Arcata narrows location list
to Samoa Boulevard and South G Street
By Charles Douglas
HUMBOLDT SENTINEL
|  ARCATA
- Fears of illegal camping, vandalism, littering and
the like overwhelmed concern for the plight of those
with no homes amongst a contingent of Valley West property
owners who berated Councilmembers for considering City-owned
properties in the Valley West and Boyd Road areas for
the relocated and expanded Arcata Service Center.
Councilmembers were quick to comply with the outcry, voting 5-0
to prioritize properties on Samoa Boulevard and South
G Street as the list of candidate strips of land continues
to narrow and the deadline for receiving grant funding
looms closer. |
This list is now further constrained after Deputy Redevelopment
Director Larry Oetker told Councilmembers that emergency housing
would be a required component of the service center under
federal grant requirements, necessitating a site of at least
three acres, not many of which are both available and suitable
within the city.
“They’re only interested in beds,” he said.
“It cannot be used for landscaping, to provide parking
or anything like that.”
This possibility only seemed to fan the flames of discontent
among business owners like Ken Zanzy, who suggested the City
focus on the “elderly, needy and disabled of Arcata”
while sending all others either to unnamed non-profit shelters
or to a non-existent county facility.
“It’s not good business for the City and it’s
not good for the citizens,” he said. “There’s
probably no good place to site a shelter in the City of Arcata.”
Even some supporters of the homeless were critical of locations
relatively remote from most populated areas of the City.
“The truly needy in this town do not live in these
areas and public transportation does not serve them,”
resident Peter Starr said. “It seems designed to move
those folks out of site and out of mind.”
Resident Cliff Sorenson said he foresaw illegal campsite
popping up as a result.
“To move the center to Valley West will only transfer
these issues to another area for another set of businesses
to deal with,” he said.
Valley West retiree Carol Graham denied any perception of
class-based bias against the homeless.
“People didn’t protest when you wanted to put
low income housing in,” she said.
Homeless activists were nonetheless disdainful of what they
saw as ‘not in my backyard’ syndrome, with Tad
Robinson decrying the lack of a legal place to sleep and ‘Sapphire’
blaming the capitalist system.
“Bourgeois pigs, when they die their poodles can eat
them,” he said.
Robinson was more diplomatic, suggesting a number of smaller
scale shelters in each neighborhood to reduce the burden on
any one part of town.
While admitting there was no such thing as a “perfect
spot” for a facility which will support an emergency
homeless shelter, Councilmember Harmony Groves suggested the
Arcata Police Department was inadequate to the task of ensuring
public safety in the Valley West area. APD is currently supported
by a largess that consumes about half the City budget.
Councilmember Mark Wheetley was blunt in opposing his colleague
Dave Meserve’s suggestion of a campground component
to provide additional emergency housing space in the event
the indoor shelter was full.
“We already tried a campground and it didn’t
work, [namely] the South Spit,” Wheetley said.
As a Department of Fish and Game employee, Wheetley was originally
involved with the removal of destitute families from the spit
just southwest of Eureka in 1996, which resulted in mass dislocation
and increased homelessness, as well as an economic boycott
of Humboldt County by some human rights groups.
Resident Jay Wright had earlier criticized the Council for
caving into special interests in the rush to move the Arcata
Endeavor away from its location two blocks from the Plaza.
“In the end this feels to me the City is being held
hostage by the Arcata Mainstreet Group,” he said. “It’s
a sanitization program.”
Mayor Michael Machi admitted that three acres would be a
“big expansion” but remained committed of making
the necessary deadlines to secure site control, irregardless
of Valley West resident Chuck Giannini’s advice to the
contrary: “It seems like we rushed into the first problem…and
now we have 60 days to rush into another one.”
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