on the cover / By Heidi Walters

Codes, Damned Codes

A clash of values could spell the end for a ‘hippie-rigged’ community in Trinidad

(Feb. 28, 2008)  Down at the county courthouse there’s a file labeled The County of Humboldt v. Charles Garth and Does 1-25. It’s a code violation case — but there’s some dispute between the parties as to just exactly who’s violating whose code.

On one side, there are the residents of a ferny, forested place they call Yee Haw up near Trinidad — landowner Charles Garth and the dozens of people he’s been renting an assortment of oddball structures to. They live by a free-form, minimalistic, some would say anachronistic code that doesn’t always conform to the tidy, plumbed, square-housed notion mandated by the larger society.

Charles Garth enters the yurt Katy Evans was living in. It looks more trashed than last summer, he said, because they’re cleaning it out. Photo by Heidi Walters

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On the other side, there are the government officials charged with enforcing the zoning, health and safety codes that the larger society has embraced. These officials say Yee Haw is a public nuisance, and last November the county sued Garth and his tenants to make them vacate the property, clear out the dead cars and junk piles, and get the buildings, water and sewer systems permitted and up to county codes.

The Yee Haw residents protest that they’re living lightly on the land and they’re not bothering anybody. And, although it isn’t part of the litigation, they’re offended by the way, last July, the county sent a posse of law enforcement officers to Yee Haw to round everyone up before letting the environmental health and code inspectors on.

On the surface, it’s a fairly cut and dried case — the county’ll probably prevail in this one. But perhaps it won’t be a concessionless victory. Some might say Yee Haw harks back in time toward a hallowed Humboldt custom — the leave-me-be one — while at the same time offering one solution to a growing Humboldt problem — homelessness, and very few low-income houses. Surely there’s room for such a place?

Unless maybe it’s just a sloppy camp.

July 26, 2007, a Thursday, started off with one of those typical, sharp-cold misty mornings that Humboldt County summers specialize in. But out at Yee Haw, events were about to happen that would make it one of the most unsettling of days, one the people who were living there at the time still talk about with indignation and dismay. Earlier this month, some of them described how they remember those events:

Just before 9 a.m. that day, Charles Garth walked down his driveway to the metal swing gate at the entrance to his property, which lies at the end of Quarry Road in the woods across the highway from Trinidad. Humboldt County Code Enforcement Officer John Desadier was supposed to be there to inspect the place for code compliance. They’d made the appointment that Monday. Fifty minutes passed. No Desadier. Garth gave up and started walking back down the road. Then he heard the rumble of diesel engines, and looking back he saw a Sheriff’s SUV rounding the corner. And another and another and another. Seven of them, recalled Garth. They stopped, a bunch of deputies jumped out, and Garth said three of them rushed him, spun him around, searched him and demanded to see his ID. Then, not waiting for him to produce the ID, he said, they shoved a warrant in his face.

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