If you’ve tried to find housing in the last few years, you know what a difficult task it is. Humboldt County property managers say local rental vacancy rates run between 0 and 3 percent — extreme, even in California, which has a roughly 4-percent vacancy rate statewide. Buying a home in Humboldt is also cost-prohibitive […]
Elaine Weinreb
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Where’s the CAP?
If an irresistible force meets an immovable object, one possible outcome is a stalled Climate Action Plan. Caught between the realities of an ever-warming climate and a culture that is embedded in fossil fuels, city, state and county planners have been trying for years to come up with some acceptable and realistic ways of staving […]
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‘Night and Day’
If you are an able-bodied person in Humboldt County, it is not difficult to get to the beach. But if you use a wheelchair or walker, or are blind, it is a lot harder. Hard enough to effectively keep most disabled people away from the beach, said Alissa Norman, community advocate for Tri-County Independent Living, […]
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Racing the Rise
Anyone who has ever driven south on U.S. Highway 101 between Arcata and Eureka during a storm at high tide can’t help but notice how close the water comes to the highway. Sea level rise, which scientists assure us is now inevitable, will only make things worse. The only questions are how much worse and […]
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Toward a Sustainable Blue Economy
The perennial conflict between environmental conservation and economic development may now be in remission, the crisis of climate change increasingly pushing industries into cooperation with environmental goals. One such path of co-existence, at least along the California coast, is the “Sustainable Blue Economy,” defined by the World Bank as the “the sustainable use of ocean […]
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‘Witnessing the Collapse’
Imagine six or seven thirsty people sitting in a hot room around a small table, at the center of which sits only one medium-sized glass of water. Who gets to drink? If everybody takes a single swallow and passes it on, there could be enough to temporarily quench everyone’s thirst. Unfortunately, this is not likely […]
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Shut Down but Maybe Not Out
The Westhaven Center for the Arts — an art gallery, concert hall, classroom and community center — has closed its doors, one more indirect victim of the COVID-19 pandemic. The closure is due to financial hits due to canceled performances, classes and fundraising events. When or if it will ever re-open is still unknown. “This […]
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A ‘Way of Life at Risk’: A Yurok Tribal Member’s Congressional Testimony
The catastrophic drought that is striking the West seems to have gotten the attention of Congress. On May 25, North Coast Rep. Jared Huffman chaired a virtual bipartisan hearing on the status of drought conditions in an area that extends from the Rio Grande to the Pacific Northwest. Huffman is no stranger to environmental issues, […]
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Piling Up
If Humboldt County departments were backyards, the Code Enforcement Unit would have so much trash piled up that concerned neighbors would call the … well, you get the picture. At a recent presentation given to the board of supervisors, the department offered an alarming picture of just how dysfunctional it has become. Code Enforcement Unit […]
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Feeding Humboldt’s Hungry
Who feeds the hungry in Humboldt County? And how are they managing to fulfill their mission during this time of job loss and lockdown? Prior to the pandemic, 20 percent of Humboldt County households lived in poverty, and that’s before COVID-19 restrictions put scores of residents out of work, sending the unemployment rate skyrocketing to […]
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Supes Send Letters Seeking Help in TV Programming Standoff
To the annoyance of thousands of Suddenlink customers, access to two local stations – KIEM (Channel 3) and KVIQ (Channel 6) — disappeared Jan. 8 and Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson brought the matter to the attention of the Board of Supervisors at its meeting Tuesday, though the board has no real power over the situation. […]
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Caltrans Charts Ambitious $155M Plan for Eureka’s Broadway
Broadway has long been an integral yet neglected part of Eureka. As a road that serves both as a state highway and as a city “Main Street,” it fills neither role satisfactorily. Half of all automobile accidents in Eureka happen on Broadway. This 3-mile stretch of road, which serves 35,000 vehicles daily, has been the […]