof in a very similar way as in the past – but NO— the City would be liable. NO the County would be liable. B.S. We, as a community of all ideals, races, creeds and sexual preference should band together and tell the powers that be that WE WANT THEM TO FIX THIS THIS IS NUTS!!!!!

WHY can’t the County, the City, the churches, and the philanthropic organizations get together and work out a work/live program?

Yes, there are pages of programs that we as tax payers pay for available to people through DHHS – but have very low participation levels – either because of the accountability requirement or the pay back requirements.

Yes, it does take charity and kindness and compassion. AND it also takes a little responsibility by the homeless – if you go through a garbage can, and you find something useful, great. Please put the garbage back into the can and not all over the street. You know better.

Another issue: when public buildings are vacated for whatever reason, there is a stupid law or ordinance that states that they have to offer the building for sale to another public agency first and not to the private sector that may be willing to build compact affordable housing etc. there.

To complicate it further, there is a new law that if the City (or County) cannot find a place for the homeless to go, they cannot force folks out of or off of private property. So then, the property owner is screwed – has squatters that do not pay rent, and if crimes take place while folks are there (and you know it does) the landowner can be held liable.

Also, those with criminal court obligations in Humboldt or Eureka are requested to stay local so they can appear in court or with the probation dept. as need be. WHY can’t they go elsewhere if they so desire and utilize either a phone conference or zoom conference via the police, court or sheriff’s department where they want to live????

THIS IS NUTS!!!!!

WHY can’t the County, the City, the churches, and the philanthropic organizations get together and work out a work/live program?

Sam
Guest
Sam
2 years ago
Reply to  Sam

Forgot to suggest that the schools and colleges used to offer courses with certificates in subjects that give one marketable skill if students not going to college right away: secretarial, book-keeping, accounting, carpentry, metallurgy, jewelry, car mechanics, electronics, plumbing, etc…. the list goes on but there are seldom classes offered to help kids find jobs after either high school or college. We should demand these courses are offered locally again!

truth is . . .
Guest
truth is . . .
2 years ago

Only permanent residents of Humboldt county should be allowed to own residential property in Humboldt county.

There should be a ban on all vacation rentals (airbnb).

No one should be allowed to own more than one house.

Alf
Guest
Alf
2 years ago
Reply to  truth is . . .

So then, what do you suppose those with bad credit, low income and those who don’t want to own a home are supposed to do? With only being allowed to own one home are the rest supposed to be homeless because rentals are illegal? Apartments are certainly multi dwellings owned by one individual. Should they be illegal since by your statement only the property owner should be allowed to live there? The United States is a country where the citizens are free to own anything they want without being judged for it. The whole comment is exactly opposite of what America stands for.

Lynn H
Guest
Lynn H
2 years ago
Reply to  truth is . . .

IDK, I’d compromise on that. I’ve known some decent caring Mom and Pop landlords in my day. There should be a cap on institutional rentals though. Large corporations are “investing” in our housing stock and holding a lot empty and off market. Also increasing rents and decreasing services drastically. Particularly those owned or financed by offshore money and further financed by global bonds and stock markets. Ghost cites are not just in China anymore- there’s a domino effect from some mostly empty condo buildings etc in major US cities now.

They should also lighten up at building and planning and allow more units to be built with a cheaper cost of doing business. It would be a lot more sanitary than having shit all over the place in parks and outskirts of towns- sometimes people have few other options.

Last edited 2 years ago
Sam
Guest
Sam
2 years ago
Reply to  Lynn H

Sorry – loved your thought but this is California; permits and fees and requirements are the reason for the ridiculous building costs here… and since the government is the benefactor of those monies they’ll never go a way…..

lol
Guest
lol
2 years ago
Reply to  Lynn H

They can be decent and carrying all they want but if they own more than one home so that they can profit off rentals that makes home inventory lower and raises the cost of home ownership, meaning fewer people can afford to own homes.

Sam
Guest
Sam
2 years ago

COWS DON’T GIVE MILK
A father used to say to his children when they were young: —When you all reach the age of 12 I will tell you the secret of life. One day when the oldest turned 12, he anxiously asked his father what was the secret of life. The father replied that he was going to tell him, but that he should not reveal it to his brothers.
—The secret of life is this: The cow does not give milk. “What are you saying?” Asked the boy incredulously. —As you hear it, son: The cow does not give milk, you have to milk it. You have to get up at 4 in the morning, go to the field, walk through the corral full of manure, tie the tail, hobble the legs of the cow, sit on the stool, place the bucket and do the work yourself.
That is the secret of life, the cow does not give milk. You milk her or you don’t get milk. There is this generation that thinks that cows GIVE milk. That things are automatic and free: their mentality is that if “I wish, I ask….. I obtain.”
“They have been accustomed to get whatever they want the easy way…But no, life is not a matter of wishing, asking and obtaining. The things that one receives are the effort of what one does. Happiness is the result of effort. Lack of effort creates frustration.”
So, share with your children from a young age the secret of life, so they don’t grow up with the mentality that the government, their parents, or their cute little faces is going to give them everything they need in life.
Remember “Cows don’t give milk; you have to work for it.”
~Author Unknown

elvis costanza
Guest
elvis costanza
2 years ago

You lost me at “..like concentration camp victims marching to the trains.”
The situation you describe is heartbreaking and horrible but ONLY The Holocaust is The Holocaust.

Two Dogs
Guest
Two Dogs
2 years ago

Caves. Caves work good, and I’m for them. I knew a hippy in the seventies that moved up from Oakland, into a remote camp. He dug a hole in the bank, stocked it with food and only came out to defecate for six months. The purpose was to figure life out. The next time we saw him was when he showed up in his own helicopter.

Littlefoot
Guest
Littlefoot
2 years ago

Not sure I agree with this portrayal of Humboldt County being so mean to it’s homeless. Back when I hung out in Arcata I remember kids coming from all over the country because they heard about the Cash-Aid that was so easy to attain here. They were also getting cash for owning a dog, and there were food trucks that would literally drive to them and give them free food.

Redway is a disaster right now, just going to that grocery store sucks.

thinkthenact
Guest
thinkthenact
2 years ago

Thanks, Ellen for the compassionate and well written letter. As an advantaged middle-class taxpayer, I fully support providing homes for the homeless. There but for the Grace of God go you and I.

AAAAAAAAAA
Guest
AAAAAAAAAA
2 years ago

“And although the conditions were dismal, compared to a middle-class hotel, they had a roof over their heads, and a comforting camaraderie.”

Poignant, to the point, well written letter.

That hotel was the only place they had to live and they were kicked out, to go…where?

Couldn’t those that were living there, that wanted to be there, be allowed to stay?

What is the point of putting them out if it makes their living conditions worse?

Thank you Ellen Taylor, well said.

Last edited 2 years ago