###

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

###

In an effort to put a dent in the state’s housing shortage, California is considering something unprecedented: getting into the construction insurance business.

Last week, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat, and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers raised the curtain on a long-awaited package of bills meant to push developers toward cost-cutting innovations in construction, with a particular focus on factory-based building.

Building homes in factories and then trucking them to where they’re needed offers a wide array of potential benefits: Faster construction, safer working conditions and lower overall cost that ought to ultimately make housing more affordable.

But despite decades of hope and hype, that promise has never materialized at scale. Boosters of the industry point to regulatory and financial hurdles that stand in the way of cost-effective mass production.

The half-dozen new bills are meant to help the nascent industry clear those hurdles. Most would do so by standardizing or trimming regulation. But one, Assembly Bill 2166, authored by Wicks and Assemblymember Juan Carrillo, a Democrat from Palmdale, is different. Though still light on detail, the bill aims to guarantee insurance payouts for developers and lenders who are interested in factory-based building, but still need a little extra assurance.

Taking on the role of re-insurer — committing to come to the financial rescue at a specific chokepoint in the residential construction process — is a departure from virtually anything the state has done before in its years-long effort to cut the cost of housing in California.

“This is the first time I have seen something like this be suggested, drafted and potentially implemented by a state for housing,” said Tyler Pullen, a researcher at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, who has been providing technical assistance to Wicks and other legislators on the bill package.

He added that though the bill is certainly the “most open-ended and technically complicated” in the legislative package, some version of the idea popped up in nearly every interview he and his colleagues conducted with industry stakeholders as part of a recent Terner report on industrialized construction.

“This could be one of the highest impact things, but it has a lot of open questions,” he said.

Avoiding a construction doom loop

Construction is a risky endeavor. Developers run out of cash. Costs overrun. Lawsuits abound. Projects fail. A complex array of financial levers exist to help everyone involved, from lenders and investors down to the lowliest subcontractor, to minimize their exposure should things fall apart.

One of the most important of those levers is the surety bond, a financial arrangement in which an insurer, in exchange for an upfront fee, agrees to pay out if, say, an electrical subcontractor fails to deliver.

A bonded project is one that “puts the developers and the lenders at ease,” said Michael Merle, business development director at Autovol, an Idaho-based housing factory. “If any portion of the project fails, they are not going to be holding the bag.”

Depending on the nature of the project and the contract, a bond might cost a factory anywhere from three-quarters of a percentage point to 3% of a contract’s entire cost, he said. For a factory working a large apartment project, those fewer percentage points might add up to a quarter million dollars or more.

But that’s if the factory can even get bonded. Often they cannot. Why not? The text of the bill refers to a “self-reinforcing cycle” that the industrialized construction industry appears to be stuck in.

That doom loop looks something like this:

A developer or project lender is wary of starting a project with a housing factory, a new-ish player in a new-ish industry that has seen some high-profile failures, and so requires a factory to bond the project. The factory would be able to convince a surety company to provide that coverage if it had a track record of financial success. But it doesn’t, because developers and project lenders are wary. No bond for the factory means it can’t attract any business. No business means the factory eventually fails.

Carrillo and Wicks’ bill would have the state insure the insurers. If a project fails and a bond is called upon, the state would cover a portion of the payout in certain extreme circumstances (the size of that portion and what qualifies as “extreme” are still undetermined).

The ultimate hope underlying the legislation is that by making insurance companies more comfortable offering insurance, developers will become more comfortable signing on with factories, factories will have more steady business and, ultimately, they’ll be able to ramp up production, push down costs and start delivering on the long-offered promise of mass-produced housing. Doom loop terminated.

Though the state of California has never taken on a role quite like this before, the idea rhymes with other policies at both the state and federal level.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two federally-sponsored companies, guarantee privately-issued mortgages as a way to boost more plentiful and cheaper lending for American homebuyers. The Small Business Administration guarantees surety bonds for (you guessed it) small businesses. The state of California operates one loan guarantee program for health care facility construction, but none for the housing industry. A bill last year that would have replicated the model for affordable housing projects died without a full vote in the Assembly.

The housing factory surety guarantee idea is “super innovative,” said Jan Lindenthal-Cox, chief investment officer at the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund, a nonprofit that directs philanthropic money toward cost-cutting affordable housing projects. “This is what’s needed if you really want to scale the industry.”

Would cash be more helpful than bonding?

But even some off-site construction proponents are skeptical.

The Carrillo-Wicks bill is meant to push developers who are interested in off-site construction but skittish about its financial viability. That does not describe Mutual Housing California, a Sacramento-based nonprofit affordable development that has committed to use factory-built housing for the bulk of its future projects.

“Who are we incentivizing?” Ryan Cassidy, Mutual’s vice president of real estate, asked of the bill. “We’re incentivizing developers whose only go/no-go is whether the factory stays in business. To me, that’s a developer who is probably not very savvy.”

Likewise, the approach will help new factories with limited experience garner more business, he said. Mutual Housing contracted with Guerdon Modular Buildings, another Idaho-based manufacturer with among the longest track-records in the industry. “I don’t think the risk of factory-built housing is whether Guerdon is going to go out of business.”

Cassidy said he would prefer a “more direct” approach of simply giving factory-built projects more money.

Merle at Autovol agreed that the surety bond proposal would likely benefit newer manufacturers. Autovol, another industry heavyweight, rarely has trouble getting coverage when it needs it, he said. And because of its relative financial stability and its list of long-term clients, it can go without bonding more often than not.

“If you’ve only got two or three projects and a couple years under your belt, those are the ones that are required to bond,” he said. But for the same reason, “those are the ones that very much struggle to bond.”

It’s unclear whether other lawmakers will be willing to tie the full faith and credit of the state to an industry that’s still proving itself. The bill is scheduled for its first legislative committee hearing in late April. The total amount that the bill could put state taxpayers on the hook remains an unanswered question. But for lawmakers who are unconvinced, one possible selling point is that the need for this program may be temporary.

The premise of the bill is that “the state can support the early adopters while the factory-built housing industry builds up its reputation,” said Pullen at Terner. “This is a problem that could eventually be solved in the private market.”

If all goes well in the industry, private insurers might be happy to offer factories their coverage without a state backstop and developers and lenders may no longer insist upon that extra layer of protection. For now, that remains a big “if.”

On Thursday, March 26, at 7:46 a.m., Tim Tanno, Sr., lost the battle to cancer after a six-year fight. Since his diagnosis, he never put down the gloves and always kept the ones he loved close.

Tim grew up in Santa Clara. In his twenties he started working for Lassen Volcanic National Park. After six seasons, he transferred to Redwood National Park, where he worked for the remainder of his 35-year career. When he moved to Orick he met the love of his life, Betsy. At the time, Betsy was working at the Orick Market, and Tim would walk to the store to see her every day. When Tim asked Betsy to go out on a date, she expected they would be walking somewhere. She was very surprised when he pulled up in a brand-new Chevy Step-Side.

Tim and Betsy shared 46 years and were married for 45 of them. They had three sons (Nicholas, Joseph and Timothy Jr.), three grandchildren (Joseph Jr., Olivia and Nicholas). Tim raised his sons to be outdoorsmen. He taught all three of them to hunt, fish and respect and enjoy the outdoors the way he did. He first started fishing when he was 10 years old. When he was 16, he learned how to hunt deer from his dad, Nicholas and godfather, Bill. He hunted every season from then on. There is no place he would rather be than up in the “piney woods” with his boys.

Tim is survived by his wife, children, grandchildren and daughters-in-law, Crissy Tanno and Amanda Fox. He is survived by extended family, including Bob and Shen Secor; Julie, Jay Adams and family; Bobby, Owens Secor and family; Anthony, Danessa Secor and family; Ben and Niki Secor; Andy Good; Ashlee, Justin Barragan and family; the Lane family; and the Dahn family.

He is preceded in death by his mother, Dorothy Tanno; his father, Nicholas Tanno; his mother-in-law, Constance Secor; his father-in-law, Bob Secor; his brother, Gary Tanno; son, Nicholas Tanno; and sister-in-law, Patti Dahn.

A special thank you to the Harpe, Ellis, Bray and the Murrell families for being there for us in our time of need.

From Tim himself: “Thank you all for being in my life. I love you all more than you will ever know. I am standing on a mountain. If you need me, I will be there. Thank you, Betsy for being in my life, and for all the love we shared. I love you.”

We will be holding a memorial ceremony Prairie Creek State Park in June 2026.

###

A weary old fishing vessel docked at the Eureka Public Marina went ahead and gave up the ghost this morning, sinking a few feet before its hull settled into the tidal mudflats.

Eureka employees responded to the scene around 11:30 this morning and employed tools from an emergency response trailer that the city acquired through a grant from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response, according to reporting from local ABC affiliate KRCR. 

The photos above and below, submitted by LoCO reader Gabriel Douge, show the floating booms that were deployed to contain any oil spillage from spreading.

We’ve reached out to OSPR for more information and will update this post if we learn anything either substantive or interesting about this incident.

In the meantime, pour one out for the Terry S. 

###

It looks like we may have reached the conclusion of the 15-year legal battle over a Caltrans project that aims to modify a stretch of Highway 101 through Richardson Grove State Park.

In a ruling handed down March 26, a three-judge panel in California’s First District Court of Appeal affirmed a lower court’s decision to reject the latest lawsuit from conservation groups that challenged the project’s compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). 

Last week’s ruling effectively says that the legal dispute over the adequacy of the project’s environmental analysis was resolved in earlier cases, and any further attempts to challenge the project on those grounds are procedurally barred.

The judges make this point explicit in the final sentence of their ruling, which says, “The CEQA battle has come to its end.”

The Richardson Grove Improvement Project, as Caltrans has dubbed it, will modify an approximately one-mile stretch of Highway 101 as it wends through the state park’s massive coast redwoods, some of which are more than 300 feet tall and thousands of years old.

Caltrans describes the work as “minor adjustments” that are necessary to improve traffic safety and accommodate industry-standard-sized semi trucks that are currently prohibited from passing through this narrow stretch of 101.

Project opponents, on the other hand, argued that both the construction activity and the resulting road realignment could harm the ancient trees — not by removing any of them down but by cutting into their root systems. Their initial suit argued that the environmental impact report (EIR) published in 2010 failed to properly analyze those risks, and in 2012, a federal judge agreed, ordering Caltrans to redo a couple major elements in the report. 

This was just the beginning of a “litigation odyssey” that proved to be “about as labyrinthine as the root systems of the redwood trees themselves,” as the latest appellate court ruling poetically observes. 

Caltrans redid the deficient sections of its EIR and prepared addenda and recertifications in 2017 and 2023 as the legal challenges kept coming. In 2019 Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Kelly Neel ruled that Caltrans had not followed proper procedure because it hadn’t recirculated its revised EIR for public comment. 

After the agency went back and did so, the court “discharged” (closed) the previous rulings, giving Caltrans the green light to proceed with the project. But the appellants, including the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), the Center for Biological Diversity, Californians for Alternatives to Toxics and others, appealed yet again, arguing that the environmental review was still deficient.

But in this latest ruling, the appellate court concluded that this dispute had already been resolved by the trial court, whose ruling was final and unappealable. The Latin legal term for this is res judicata, meaning “claim preclusion” or “a matter judged.”

Even if that weren’t the case, though, the appellate court said the plaintiffs’ underlying argument “lacks merit.”

You can read the full decision, linked below.

###

UPDATE, 2:36 p.m.:

Shortly after this story was published, Caltrans sent along the following statement:

The Richardson Grove Improvement Project is intended to make minor targeted improvements along about one mile of U.S. 101 through Richardson Grove State Park so standard STAA trucks can travel through the corridor, which is important for goods movement on the North Coast.

No old-growth redwoods will be removed by the project. As part of early efforts, Caltrans recently completed time-sensitive tree work ahead of nesting bird season. Only younger, newer-growth trees of various types were marked and removed in preparation for construction, and all tree removals planned for the project are now complete.

Because of the setting, Caltrans plans to use methods such as hand digging and air spades to help reduce impacts on old-growth redwood root systems. A certified arborist analyzing project impacts determined that limited root disturbance would not have a significant impact on appearance, stability, and continued health of the old-growth redwoods in Richardson Grove.

The project has been the subject of more than 15 years of litigation, involving many hours of work by our legal team across multiple rounds of court proceedings.

More project information, including visual simulations, is available on the project webpage, and Caltrans District 1 will continue sharing updates on social media as appropriate.

###

DOCUMENT:

• Appellate court ruling in Blair, et al. v. California Department of Transportation, et al.

###

PREVIOUSLY

• Caltrans Ordered to Redo Richardson Grove Environmental Documentation
• EPIC Claims Victory in Latest Richardson Grove Ruling
• EPIC: Richardson Grove Realignment Project “Not Active At All” Anymore
• Caltrans: Richardson Grove Realignment Project Still Going Forward
• Judge Denies Environmental Groups’ Request for Attorney Fees in Richardson Grove Case
• Caltrans Relaunches Richardson Grove Project; Agency Issues New Environmental Documentation For Controversial Highway 101 Realignment at the South End of the County
• As Expected, EPIC and Others Launch New Lawsuit Against Caltrans’ Richardson Grove Improvement Project
• Here We Go Again: Fifth Lawsuit Filed Against Caltrans’ Richardson Grove Project
• Court Halts Richardson Grove Highway Project Yet Again; Environmental Groups ‘Elated’ at Federal Judge’s Order
• Another Court Puts the Brakes on Caltrans’ Richardson Grove Project; Local Judge Orders Agency to Revise Environmental Impact Report
• Federal Judge Rules For Caltrans in Lawsuit Over Road-Widening Project Through Richardson Grove
• Richardson Grove Conflict Heads to Round Four as Conservation Groups File Legal Challenge to Caltrans’ 101 Realignment Project
• Judge Tosses the Latest Injunction From Environmental Groups Over Caltrans’ Richardson Grove Improvement Project
• Enviro Group Cries Foul as Caltrans Removes a Few Small Trees in Richardson Grove; Agency Says Construction on Long-Delayed Improvement Project Will Start in Spring

Press release from Cal Poly Humboldt: 

This fall, Cal Poly Humboldt is launching five new academic programs designed to prepare students for high-impact careers. From healthcare to sustainable food systems, the programs address workforce needs across California and the North Coast.

The new degrees include four bachelor’s degrees and one master’s program: 

Applied Humanities (B.A.): a multidisciplinary program that connects skills like media literacy, ethics, and cross-cultural communication.

Critical Agriculture Studies & Agroecology (B.A.): combines the study of food systems, environmental justice, and cultural resilience.

Community Health (B.A.): focuses on health equity and how social and environmental conditions shape community well-being.

Health & Medical Science (B.S.): prepares students for careers in healthcare and graduate programs such as medicine, pharmacy, and physical therapy.

STEM Education (M.A.): a hybrid program for STEM educators that allows students to earn a teaching credential and a master’s degree.

Designed to be interdisciplinary, these programs bridge the sciences, arts, and humanities while giving students experience through lab work, internships, and community partnerships.

“These programs are designed to help students find meaningful paths where they can make a difference, and give them the skills to do so,” said Shawna Young, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. “They connect what students learn in the classroom with hands-on experience in the community, so they’re prepared to take on challenges we’re seeing here on the North Coast and beyond.”

The programs are part of Cal Poly Humboldt’s transition to a polytechnic university and join more than a dozen new programs launched since 2023, including Cannabis Studies, Marine Biology, and Fire Science. Last fall, the University also introduced its Media Arts degree, which sits at the intersection of art and technology to prepare students for careers in fields like animation and digital design. 

Additional academic programs are expected to roll out in the coming years as part of the University’s broader polytechnic transformation, with the next programs launching by 2029.

Students applying to Cal Poly Humboldt can explore the new programs and learn more about admissions requirements at humboldt.edu/academics/new-polytechnic-programs. 

ED. NOTE: The Outpost’s Trinidad Bureau Chief, Ted Pease, sent us the following report from Saturday’s northernmost “No Kings” protest on Sunday morning, nearly a full 24 hours after the event took place.

He is fired. But you may as well enjoy his photos from the event.

###

PREVIOUSLY:

• (PHOTOS) Thousands Protest Trump at ‘No Kings’ Rally in Eureka

###

Press release from Indivisible Trinidad:

A crowd of protesters estimated at 350 to 400 took to the streets of tiny Trinidad Saturday for the little seaside village’s contributions to worldwide No Kings 3 demonstrations against Trump administration policies.

The crowd for Indivisible Trinidad’s demonstration was “bigger than the town,” resident Karen Snell observed, holding a sign in front of her mother’s Main Street home. Barbara Snell, 95, started the pro-democracy protests more than a year ago with signs and upside-down American flags on her front porch.

Trinidad, one of the geographically smallest incorporated cities in California, has an official population of 313.

“You just have to do it,” Barbara told her neighbors when Indivisible Trinidad, part of a nationwide protest network against the Trump White House, formed last fall. Since then, the group has more than 100 members and has now holds rallies in front of Barbara’s house every Saturday at noon.

But none like Saturday’s event, which featured hundreds of signs, chants, a 0.5-mile march around Trinidad, an estimated 28 dogs, a frog, Taiko drummers and Bigfoot wearing an American flag cape. Passing motorists honked and waved. The atmosphere was festive, but the underlying theme was deadly serious. “Hey hey! Ho ho!! Donald Trump has got to go!” marchers chanted as they passed the scenic overlook above Trinidad Bay.

“Protect Our Constitution!” read one sign. Dozens of others included peace signs and, “Stop the Insanity!” “Resist the Police State!” “Dump Trump! Defend Democracy!” “No Fascism!” “No Kings! Can We put smart people back in charge now?”

Other signs: “US Out of Iran!” “No Faux-King Way!” “Where the HELL Is Congress?” “Ashamed of the USA.” “Veto the Cheeto!” “Bridge Players Say: ‘No Trump!’” “No Pedophile Kings!” and many others.

“This is amazing,” said District 5 supervisor candidate Mary Burke of McKinleyville.

Organizers were surprised and ecstatic at the turnout. “This is really wonderful,” said Indivisible Trinidad leader Tina Freeland. “For this many people to come to Trinidad today really should send a message all the way to Washington that we want our country back,” she said.

Nationwide, millions of American turned out Saturday at a reported 3,300 No Kings rallies in all 50 states, sending a strong message to the White House.

“That sign is right,” Freeland said, pointing to a woman wearing a t-shirt reading “Resist. Persist. Insist.” Her sign said, “The POWER of the PEOPLE is greater than the People in Power!”

Several people stopped to thank Barbara Snell, holding an inverted U.S. flag to indicate a nation in distress. “You started all this,” on woman told her.

“It’s really wonderful,” Snell said.

For information about Indivisible Trinidad, go to this link.

If you’d been thinking about joining Arcata’s Public Safety Committee, I’ve got some bad news for you. 

The Arcata City Council will consider dissolving the committee at its meeting this Wednesday. There’s only one person on the committee, the Arcata Police Department’s Lt. Luke Scown, who is the committee’s city liaison. It hasn’t met since April 26, 2023. Every meeting since — one every month — has been announced with a little cancellation notice posted to the city’s website. Despite the city’s efforts to attract potential members, no one’s joined. 

The group was created in 2016 to talk about public safety issues and give recommendations to the city council. A sample from the July 2019 meeting: the five members present talked about community courts, posting case workers around higher-crime areas, expanding a neighborhood watch program, and considered inviting then-HSU president Tom Jackson to speak at one of their meetings in the coming months. An Arcata resident called their Safe Arcata plan “a useless 3 pages that has bored him” and said the committee’s focus is “unclear to him.” 

A staff report on the ordinance to nix the committee says that it’s not necessary to keep it because the problems it was designed to cover are addressed regularly through other means, such as city council meetings, study sessions, and continuing coordination between APD, city staff, and elected officials. 

“This approach reflects current practice, in which public safety matters are informed by public input received at Council meetings, engagement between staff and community members, and coordination across City departments,” reads the staff report. “It reinforces the Council’s role in setting policy direction in public meetings and the City Manager’s role in implementing that direction through departmental leadership.”

Lt. Scown told the Outpost that APD Chief Chris Ortega will go into greater detail during Wednesday’s meeting. 

“There’s lots of avenues for people to bring concerns and opinions and thoughts about policing in their community to the government,” Scown said. “There’s all different kinds of channels that are open and available and always have been. We are, probably more so than ever, heavily involved in community groups and do a lot of reaching out and interaction with a lot of different groups throughout the community.”