Humboldt Approves Multi-Million Dollar Homelessness Help

The new Humboldt County budget will include $4.6 million in state funding to shelter and assist homeless people.

At its June 10 meeting, the county’s Board of Supervisors approved spending the state funds.

Awarded through the state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention Program, the funding will pay for a variety of services, including preventative services like rental assistance, and support of new and existing housing and sheltering projects.

The state funding is the outcome of collaboration between the county and the Humboldt Housing and Homelessness Coalition.

Most of it will be divided between the Arcata House Partnership, the City of Eureka and the Redwood Community Action Agency.

A small portion will go to the 2-1-1 Humboldt Information and Resource Center for what a written staff report describes as “coordinated entry system services.”

Redwoods Rural Health Center’s request for $367,000 was not recommended for funding and wasn’t approved.

The Southern Humboldt health care facility sought support for a team of specialists and case managers who “together deliver consistent, trauma-informed, Housing First-aligned support,” according to the center’s funding application.

Also approved by supervisors was another $1.1 million of funding from the county’s Social Services Fund for the Redwood Community Action Agency’s Parents and Children in Transition Program.

The program provides housing assistance and support services that “enable eligible families to become stabilized and transition into permanent housing,” according to a written staff report.

Supervisor Rex Bohn noted the spending before it was approved as part of the meeting’s consent agenda of items considered routine.

“So when people come up and ask, what are you doing about the homeless problem or issue or needs, it feels like we’re doing everything we can and I think our staff is doing everything they can,” he said. “We’re trying to utilize as much federal and state monies as we can, I don’t know if we’re making any ground but we certainly give it an effort.”

He added the combined $5.7 million in funding is notable but “it’s a little more than that, it’s giving people opportunities to maybe change the direction of their life.”

The funding will be part of the budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Also during the meeting, supervisors approved a proclamation honoring Juneteenth day, June 19, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.

Read aloud by Supervisor Mike Wilson, the proclamation says Juneteenth “stands as a powerful symbol of resilience, liberation, and the ongoing pursuit of justice and equality for black Americans while honoring their strength, contributions and perseverance throughout history.”

As noted in the proclamation, Eureka NAACP will host a Juneteenth Cultural Festival from June 19 to June 22 at Halvorsen Park in Eureka.

It will include “educational workshops, cultural performances and community gatherings,” according to the proclamation.

Also approved was a proclamation commemorating the tenth “splashiversary” of the Golden Rule, a 34-foot wooden “peace boat” described as “a powerful symbol of peace, environmental responsibility and nuclear disarmament.”

Docked at Humboldt Bay, the sailboat is historic for “a daring voyage into the nuclear test zone of the Marshall Islands to protest U.S. atmospheric nuclear weapons testing” and was renovated and re-launched in 2015.

The proclamation says the boat was “rediscovered and rescued from a Humboldt Bay boatyard in 2010” but Wilson, who read the proclamation, corrected that, saying “it was actually on the bottom of the bay.”

Wilson was a Harbor District commissioner at the time and he said the district helped bring the boat up from the bay’s depths.

The June 14 “splashiversary” was supposed to include a launch of the boat but its project manager, who is visiting from Oregon, said the “boatyard got a little backlogged in its haul-out processes” and there was a “pivot scramble.”

The event shifted to the dry land of the Eureka Theater, sans splash.