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As California’s 2022 water year ends this week, the parched state is bracing for another dry year — its fourth in a row.

So far, in California’s recorded history, six previous droughts have lasted four or more years, two of them in the past 35 years.

Despite some rain in September, weather watchers expect a hot and dry fall, and warn that this winter could bring warm temperatures and below-average precipitation.

Conditions are shaping up to be a “recipe for drought”: a La Niña climate pattern plus warm temperatures in the Western Tropical Pacific that could mean critical rain and snowstorms miss California, according to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA and The Nature Conservancy.

Swain said California’s fate will depend on how exactly the storm track shifts, and that seasonal forecasts are inherently uncertain. Even so, “I would still put my money on dry, even in the northern third of the state,” he said. “It’s not a guarantee. But if you were to see 50 winters like this one, most of them would be dry.”

Through August, no other three-year period in California history has been this dry — even during the last historic drought from 2012 through 2016.

“Or did the last drought end? Which is the bigger question,” said John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced. “We’re basically having droughts that are disrupted by wet periods.”

California has seen lengthy droughts before, including two seven-year droughts that started in the late 1920s and 1940s. A more recent one lasted six years, from 1987 to 1992.

“To get these kinds of years, we have to go back to the late 1920s and the 1930s, which were the Dust Bowl years,” said California state climatologist Michael Anderson. He tallies far more dry years than wet since the turn of the millennium. “If you look at the 21st century, we really only have a handful of wet years to work with.”

It’s not just the lack of rain and snow. Warmer temperatures, too, are exacerbating California’s droughts. January through August ranked as California’s fifth warmest year to date, following 2021’s warmest summer on record.

“One thing that is unfortunately becoming easier to anticipate are warmer than average conditions due to climate change,” Swain said.

The heat contributes to a thirstier atmosphere, plants and soils, which increases demand and reduces runoff that flows into reservoirs. “That’s taking what’s already been a really rotten, worst-in-the-instrumental-record precipitation drought, and making it into even a worse drought,” Abatzoglou said.

Winter is coming. But will it rain?

What the coming water year, which begins Oct. 1, will bring is still up in the air. But La Niña conditions are highly likely to continue through at least the fall, with an 80% chance of persisting through January, for a third year in a row.

A “three-peat” La Niña is rare: It has happened only twice before since record-keeping began. La Niña occurs when ocean temperatures in the Eastern Tropical Pacific are below normal, which can shift the storm track that California depends on.

“Seeing things that we’ve never seen before is very much on the table,” said John Yarbrough, assistant deputy director of the State Water Project, which funnels water from Northern California to 27 million people and 750,000 acres of farmland.

Often La Niña means drier conditions in Southern California, but the effects on Northern California watersheds critical to the state’s water supply can be harder to predict, according to Julie Kalansky, deputy director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

“Every year is such a unique story for water, which makes California exciting, but it also makes it hard to predict and say what will happen,” Kalansky said.

What will ultimately shape the next water year is the number of storms known as atmospheric rivers that make landfall, and the amount of precipitation they unleash. The timing, too, will be important, Anderson said: when rain and snow falls can affect how much of California’s precious snowpack rushes into reservoirs or soaks into the soil.

“From the water management standpoint, we’re being mindful that it very well could be dry,” Yarbrough said. “At the same time, we’ve got to be mindful that it could be very wet and you could have flooding. Both of those still are possible.”

Dry spells punctuated by wet years are part of “the California story,” Abazoglou said. “But obviously the last decade has shifted the balance towards more droughts.”

What about snow?

Snow, too, is difficult to predict for the year ahead.

“It’s definitely more of a guessing game. You’re just sort of crossing your fingers and hoping,” said Michael Reitzell, president of Ski California, a trade association representing resorts in Nevada and California.

This past year was a strange one for the ski industry, he said — marred first by wildfires that damaged the Sierra-at-Tahoe resort, then by extreme snowstorms at the end of December that forced some resorts to close.

“In the holiday period, some resorts lost full days that would have been huge, huge revenue days,” Reitzell said. “That certainly does put a ding in things.”

This year’s snowpack measured at 38% of average statewide, at a time when it should have been its deepest on April 1. It was the worst snowpack in seven years and the sixth lowest April measurement in state history. The 2015 snowpack was the lowest on record.

The measurement came on the heels of a record-setting dry spell from January through March, with warm temperatures spurring an early season melt. This kind of early melt is difficult to recover from, said Andrew Schwartz, lead scientist and station manager at the University of California, Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Lab.

“Our soils get dry and soak up any additional rain or snow that comes in, so that doesn’t make it to our reservoirs. And then we get these mass forest die-offs and subsequent forest fires,” Schwartz said.

He agreed it’s hard to say what La Niña will mean for the Sierra Nevada this winter. He said “some absolutely massive snow years” have happened during La Niña years.

“But we’ve also had some of the worst years on record happen here. So the La Niña doesn’t look like it’s going to play too much of a role up here, because traditionally it hasn’t,” he said. “With that being said, I’m expecting drier and warmer than average conditions.”

A deep water deficit

California is entering the next year with a water deficit unlikely to recover with an average year of precipitation.

Groundwater levels in almost two-thirds of wells assessed have sunk below average, and by the end of August, reservoir storage had hit 69% of normal for the date. It’s an improvement over last year, when reservoir levels had dropped to just 60% of average for the date.

But reservoirs are still not where they need to be. “We’re still well-below average, still well-below where we would like to be,” Yarbrough said.

Lake Oroville, at 1.24 million acre feet, remains below the 1.6 million acre-foot threshold that managers would like to see by the end of the year before considering exports. Last year, deliveries from the State Water Project dropped to 5% of requested supplies in March.

Initial water allocations are expected to be announced Dec. 1, and Yarbrough would not say what they were likely to be. Still, he said, “Do expect it to be on the lower end.”

The US Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the Central Valley Project, also would not say how much water its recipients, including Central Valley growers, can expect next year. That announcement will come in February, spokesperson Mary Lee Knecht said.

But Ryan Jacobsen, CEO of the Fresno County Farm Bureau, is not expecting the news to be good.

“We find ourselves going into this year with such a substantial decline over the course of the previous three years that even an average year most likely is going to mean some not good allocations to farmers down here in the Valley,” he said.

Jacobsen said local growers already have cut back on plantings for fall and winter crops. He expects even more fields to be fallowed as farmers decide not to plant annual crops like tomatoes, melons and corn to preserve their scarce water supplies for permanent crops like tree nuts and grapes.

“People are saying ‘Hey, we’ve gone through this before. California is used to droughts.’ That is true. But we’re seeing these things get a lot worse and worse.”
— Demetri Polyzos, Metropolitan Water District

One source of California’s water supply is in even more dire shape than in previous droughts: the Colorado River, which remained a reliable source of water supply even during California’s 2012 through 2016 drought. This time the river’s massive reservoirs have hit historic lows.

“The Colorado River system is in deep crisis,” said Alex Hall, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UCLA. “That means Southern California is in a more difficult position than in the past.”

Southern California’s giant water importer, the Metropolitan Water District, issued unprecedented outdoor watering restrictions last spring for the 6 million people in its vast service area that depend on supplies from the parched State Water Project. Over the last three years, the water district has received its lowest total deliveries from Northern California reservoirs.

Now, the water importer is weighing how potential future cutbacks on the Colorado River could affect the rest of its customers as California, Arizona and Nevada hash out a deal to conserve the river’s water, said Demetri Polyzos, Metropolitan’s manager of resource planning.

“People are saying ‘Hey, we’ve gone through this before. California is used to droughts,’” Polyzos said. “That is true. But we’re seeing these things get a lot worse and worse and more difficult to manage through.”

What is becoming increasingly clear is that the nature of drought in the West is changing from the plural to the singular as it endures for long stretches punctuated by brief spells of wet years.

“The idea of drought as a temporary, transient thing is shifting,” Swain said. “We should be thinking more about long-term aridification.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

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When Laura Swartzen saw the email from Sacramento State University’s Title IX office, it felt like her heart skipped a beat.

Swartzen, the Sac State confidential campus advocate, had spent the past nine months supporting a student who reported being sexually assaulted. Swartzen had listened to the student’s wrenching account, offered to connect them with medical and mental health care, and sat with them through an “incredibly draining” formal hearing.

Now, the Title IX office — which investigates cases of campus sex discrimination — had found the perpetrator responsible for the assault. Swartzen’s lonely celebration lasted for just one joyful minute.

“I just took a moment, closed my eyes and thought of them,” said Swartzen, who had to keep the news to herself. Then she got back to work. “There’s a lot of other students that now need that same support.”

Fifty years since then-President Richard Nixon signed the country’s landmark gender discrimination law known as Title IX — and in the aftermath of a leadership shakeup within California’s largest public university prompted by a sexual harassment scandal — there’s fresh scrutiny over how the state’s colleges handle sexual misconduct.

Many sexual assault survivors and activists at California public universities and colleges say it’s simply not enough to have Title IX offices, which focus on the legal aspects of a case and campuses’ liability.

Instead, they say colleges need confidential advocates like Swartzen, who are independent from Title IX offices. Survivors say advocates are “superheroes” who are critical in helping them heal after a traumatic experience.

Thirteen percent of students report experiencing sexual violence during their time in college, according to the Association of American Universities — including more than a quarter of undergraduate women and more than 20% of transgender and nonbinary undergraduates. That’s equal to tens of thousands of undergraduates in the University of California system alone.

But across California’s public colleges and universities, the availability of advocates to support these students varies widely – from a robust sexual assault counseling center with a dozen staff members at UC Berkeley, to a single part-time advocate serving Cal State LA’s tens of thousands of students, to community college campuses where there is no survivor advocate at all. Some California State University campuses have allocated as much as $200,000 in a single year to support survivor advocates, while others have had an annual budget of $10,000.

“Over the recent decade, it’s been clear that universities need to reevaluate their approach to the issue of sexual assault…We need to actually face up to the unfortunate truth that this has been a culture of enabling sexual assault, sexual violence on our college campuses,” said Assemblymember Sabrina Cervantes, a Democrat from Riverside who authored a bill signed Tuesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom that will standardize the survivor advocate role across California campuses.

“Over the recent decade, it’s been clear that universities need to reevaluate their approach to the issue of sexual assault.”
— Assemblymember Sabrina Cervantes

After the Trump administration passed new rules in 2020 requiring that students filing formal claims of sexual harassment and assault be cross-examined in live hearings, Title IX experts say demand grew for alternatives to that process. (The Biden administration has proposed changes to those rules.)

“Title IX can also be a tool to harm students or to discourage students from coming out with their experience with sexual violence and sexual harassment issues,” said Bailey Henderson, external affairs vice president of the UC Berkeley’s student government.

Survivor advocates can help students decide whether and how to file Title IX complaints, advise them on their options if they choose not to file, and help them navigate hearings that can bring up the trauma of the original event.

Swartzen, for example, says she reminds survivors participating in online hearings that they can cover the screen with a Post-it to avoid seeing the alleged perpetrator. She often hands them a journal to draw on to distract themselves.

In one-on-one meetings in her office, she walks students who say they’ve experienced an assault through what will happen if they file a report with the campus Title IX office.

“It’s going to feel scary and a lot, and it is, and nothing has to happen today,” she tells them. “But it’s really, really important that you have all of that information so you feel really empowered to make that decision.”

For some of the survivors she works with, Swartzen said, no one else in their lives knows about what happened. “​​And so they’re navigating these big, big, big things by themselves.”

In Cal State system, every campus on its own

At Cal State, where previous Chancellor Joseph Castro resigned in February after he was accused of mishandling sexual misconduct complaints against a Fresno State administrator while he was president of that university, many of the system’s largest campuses rely on a single survivor advocate to serve the entire student population. That includes some campuses where demand for advocates’ services has grown.

While most campuses provide survivors with access to a full-time advocate, there is little consistency in the ratio between the number of advocates and the size of the student population.

For example, Sacramento State and Cal Poly Pomona place their approximately 30,000 students in the care of one advocate. Meanwhile, Cal State Dominguez Hills is hiring a second advocate to serve a campus population of about 17,000 students, meaning each advocate would be responsible for about 8,500 students — less than a third of the load at Sacramento State and Cal Poly Pomona.

“There hasn’t been a lot of guidance from the CSU, from the Chancellor’s office, that trickles down to the campuses,” said Mayra Romo, associate director for the Center for Advocacy, Prevention and Empowerment at Cal State Dominguez Hills. “Every campus is kind of on their own.”

Besides meeting with students, survivor advocates also counsel faculty and staff, and conduct workshops with campus organizations about sexual violence and building healthy relationships.

Maintaining such a workload — and struggling with stress and frequent nightmares after hearing about students’ traumas — led Romo, who is also a survivor, to question her future as an advocate. She and other Cal State survivor advocates have formed an unofficial support group to help each other cope with the pressures of the job – any of them can call an emergency meeting at any time. Cal State Dominguez Hills’s decision to hire a second advocate was ultimately Romo’s “determining factor” in staying.

“It almost felt kind of unethical for me to continue serving survivors when I wasn’t okay,” Romo said. “But there was no option. There’s nothing else. If there wasn’t me to support them, who else is going to be there?”

“If there wasn’t me to support them, who else is going to be there?”
— Mayra Romo, associate director for the Center for Advocacy, Prevention and Empowerment at CSU Dominguez Hills

More than a third of CSU campuses partner with nearby organizations that support survivors instead of employing an advocate on campus. That includes Cal State LA, which spends $35,000 each year to partner with a local rape crisis center called Peace Over Violence, which supported 22 students in 2021.

April Hernandez, the organization’s intervention division associate manager, said its advocate works with Cal State LA, which has about 27,000 students, for just eight hours per week — split into two four-hour shifts.

“We know sexual assault is obviously not only happening Monday through Friday, nine to five when the advocate is available,” Hernandez said.

In an email to CalMatters, a Cal State spokesperson said “the needs of campuses vary” when it comes to support for sexual assault survivors. “Campus leaders have the discretion to determine the staffing and how best to serve students and their unique campus communities,” the spokesperson said.

Some campuses have seen steep increases in demand for survivor advocate services in the past few years.

When she started working at Sacramento State in fall 2019, Swartzen saw around 15 students over the course of three months. Two years later, in the fall of 2021, she met with about 60 survivors.

“Many students have kind of disclosed that during COVID, they really didn’t have much to do but sit alone with their thoughts. And so, some things came to the surface,” Swartzen said, noting the pandemic also triggered increased rates of intimate partner violence and sexual assault.

Since Castro’s resignation, numerous other instances of alleged sexual misconduct at Cal State have come to light, including a reported rape of a 17-year-old girl by three San Diego State football players, and charges that then-Sonoma State president Judy Sakaki retaliated against a provost who accused Sakaki’s husband of sexual harassment.

At Cal Poly Humboldt – which allowed a dean who had been fired in 2016 for groping and forcibly kissing female colleagues to return as a tenured professor, according to a USA Today investigation – President Tom Jackson recently seemed to admonish faculty and staff not to talk to the press about Title IX cases. “The process is designed to be behind the door so that we can resolve it for the individuals that are involved, not to celebrate it or promote it or use it for personal gain later on,” Jackson said during his Fall welcome address in August.

Cal State has commissioned an external review of its Title IX policies; the first phase of that investigation was scheduled to be complete by the end of July, but the university has yet to release the report. Lawmakers have also asked the state auditor to conduct its own investigation after Cal State’s review is complete.

Higher demand for campus advocates prolongs wait times and makes it more difficult for survivors to get help, said Fresno State senior Amalia Lopez. The lack of publicity for survivor advocate services also gets in the way.

Lopez said she struggled to get support on the Fresno State campus after she reported being sexually assaulted in 2020. She went to the Fresno State Police Department and told a detective about her experience. She said nobody — including the campus Title IX office — reached back out.

“After that, I was not in a mental place to reach out to resources,” said Lopez, who was 18 at the time. She added that she only came to know about the campus advocate after her case closed.

“At that point, it’s really too late. I needed the help years ago,” she said.

Earlier this year, Fresno State sat at the epicenter of the scandal that resulted in Castro’s resignation as chancellor.

Students including former Fresno State student Xitllali Loya led protests to press for Castro’s resignation and stand in solidarity with survivors. Fresno State has since hired a second advocate who will start in January. The campus should increase funding for survivor advocates, Loya said. But she added that the responsibility ultimately falls on campus and system leaders to make sure students can feel safe at Cal State.

“There’s only so much a sexual assault advocate can do,” Loya said. “You need to change the environment.”

Advocates at community colleges

Many California community colleges lack survivor advocates, instead directing students toward their Title IX officers or to local police.

One exception is the Los Rios Community College District in Sacramento, which contracts out to WEAVE, a local crisis intervention organization.

Demand for sexual harassment and assault support services tends to be lower at community colleges because students are older and don’t typically live on campus, said Joshua Moon Johnson, the Title IX coordinator at American River College in the district.

“These are our students, but it’s happening at their personal homes with their partners,” Johnson said.

While the Trump administration barred schools from investigating and punishing alleged assaults that happened off campus, that could soon change under a Biden administration proposal.

Johnson said WEAVE counselors provide confidential support that he can’t. And their independence is important, he said.

“Institutions, you know, have neglected survivors at the expense of making their institutions look good,” Johnson said. Advocates, on the other hand, “have no incentive to protect the institution. That’s not what they’re here for,” he said.

A possible model?

One place where survivor advocate services are more robust: the University of California, which established support centers on every campus in response to a wave of student activism in 2014, according to spokesperson Stett Holbrook.

Known as CARE centers – short for Campus Assault Resources and Education – they support survivors one-on-one and offer workshops on self care and healthy relationships, said Jazmin Jauregui, the interim co-director at the UC Santa Cruz CARE center. They can also refer students to therapists and help them seek out academic accommodations – such as extensions on assignments – after experiencing sexual misconduct, a right Title IX guarantees even when a formal complaint isn’t filed.

CARE offices provide critical support to students who may be confused or intimidated about their options, said Manju Cheenath, a student at UC Santa Barbara and the co-chairperson of Students Against Sexual Assault.

“I don’t think most students know anything about Title IX until something happens and they have to know everything about Title IX,” Cheenath said, adding that the system is “horrifically complicated…if you’re doing it by yourself, especially after going through something traumatic.”

“I don’t think most students know anything about Title IX until something happens and they have to know everything about Title IX.”
— Manju Cheenath, student at UC Santa Barbara, co-chairperson of Students Against Sexual Assault

Henderson, the UC Berkeley student government representative, said the campus’s Path to Care office is often the first place student leaders direct survivors, mainly because they can present survivors with their various options and support them.

“They can take a step back from formal ways of doing things and just kind of like, care for the individual first,” he said.

UC Berkeley’s PATH to Care Center has 12 staff members – compared to just one at most CSU campuses — who collectively supported 338 students, faculty and staff members during the 2020-21 academic year. The center also staffs an emergency hotline that received 738 calls that same year.

A similar center at UC Davis has six full-time staff members and served 70 survivors in 2021.

This model would have been extended to Cal State and community colleges under a bill proposed by Riverside Assemblymember Jose Medina. The bill, which would have required each campus to have confidential advocates for survivors as well as those accused of sexual assault, died in the Legislature in May.

“We do want to be consistent throughout the state and so that both the CSU and the community colleges would have a consistent response on all the campuses,” Medina said.

Making advocates independent

Cervantes’ bill will enshrine campus survivor advocates’ independent status into law, requiring that they be specially trained and that their communications with those they counsel be confidential. It will also require California’s public colleges and universities to inform students, faculty and staff who experience sexual assault about their options – including counseling, filing civil and criminal lawsuits, and going through the campus disciplinary process.

The bill “empowers campus-based sexual assault counselors with adequate protections and the ability to act independently from the university without fear of retribution,” said Cervantes. “This is exactly what we need to do to ensure that counselors have the support they need to do their jobs.”

Cervantes said campus policies – including the requirement that most staff report sexual assaults that they are aware of – sometimes conflict with the needs of the person who has suffered the assault. Confidentiality is important, she said, because it allows survivors to choose “how they wish to heal and seek justice.”

The bill also aims to protect advocates from retaliation if they support survivors who choose to take action against the university, such as filing a civil suit.

“[Advocates] are supposed to make it easier on survivors,” said Nicole Bedera, a sociologist who studies college sexual assault and testified in favor of the bill. “And I found in my research, time and time again, that they really struggle to do that if they don’t have full autonomy.”

Bedera said some campus advocates, for example, are encouraged to dissuade students from pursuing Title IX investigations to help the campus lower the number of complaints and improve their public image.

While neither CSU or UC took a position on the bill, Romo — the advocate from CSU Dominguez Hills — said she’d welcome the new protections.

“We do have a need to feel protected from retaliation so we can truly support the rights of the survivor,” she said. “It’s my job to tell a survivor: These are your rights and options, and one of those rights and options is you can sue the university…It’s hard for us to be in that position, even though that’s our role.”

The sole support

Some sexual assault survivors told CalMatters they turned to campus advocates after failing to find support anywhere else.

Loya, the Fresno State student, said after she was raped at a fraternity party in January 2020, her sorority sisters pressured her to stay quiet. In a video posted to YouTube, Loya said she was raped again later that weekend. Loya then went to the campus police for help.

While campus police say they followed their protocol — which includes informing survivors about campus resources — Loya said she left with little more than a pamphlet, still afraid she’d run into one of her attackers.

“I was on campus a week after my rapes and I was just insane, like going insane — like asking who can I get help from,” Loya said.

“I was on campus a week after my rapes and I was just insane, like going insane — like asking who can I get help from.”
— former Fresno State student Xitllali Loya

She had a panic attack at a campus bookstore, she said, and someone there took her to see the campus advocate, Mindy Kates.

Kates listened to Loya whenever she needed, pointed her to a local rape crisis center and explained the Title IX process, Loya said.

Even the Title IX office, Loya said, only responded to her complaint a month after she filed it with campus police – after she released the YouTube video detailing her experience. Fresno State, which suspended the Kappa Sigma fraternity after the video’s release, declined to comment on Loya’s case but said they try to respond to survivors as quickly as possible.

After Fresno State held hearings, two students were suspended for two semesters each in connection with Loya’s case, according to the university; a third was expelled.

Loya wishes the punishments had been more severe. But she’s grateful for the “superhero” who got her to this point.

“It’s Mindy that should be appreciated,” Loya said. “She’s the one…supporting survivors, not the school, not Title IX.”

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Seshadri and Shaikh are former fellows with the CalMatters College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. Former fellows Ryan Loyola and Julia Woock contributed reporting. This story and other higher education coverage are supported by the College Futures Foundation.

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

A controversial bill aimed at fixing aspects of California’s broken nursing home licensing system was signed Tuesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who faced dueling pressure from advocates who typically are aligned.

In approving Assembly Bill 1502, the governor had no comment about his decision.

The bill was drafted to address serious problems with the state’s nursing home licensing system, which is overseen by the California Department of Public Health. A CalMatters investigation last year highlighted an opaque licensing process marred by indecision, confusion and yearslong delays that advocates contend affects patient care and transparency for consumers.

CalMatters examined the Department of Public Health’s treatment of Los Angeles businessman Shlomo Rechnitz and his web of companies, which own facilities up and down the state.

For years, CalMatters found, the department allowed Rechnitz and his companies to unofficially operate 18 Country Villa facilities with license applications in “pending” status. The state also has permitted Rechnitz and his companies to operate five Windsor homes, even after the department denied their licensing applications.

As of last year, Rechnitz and his companies, including Brius Healthcare, had acquired at least 81 facilities with more than 9,000 beds, many with below-average ratings from the federal government.

Along with licensing facilities, the Department of Public Health is responsible for routinely inspecting the state’s 1,200 nursing homes. It also conducts complaint investigations and can cite facilities and levy fines for violating federal or state rules.

The bill signed by Newsom was co-authored by Democratic Assemblymembers Al Muratsuchi of Los Angeles and Jim Wood of Santa Rosa. Muratsuchi said the bill will close a loophole that allows nursing home operators to run a facility without first receiving a license, something advocates refer to as “squatting.” It also will require the Department of Public Health to look at an applicant’s track record over several years before granting a license.

Dr. Michael Wasserman, a geriatrician and chair of public policy for the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine, sent the governor a letter of strong support in August from his organization, saying the bill brings “critical accountability to the nursing home industry in California.”

In an interview, Wasserman called the bill “implementable, actionable, more effective, sustainable,” and “an incredibly positive step forward.”

“What I see in here is a lot more transparency,” he said.

But, in a significant plot twist, the bill’s original sponsors, California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, not only pulled their support this summer, but came out in “strong opposition” to the bill. In a letter sent a few days after Wasserman’s, the organization’s executive director, Patricia McGinnis, asked the governor for a veto.

“Instead of the major reform that the nursing home licensing system needs, AB 1502 cements the current system, a system that has nourished the most dangerous operators in the state,” she wrote.

The bill’s original language, which the organization helped craft, would have established strict suitability standards, including 10-year history checks for new owners, a public process for vetting them, and annual reports to the Legislature by the Department of Public Health.

“Instead of the major reform that the nursing home licensing system needs, AB 1502 cements the current system, a system that has nourished the most dangerous operators in the state.”
— Patricia McGinnis, executive director, California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform

The amended language took out some of these provisions, has shorter history checks, and institutes smaller, discretionary financial penalties in lieu of more significant ones.

But the organization’s biggest objection was what they say is a loophole related to background checks on applicants, said Tony Chicotel, a staff attorney for California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.

While the original language required the department to look at applicants, as well as associated persons or entities, the bill signed by Newsom only focuses on the applicants themselves. The problem, Chicotel said, is that some people file each new application under a unique limited liability corporation. If the Department of Public Health doesn’t look beyond the applicant, he said, it could allow officials to rubber-stamp applications regardless of the track record of the individual behind the entity.

Assemblymember Wood said such details can be overcome or fixed in the future.

“Rest assured, we’ll be watching this,” he said, calling the new law “a really big step forward.”

“Rest assured, we’ll be watching this.”
— Assemblymember Jim Wood of Santa Rosa

Due to the strength of the nursing home lobby, Wood said, nursing home legislation can be especially tough to shepherd through.

The California Association of Health Facilities, an industry group, did not register opposition to this bill.

Corey Egel, spokesperson for the organization, declined to comment for this story. But he referred back to a statement the group issued earlier this summer, saying that the change-of-ownership process “needs to be reformed to ensure the timely and expedited review of licensure applications.” Requirements for applicants need to be “reasonable with minimal disruptions to patient access to long term care services,” the group stated.

Wood held an emotional hearing last fall about licensing issues, repeatedly calling the Department of Public Health to task.

“We don’t need excuses,” he told them. “We have to do more.”

Since then, he said, department officials have stepped up to provide technical assistance in crafting legislation to help reform the licensing process.

The department, he said, is “under a big spotlight and they’re going to do the very best they can.”

“Sometimes it’s not only in the letter of the law, but it’s in the spirit of the law,” he said.

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

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The County of Humboldt expects to spend roughly $571.4 million during the 2022-23 fiscal year, an increase of about four percent over last year’s budget. At today’s meeting, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the recommended annual budget following a presentation by Tabatha Miller, the county’s chief financial officer and interim assistant auditor-controller.

Miller told the board that the budget was “almost identical” to versions they’d seen during previous hearings in June and earlier this month. Nearly half of the planned expenditures — $268.2 million, or 47 percent — is allocated to the Department of Health and Human Services. Another $120.4 million (21 percent) will go to the Public Works Department, with Law & Justice getting the third-largest chunk of the budget with $108.1 million (19 percent).

Miller and the supervisors made some oblique references to the financial reporting gaps under former Auditor-Controller Karen Paz Dominguez. For example, Miller noted that the board hasn’t been given any info on the beginning balance of the general fund “for a while” before offering an estimate for the current fiscal year — $24.7 million, conservatively. 

The county’s fiscal staff, including contracted outside auditors, are still working to close last year’s books, and Miller noted that the outside auditors have found “big posting errors,” including $18.2 million that had been incorrectly added to the general fund balance.

The county has set aside $5 million in general reserves, nearly doubling the “rainy day” emergency fund balance to $10.6 million, which is still well short of the target balance of $17.6 million. 

“So we still have some room to grow,” Miller said, “but we’ve made some pretty significant progress in establishing those outside reserves.”

The county is using just under $5.2 million in one-time funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) on staffing costs, covering about 50 employees. Miller said the county will need to focus on filling that revenue hole during the next budget cycle.

First District Supervisor Rex Bohn took a veiled swipe at Paz Dominguez, saying, “It’s nice to get a budget in a somewhat timely manner” before asking whether the budget’s $443,000 in penalties and interest from the Internal Revenue Service will be “the last surprise we have.”

“I don’t know that I can say that,” Miller responded.

County Administrative Officer Elishia Hayes voiced appreciation for Miller and the rest of the budget team, saying, “This year in particular has been a very difficult budget year for all of us.”

“I think we can echo that,” Fourth District Supervisor Virginia Bass said. 

The board voted unanimously to approve the budget.

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Food Bank Update

Leaders of Food for People, the nonprofit managing the county’s officially sanctioned food bank, delivered their latest annual report. The 40-year-old organization, which runs a network of 18 food pantries from Garberville to the Oregon border and east to Hoopa and Bridgeville, has had to change things up in recent years due to the pandemic as well as a sewer disaster at their Eureka headquarters in February of 2020. 

The average number of people served monthly increased from 12,000 to 16,000 as the pandemic unfolded, Executive Director Anne Holcomb told the board. More recent increases in fuel and food costs have led to a 25 percent increase in costs, which she said is “really concerning.”

There have been delays and cost increases in the process of getting the new Eureka building built.

“We couldn’t have asked for a worse time to try to be starting a building and construction project of this magnitude because the prices went through the roof,” Holcomb said, adding that shipping delays for steel and other building materials extended the project’s timeline by six to nine months. 

But the new building, which is slated for completion by the end December, will have added storage and operational capacity, Holcomb said. The project’s cost, after many delays and price increases, now stands at $6.1 million. 

“And I can say we’ve already raised over $ 6 million, so we are just in the last bit — I’d say we have about $50,000 to $100,000 left to raise, depending on how all of our change orders come in,” Holcomb said. “We’re really excited for everything it’s going to offer, and at this point we’re just hoping we can raise the rest so we are not taking on debt in the current rates.”

Homelessness

In the afternoon, staff from the Department of Health and Human Services delivered a presentation on the county’s latest Point in Time (PIT) count of local homeless residents and a report on services for that population. 

Robert Ward, the department’s housing coordinator, explained to the board that in the early morning hours of January 26, staff and volunteers attempted to get an accurate count of the local homeless population, defined, in this case, as “people living in a place not meant for human habitation as well as people in emergency shelters and transitional housing.”

Ward said there are several different methods for counting the homeless population, all of which inevitably miss some portion of unhoused residents. This year’s count was 1,648 homeless residents, down slightly from the previous count in 2019. But Ward noted that 746 of those folks are estimated to be chronically homeless, which represents a significant increase from 2019.

“We also saw increases of people reporting serious mental illness and substance use disorders,” he said, specifying that an estimated 48 percent of adults suffer from mental illness while 49 percent have substance use disorders.

Humboldt County’s rate of homelessness is roughly comparable to Sacramento’s, which has made headlines for exceeding the rate in San Francisco.

“I’ve heard some people say that [Humboldt County’s] is the highest per capita rate of homelessness in the country,” Ward said. Staff can’t say for sure because many counties don’t collect their own data; rather, they belong to multi-county continuums of care, where efforts and data are coordinated. “But we could be” ranked highest, Ward said, adding, “It’s quite high, that’s for sure.”

DHHS Director Connie Beck then delivered a report on the county’s homelessness services, saying her department’s role has increased dramatically over the past seven years. 

“Today we operate several housing programs for specific safety net populations,” including permanent supportive housing for people with serious mental illness, Beck said. The latest project, Pine Hill Village in Eureka, brings the county’s total to 94 units dedicated to people with serious mental illness.

The department also operates a program called Housing, Outreach and Mobile Engagement, or HOME, which accounts for most of DHHS’s housing budget. The program’s recommended budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year is $8,106,625, a total that includes funding from 11 separate grants.

Beck said her department works with just under 100 local landlords and property management companies to help clients secure housing.

“So far, HOME Assist has assisted 269 people with serious and persistent mental illness, successfully obtaining housing,” she said.

DHHS also operates the Cal Works Housing Support Program to assist families experiencing or at risk of homelessness, and a Home Safe Program to help older adults with such services as helping with utility expenses, performing deep cleaning and assistance with hoarding.

Beck outlined a number of other programs in her department, noting that their work with the homeless population involves collaboration with a variety of community-based organizations to offer permanent supportive housing, transitional housing, emergency shelter, street outreach, homeless prevention and case management services.

“The solution to homelessness is housing, of course,” Beck said at one point. This observation may sound obvious, but it highlights a particular struggle here in Humboldt County, where the housing stock is insufficient to meet local demand.

The Board of Supervisors recently authorized DHHS to work with Providence Supportive Housing on a 42-unit HomeKey project, converting the former Humboldt Inn on Eureka’s Fourth Street to a housing unit called the Mother Bernard House.

“There have been three additional HomeKey projects awarded in the county that together aim to dedicate more than 150 additional units for people experiencing homelessness,” Beck said, adding that the Eureka Housing Authority is looking to increase its stock from 196 to 350 units over the next decade.

McKay Community Forest Trail Plan

For the last item on the day’s agenda, the board heard a lengthy presentation from Hank Seemann, public works deputy director of environmental services, on a forest trail plan for the McKay Community Forest on the southeast outskirts of Eureka. 

The county has been working for the past eight years to develop the community forest, which sits on a roughly 1,200-acre tract of land formerly owned by Green Diamond and a series of other lumber companies. 

A parking area along Northridge Road in Cutten is slated to be the primary public access point to the forest. Seemann said the parking area is now ready to be opened, providing access to four miles of trails that are still works in progress but ready for public use.

“We have a lot of work to do, but I’m confident we can do it because of the community interest,” Seemann said. “And really our job as county staff is to channel and unleash the passion and the skills and the energy of people that are interested in helping develop trails.”

To that end, the county has agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Redwood Coast Mountain Bike Association to develop a bike skills park within the forest.

“One of the exciting things about the McKay Committee Forest is that we’ve got land that will be suitable … especially for mountain bike trails that will be beginner and intermediate trails,” Seemann said.

The board unanimously approved a list of staff recommendations, approving the forest trail plan, a stewardship plan and related environmental documents while directing staff to initiate a process to consider changing the name of the McKay Community Forest. According to a staff report, the forest is named after Allan McKay, the owner of a lumber company that acquired the property in 1875.

Some members of the public have called for a new name. “One commenter expressed that the name ‘McKay’ is associated with a distant historical era and has limited contemporary significance,” the staff report notes. Potential new names identified in the report include “Eureka Community Forest,” “Humboldt County Community Forest” and “Ryan Creek Community Forest.”

Bohn expressed skepticism and confusion about changing the name, saying he likes the past. But Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson said he’s happy to have a conversation about the name-change idea.

Arcata’s Gateway Area Plan may be nearing the next steps to completion,  with the Planning Commission discussing form-based codes, proposed building heights and possibly making an official recommendation during tonight’s meeting,

To recap, the Gateway Area Plan (GAP) is a subsection of the city’s General Plan, which need to be updated every few years to accommodate Arcata’s changing needs. The plan would rezone 138 acres of land in and around the Creamery District to facilitate the development of high density housing. This is necessary for a couple of reasons: First of all, you’ve probably heard that Arcata and Humboldt are expected to see huge population growth in the coming years and people need housing. Secondly, the California Department of Housing and Community Development requires all cities to create a feasible plan to build more housing. If Arcata fails to meet that requirement, it will not be eligible for all kinds of state grant programs and things like that. 

In order to prevent the city from having to build out into the surrounding agricultural lands, city staff worked to identify existing sites within the city that would have the potential for housing development. The part of town in and around the Creamery District, which staff started calling the “Gateway Area,” is ideal, according to staff, because it contains many underutilized sites that are zoned for industrial purposes. 

The Planning Commission’s discussion tonight will focus primarily on form-based codes, something you’ve probably heard mentioned a lot if you’ve been following the gateway plan. If you want to dive deep into form-based codes, you should watch this video from the Form-Based Code Workshop, held on Aug. 16. Basically, form-based codes are a way for a city to have more control over what new buildings look like. Rather than using conventional zoning, which focuses on allowed uses for a site, if Arcata adopts a form-based code, it can bake in requirements for the aesthetic of the buildings like building heights, setbacks and general building design. 

The biggest concern surrounding the city’s plans for the Gateway has been building heights. Staff is recommending that the maximum height be different for different neighborhoods within the Gateway area, ranging between five and eight stories, which some community members and planning commissioners have felt is too high. Staff is also recommending implementing a community benefits program, which would require developments to include a certain number of amenities that would benefit the community – such as green spaces, community gardens, rooftop dining, etc. – to determine the building height and density. The more benefits a developer agrees to provide, the bigger it could build. 

Some planning commissioners have expressed concerns over the community benefit program idea, saying that some of the listed amenities might only benefit residents rather than the entire community, and that some of the listed amenities should be requirements for all new development. The staff report includes a list of concerns and considerations to be discussed at the meeting written by Planning Commissioner Judith Mayer. You can read it here. 

If the commission feels ready, it may make a concrete recommendation to the Council during tonight’s meeting on any aspect of the plan, including proposed building heights. But that will depend on how the conversation goes. According to the staff report, the commission does not yet feel equipped to make any decisions until all of its concerns, and the concerns of the community have been identified. 

If you have concerns about the Gateway Area Plan, you’ll want to attend tonight’s meeting because the community will also have a chance to voice their concerns through a poll that will be taken during the meeting. 

“The polling results are not intended to show how important any particular issue is, and the results will not be used in this way,” the staff report says. “Instead, the poll will provide the public efficient access to the process to ensure all ideas are on the table among those participating. There will also be a paper option in the meeting to allow those without devices to be heard. Additionally, since users can add as many responses as they wish, the public may share devices in the meeting.” 

The Planning Commission will meet tonight at 6 p.m. You can read the full agenda and directions on how to view and participate, in person or virtually, here. 

UPDATE: The toilet has been fixed, and the Subway is back in effect.

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This is the Subway with the toilet problem. The other ones are OK, as far as we know.

Roachy speaks.

Hardcore fans of the Subway Sandwiches location at the corner of Fourth and T streets in Eureka are going to have to seek succor elsewhere for the time being, after the county’s Health Environmental Health Division closed the facility down for having an inoperable toilet and “standing wastewater on the bathroom floor” this afternoon.

“A food facility shall not operate if there is sewage overflowing or backing up in the food facility,” this afternoon’s health inspection report helpfully notes.

The facility will have to remain closed until such time as the wastewater is cleaned up and the toilet is repaired. 

Your Eureka Subway options have become extremely limited since the onset of the pandemmy. Best we can tell, the closest still-open Subway is across town in the Eureka Mall, around the corner from Winco.

DOCUMENT:

• “Inspection of Subway #23069,” Sept. 27, 2022.

Cal Poly Humboldt release:

Cal Poly Humboldt is providing support for an affected student and gathering details from partners and law enforcement about a recent police action at a local school.

The focus of Humboldt’s response has been providing support for the student who was involved, who was on campus as part of an internship. The student contacted University officials yesterday to report the situation and to request specific types of support and engagement. The University is working to help her through the situation.

The incident involved concerns about a possible gun at the school, which was reported by a witness.

The report led to an urgent response by officers from Arcata Police Department. The Humboldt student was at the location at the time of the response, and was questioned by the officers, which was a difficult and traumatic situation. She was deeply affected emotionally by the interaction.

Cal Poly Humboldt’s priority is providing support as needed by the student who was affected. The University has been in contact with APD and the City of Arcata about the situation, and is seeking further information on the matter, including their protocols and procedures. The University is also in close contact with the school site to gain a better understanding of what occurred and about their procedures.