Karelian bear dogs were bred to hunt large game, like bears. Now they are being used to save them. Jessica Reyes of the Wind River Bear Institute joins Gang Green to talk about how these fearless dogs train bears to avoid humans and how the dogs train humans to be better for bears

Want more? Check out this YouTube video or the Wind River Bear Institute’s website.

AUDIO:

“The EcoNews Report,” April 23, 2022.

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Battle lines are being drawn in the cannabis industry. On one side are family farms. On the other are larger corporate entities.

Family farms argue that culture, legacy, environmental stewardship, and decades of sacrifice have earned them a lasting foothold in the industry. Corporate operators argue that scale, efficiency, and improved operations lead to economic growth and more affordable products. Ultimately it is consumers and the marketplace itself who will decide the fate of both groups.

You may recall the biblical account of David vs Goliath. David was a young shepherd boy, while Goliath was a Philistine giant. Saul and the Israelites were facing the Philistines in the Valley of Elah. Twice daily for forty days, Goliath would challenge the Israelites to send out a combatant of their own to face him in single combat. All were afraid.

David, the shepherd boy and least likely to succeed among his family, accepts the challenge, declares victory in the name of the Lord, and strikes down the giant with a stone and sling.

In modern times, this story is used in reference to the underdog – someone, who, facing insurmountable odds, digs deep and finds a way to succeed.

Such is the case currently in the cannabis industry, both throughout California and the broader United States. Family farms, which had a lock on the industry for the last fifty years, have lost their leadership position and many are being forced out of the business. With explosive amounts of indoor and mixed-light flower coming to market, sun-grown farmers simply aren’t finding enough distribution outlets or livable prices for their work. This will likely get worse, not better in the coming months and years.

I, like many other consumers, root for the little guy and purchase locally produced cannabis products when I shop. That said, I understand market forces and am accepting the sad reality that most “legacy” producers will not continue in this business. Corporate domination is real and the end of an era where mom and pop operators made a great living farming ganja is upon us.

Like most county residents I enjoy raising my kids in the outdoors. I regularly decline city jobs in financial markets and cannabis cultivation as I simply prefer living here. That said, I fully realize that the cannabis industry allowed a little community like ours to thrive and flourish economically. Many of us were able to live far better than folks in other remote locations of the country because we made so much money weed farming – literally billions a year sloshing around the area.

Now that the money is going away, life here will change. Folks will leave the area, businesses will close, property values will deteriorate, and things won’t feel so rosy. It is for this reason that I advocate for large-scale cannabis projects here locally. It’s not because I’m a jerk or because I don’t appreciate the efforts or values of family farms and our robust regenerative agricultural community. It’s because our time is largely over, and a new chapter has begun. I dislike this reality but understand change and believe that adopting a more corporate-friendly stance is important for Humboldt’s economic future.

I’ll never forget years ago when rumors of a big box store coming to my hometown of Fortuna were swirling around. A financial advisor at the time, I welcomed the development as our area needs jobs. As a consumer and homeowner, I was also interested in lower prices as the local hardware stores are quite expensive. While I believe in local and enjoy spending money locally, I also believe in competition and price discovery.

One day at the soccer field someone was going around putting fliers on cars about keeping the big guys out of our community. It was handwritten in purple crayon – perhaps for enhanced comedic effect. The point is clear. Humboldt values being different. We value a rural lifestyle – one untarnished by the “evils” of corporate profit and I get it. I too choose to live in Humboldt for the beauty of our natural surroundings and for a bit slower-paced lifestyle. Unfortunately, the immense cannabis revenues that made life here so comfortable are going away – quickly.

Although in Humboldt it is terribly unpopular to speak fondly of corporate operators, corporations have many positive attributes, some of which I’ll explain here.

Financial Strength

Corporations tend to have deeper pockets and a greater ability to weather financial downturns. Corporations often keep cash reserves or earmark a certain percentage of profits for savings versus plow back or shareholder distributions. When challenging times come, they draw on those reserves or borrow to survive cyclical economic downturns and live to fight another day.

With greater financial strength comes more security for employees. While it is true that corporations expand and contract the workforce throughout the economic cycle, corporations are less likely to stiff employees on pay, which is common on small pot farms. The market dip of 2017 and 2018 was unkind to many workers in the hills as was last year when many employees were given a blank check. Additionally, in a corporate setting, workers are afforded more legal protections and have recourse for financial or other disputes.

Work-Life Balance

Corporate cannabis farms also offer more work-life balance. Six-day workweeks with long days are common on family farms. Some farms offer a day off every two weeks, while in extreme cases, everyday work is requested.

The larger corporate outfits I have interviewed with offer five-day works weeks with shorter days. Although cannabis farming is rigorous and time-consuming, larger farms tend to have the staffing, organization, and logistics that lend themselves to greater work-life balance.

Salary and Benefits

Well-established corporate farms also value highly skilled employees. When entertaining offers I see much more attractive compensation and benefits packages coming from larger, corporate operators. Competitive salary, dental, medical, and vision coverage, as well as corporate retirement plans are common. Paid time off, sick leave, and travel reimbursement are also offered regularly.

While I myself work on a family farm and always have, these benefit packages are enticing and common in a highly competitive corporate environment. Unfortunately, such offers are rare on small farms.

Charitable Contributions

Charitable contributions are also common in the corporate sector. U.S. corporations gave away approximately $20 billion last year according to Philanthropy Network. In fact, I read just today that a well-established cannabis company is matching up to $1,000,000 donated to the Last Prisoner Project – truly awesome stuff that needs to be acknowledged.

In addition, companies often pride themselves on many thousands of volunteer hours per year, helping different causes in the communities in which they operate. While it’s true that family farms in the cannabis industry have also been generous over the years, outsized profits fueled that generosity and falling prices are now crimping charitable inclinations.

My Two Cents

I agree that corporate scandals are real – insider trading, environmental damage, worker abuses, and illegal activities have obviously plagued the corporate sector. They have also plagued small family farms. The most appalling and most egregious cases of environmental, legal, and employee abuse I’ve seen have been at the hands of underperforming, cash-strapped small farms. While I truly believe that many of the bad actors have gone and that the remaining farmers in Humboldt are kind, loving people who honor employees and the environment, there is nothing about one’s corporate structure, funding mechanisms, or size that makes one superior or inferior. It is about morals, values, conduct, and deliverables.

I believe it’s an inherently egotistical, or perhaps fearful position to say that corporations are evil and that small operators are superior, either morally or in terms of farming process. Large farms also touch every plant and care for them exquisitely in a growing number of cases. They just perform plant-facing activities with dozens or hundreds of employees, not two. Some high-end greenhouse and indoor installments utilize rain catchment, recycled water, and solar power making them far more environmentally friendly than folks draining the creeks and burning diesel.

Many corporate entities are ethical and just and are doing their part to improve lives through economic growth and sustainable business practices. Anti-corporate views are understandable to some extent but are often short-sighted, selfish, and protectionist. Maintaining the status quo and preventing business development will only hasten our county’s economic collapse and prevent our area from staying on the map as a global production hub for cannabis. Conversely, a host of million square foot greenhouse grows will bring hundreds of millions of investment dollars to our area and put thousands of displaced farmers back to work.

Unlike the story of David and Goliath where the underdog triumphs over the larger, evil aggressor, I doubt that cannabis farmers will experience the same. Cannabis will be increasingly produced, packaged, and sold by larger, well-funded corporate entities. National legalization will only hasten this trend as that’s when the really big money will enter the fray.

Additionally, corporate operators will form strategic alliances with other corporations. Mutually beneficial business-to-business relationships will dominate the industry and leave most family farms behind. Working with one large producer is much easier and much better for cost control and predictability than sourcing products from dozens or hundreds of small ones. This reality, perhaps more than any other promises to be the demise of the vast majority of small farmers. Consolidation up and down the supply chain is underway and will intensify significantly moving forward. This will benefit a very small number of highly valuable takeover targets and will force most others out of business.

Small farms enjoyed fifty years atop this industry, but sadly that is over. As soon as CNBC, the supposed leader in business worldwide, showed $5,000 pot plants out of Mendo in 2014, the beginning of the end was born for many of us. Competition is only just beginning and without truly killer stuff and an exceptionally unique story or value proposition, most of us will fade away in the coming months.

High value, niche distribution will allow some to remain in the game, as will celebrity endorsement, regular press coverage, and vertical integration. A few successful farms will ring the register by selling their operation and or processes to a larger entity, but for most, troubled times are here and the end game is in sight. It breaks my heart every time I receive a message about another farm closing, but such is life…change is the only true constant.

Aside from getting famous, going viral, or having awesome friends in distro, radically boosting yields and quality while shredding costs is the only path forward for producers. Go get yours.

I’m rooting for us all!

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Jesse Duncan is a lifelong Humboldt County resident, a father of six, a retired financial advisor, and a full-time commercial cannabis grower. He is also the creator of NorCal Financial and Cannabis Consulting, a no-cost platform that helps small farmers improve their cultivation, business, and financial skills. Please check out his blog, his Instagram at jesse_duncann, and connect with him on Linkedin.

With the troubling impacts of climate change becoming more apparent with each passing year, conservationist M. Sanjayan has embarked on an ambitious project to spend the next seven years chronicling the resulting challenges faced by various people groups and habitats around the globe. His findings will be presented as part of the new PBS series Changing Planet. 

The first episode, which you can watch above, was released earlier this week and features several segments highlighting the efforts by local Yurok tribal members to preserve their way of life. Sanjayan’s visit to Yurok country takes him from the mouth of the Klamath River all the way up to Weitchpec as he speaks with Yurok experts about cultural burning practices, Trinity River watershed restoration projects and the long battle to remove dams to encourage salmon preservation. 

Tune in!

Current staff of the Parco de’Medici Sheraton. Photo from and email update sent to parents by a NHUHSD administrator.

Around two dozen children from Humboldt County are currently trapped in Italy, after a spring break education tour of Europe went disastrously wrong last week, after about two dozen student and several adults contracted COVID, leaving many of them institutionalized and unable to return to the United States.

About half of the students are currently locked down in Rome, in a Sheraton Hotel that was taken over by the government and turned into a secure COVID facility at the beginning of the pandemic. Those students are being kept in fairly abysmal conditions, parents say, with intermittent access to food, medicine, fresh air or even – until recently – the ability to visit one another.

The other half, who tested positive for COVID earlier in the week, are in Milan, being housed under better conditions but still trapped in the country until they test negative.

The Outpost has spoken to several parents of these students. The ones we talked to are a little panicked and more than a little angry at the Northern Humboldt Union High School District and the tour company that organized the educational trip. Partly they’re upset about what they’re calling the lack of COVID precautions taken by the organizers of the tour, but they’re also incredulous that those organizers didn’t seem to have a contingency plan in case of an outbreak – especially overseas, especially in a country with such still-strong lockdown requirements.

“It’s just a whole conflagration of fuckery,” said Rae Robison, a Cal Poly Humboldt professor with a son currently in quarantine at the Sheraton, when she spoke with the Outpost this morning.

The trip – which originally included 68 students from Arcata and Mckinleyville High Schools enrolled in AP European History courses, along with several chaperones – was planned and undertaken by EF Educational Tours, a travel company focusing on student-abroad experiences. It was originally planned to include several-day stops in the United Kingdom, France and Italy. Robinson and other parents said it was fraught nearly from the beginning.

Kids started falling sick before the group reached Milan, parents say. When they arrived there, several children tested positive, but the group quickly ran out of rapid tests. Other students started feeling ill, but did not test again until after all members of the group who had tested positive continued on to the next stop on their schedule, a villa outside Rome.

But even as kids began to get sicker, that villa proved inadequate – according to the messages sent home to parents, it lacked hot water and food services. After a day and night there, a group chaperone employed by the school district wrote a note to parents back home, which one parent shared with the Outpost:

We are staying a second night in Villa Valente — which can accurately be described as charming in a rustic way. The staff has been super helpful, but we just ate our second sandwich meal of the day because they aren’t set up for something like this.

I expect we will switch to a business class hotel — one with room service so we can get meals – tomorrow. As soon as I know more I will email you.

But when the bus pulled up to that “business-class hotel” – the Sheraton Parco de’Medici – the kids were surprised to be greeted by armed guards. The hotel was now serving as a governmental COVID facility, and everyone who had since tested positive for COVID was escorted inside and placed in isolation.

In the few days they’ve been there, they’ve been confined to their rooms and fed institutional meals, and provided very little medical attention while sick. There are no laundry services available. According to two parents, there have been bedbug outbreaks in the kids’ rooms. Until recently, they were all kept isolated from one another as well, and only some of them had the luxury of a balcony on which to catch some fresh air.

This has loosened somewhat as of today. The students are now allowed to visit one another during the day, according to parents, who have organized in a group chat to figure out what to do to help their kids. A few of them are flying to Rome right now, and at least a few more say they may join them shortly. They plan to join the school chaperones who stuck with the kids – at least one of which has not yet tested positive, and is apparently frantically running around the city attempting to secure supplies for them.

The kids may be in for a long haul. The current rules, in Italy, prescribe a 7-day waiting period between COVID tests. The kids who ended up in Rome are scheduled to test again on Monday; any who continue to test positive will apparently be stuck there for at least an additional week.

Rosemary Sherriff, a Cal Poly Humboldt geography instructor whose daughter, a sophomore at Arcata High, is one of the students in Rome, told the Outpost that she’s one of the people planning to fly out if the situation doesn’t improve quickly. She said her first priority is trying to find a way to get the kids out of the Sheraton and into a different facility. Like many parents of the Rome kids, Sherriff was aware that the kids who fell ill in Milan were able to quarantine under very different circumstances: They were allowed to stay in their regular hotel, and are able to get fresh air and exercise during quarantine. (Another Rome parent, Elise Miller, told the Outpost that it’s her understanding that the law does not require the kids to be in government-run facilities – that they can quarantine any place that will have them.)

Both Miller and Sherriff said that they have been frustrated by the fact that it seems to have fallen upon the parents, rather than the district or the tour company, to lead efforts to improve their sick kids’ situations. “It’s just a huge amount of frustration, and parents are feeling like we have to do a lot of the advocating ourselves,” Miller said.

Supplies brought to the Rome kids from a non-sick chaperone. Photo from update sent to parents by a NHUHSD administrator.

Roger Macdonald, superintendent of the NHUHSD, told the Outpost today that he and his staff have been working tirelessly with the State Department and Rep. Jared Huffman’s office to improve the students’ living conditions, including exploring the possibility of finding a new place for them to stay and upping the testing frequency. He said that he understands parents’ frustration at this time, but he wished to assure the community that the district is doing all it can to support students and their families, and that staff members on the ground in Milan and Rome are doing everything they can to help students.

He said that once everyone is home safe, the district will review the trip to see if lessons can be learned from what went wrong and what could have been differently. Everyone knew there was a risk of an outbreak, he said, but after two years of hiatus, people – parents, teachers, students – were eager to get back to the annual trip to Europe, much as they have been eager to get back to other traditional school activities.

“We’ve had kids travel for ag, for sports — a lot of us have been traveling, and we haven’t really run into this,” he said. In the meanwhile, eight of the kids currently stuck in Milan have now been cleared to come home, Macdonald added.

In a statement sent to the Outpost today, Terence Burke, a spokesperson for EF Educational Tours, wrote that the differing laws between Italian states have made it difficult to find other lodging for the Rome kids. He emphasized that students and parents are required to sign a “COVID Safe Travel” agreement, and said that the company is supporting the kids and their parents during this time. He wrote:

We have sent an additional EF Tour Director to support the group’s chaperones, who did not test positive; and we have offered to fly the students’ parents to Rome to be with the group. One parent is now on-site providing additional support and a second is on the way.

We have not been able to secure approval from the Italian government to inspect the lodging conditions; however, our Tour Directors did arrange for the group’s relocation to new rooms within the quarantine hotel. The Tour Directors are also supporting the chaperones to ensure the group has additional food and that their needs are being met. Despite Italian COVID regulations limiting the group’s transfer to a new hotel, we are continuing to work with officials in Italy to see if a transfer is feasible.

Our EF COVID Care Promise program provides comprehensive support for every travel group in the event they experience a pandemic-related travel disruption. The program provides lodging and meals, in-person representation and coordination with local authorities, translation services, flight rebooking, and the facilitation of communication between the group and their families and school back home, if necessary – all at no additional expense to the traveler and throughout the extended duration of the trip.

Meanwhile, the county’s Public Health Division is working with the students and chaperones who have returned from the trip, and who – if found positive – may be carrying a COVID variant that has yet to be seen in Humboldt County.

“Public Health is working with the group from Arcata and McKinleyville high schools on response testing and will be sending all positive tests to the state for genomic sequencing,” Public Health director Sofia Pereira wrote the Outpost this afternoon. “Turnaround time for sequencing results is typically 3-4 weeks, but because this is related to international travel we should be able have the sequencing expedited.”

Humboldt County Drug Task Force press release:

For the past few weeks the Humboldt County Drug Task Force (HCDTF) has been conducting an investigation into Jacob Silverman AKA: “High Five” (46 years old from Ukiah) for trafficking fentanyl into Humboldt County and selling fentanyl out of Garberville area hotels. Agents had information that Silverman uses follow cars with co-conspirators to carry his drugs. Silverman had two active felony warrants for his arrest out of Mendocino County for 2800.2 VC (felony evading) and 12022 PC (armed with a firearm during commission of a felony).

In the early morning hours of Friday April 22nd, 2022 HCDTF Agents observed Silverman drive into Humboldt County. Agents observed a second vehicle was following Silverman closely and it appeared to be working in tandem with him. Agents followed both vehicles until they stopped in the back driveway of a hotel in the 700 block of Redwood Dr. in Garberville.

Agents quickly identified Humboldt County resident Maxwell Elliot (26 years old from Rio Dell) in the follow car. Agents knew that Elliot had three active felony warrants in Humboldt County for 11378 H&S (possession of methamphetamine for sale), 10851 VC (auto theft), and 2800.2 VC (felony evading). Agents placed Elliot under arrest for his warrants without issue. Elliot was found to be in possession of 22 grams of methamphetamine.

Elliot was transported to the Humboldt County Jail where he was booked for the following charges:

• 11378 H&S Possession of methamphetamine for sale
• Warrants 3 felony warrants

During the jail booking process jail staff located 31 grams of fentanyl hidden inside a body cavity on Elliot’s person. Agents added charges of 11351 H&S (possession of fentanyl for sale) and 4573 PC (bringing drugs into a jail).

Agents attempted to arrest Silverman however he drove in reverse through the parking lot in an attempt to get away from the agents. Silverman ended up blocked in the parking lot of the hotel and he refused commands to show agents his hands. Silverman continually reached under his driver’s seat and would not follow commands.

HCDTF Agents called for assistance and officers from the California Highway Patrol (CHP) and deputies from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) arrived on scene. Agents gave commands to Silverman for approx. 10 minutes before he finally complied, exited the vehicle, and surrendered to arrest without issue.

Silverman was transported to the Humboldt County Jail where he was booked for the following charges:

• Warrants: 2 felony warrants
• 148(a)(1) PC Obstructing or resisting a police officer

HCDTF would like to thank the California Highway Patrol and Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office for their assistance with this investigation. Anyone with information related to this investigation or other narcotics related crimes are encouraged to call the Humboldt County Drug Task Force at 707-267-9976.

The passage of 2021’s Senate Bill 9 was supposed to herald the end of the single-family zoning that many point to as a culprit of California’s housing crisis. But four months into the new era, little has changed, and the scant enforcement of the law has come about largely because of pro-housing activists.

The new law, which allows duplexes and split lots on land previously marked as single-family only, has been met with stiff resistance by cities across the state that have passed ordinances effectively — but not directly — blocking the law in their area.

The state of California — with an annual budget north of $280 billion — is largely reliant on YIMBY, or “yes in my backyard” activists, to find out about law-breaking cities.

“The bulk of how we’re going to learn about these cases is through complaints that we receive from ordinary citizens, through advocates, and other stakeholders,” said David Zisser, who leads the Housing and Community Development Department’s newly created Housing Accountability Unit. “The fact that we’ve gotten complaints about 29 different jurisdictions is a good example of how it’s working.”

No one knows how many permits cities have issued statewide to split a lot or build a duplex, as that information is not tracked in any centralized database. Nor is there a centralized way to track the slew of local ordinances cities have passed to limit its use, state officials told CalMatters.

But some lawmakers don’t see the reliance on outside watchdogs as a problem. In fact, advocates have long been the main enforcers of housing law in the state.

“It would be abnormal if we were monitoring every action by each of the 500 cities at all times,” said Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco who has been a vocal leader in the Legislature promoting housing production. “We have to have a robust advocacy network that is monitoring, reporting and sometimes filing lawsuits. In fact, it’s a healthy sign that that’s happening.”

The attorney general has sent two sternly worded letters to cities about the law so far, and the housing department is gearing up to do the same. The jury is still out on how cities will respond.

New cops on California’s duplex beat

The state housing department received a $4.65 million budget allocation last year to build out a team of 25 staff members — not all of whom will work on enforcement full time — to make sure 16 housing laws they received explicit authority to enforce are followed.

That’s a dramatic departure from the status quo, according to Valerie Feldman, a staff attorney at Public Interest Law Project. The nonprofit legal services organization has been suing cities for decades that don’t build enough housing for low-income residents.

“It’s a big change,” she said. “But it will take time. And they will always need connections on the ground.”

Zisser, who leads the unit, said his department hadn’t received explicit statutory authority over the duplex law. One of the laws they can enforce limits a city’s ability to restrict the development of new housing, which is a concern with many of these duplex-hostile ordinances. The housing department’s main priority at the moment is the housing element, by which cities have to plan for enough housing to accommodate the growing population.

“The bulk of how we’re going to learn about these cases is through complaints that we receive from ordinary citizens.”
— David Zisser, CA’s Housing and Community Development Department

Neither the attorney general nor the housing department is dispensing their limited resources to track the local city council and planning meetings in which duplex law related-ordinances unfold, and in which city councilmembers say things like, “What we’re trying to do here is to mitigate the impact of what we believe is a ridiculous state law.”

Instead, they depend largely on advocates and local journalists to report on the shenanigans. That’s how Bonta’s office found out about Woodside, a Silicon Valley town that claimed immunity from the duplex law because the town, in its entirety, was a mountain lion habitat. A local newspaper first reported the story, and it went viral on Twitter — where many YIMBY activists pointed to Cougar Town as a poster child of the NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) mindset. Several news stories later, Bonta wrote the city a letter, and Woodside reversed course.

“What we’re doing is new, in terms of active, visible, aggressive enforcement, so it has a statewide implication and impact,” Bonta said. “I think we need to see how that plays out. But I think we could always do more, we could always do it faster.”

What could that look like? Bonta suggested maybe pouring more resources into enforcement and requiring that cities submit their duplex law implementation rules for state approval, as is the case for accessory dwelling unit ordinances. While he sees the value in centralization, he said that’s not the norm.

“Most laws don’t work that way,” he said. “You create the law for the state of California and you expect the locals to comply with it.”

The law is still so fresh and complicated for the average homeowner that YIMBYs have been the main cops on the new duplex law beat.

Dylan Casey, executive director of the California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund, a YIMBY group, said he and an intern have spent most of their recent Fridays culling through city council and planning commission agendas for more than 200 cities, marking which weekday meetings to watch and ordinances to review. The group has sent warning letters to a few of the 64 cities they say have restrictive ordinances, and filed multiple complaints with the state — which are triggers the state uses to look into cities.

Meanwhile, two employees of YIMBY Law, another pro-housing group, with the help of dozens of volunteers across the state, have created a spreadsheet of 80 cities with restrictive ordinances and shared it with the state housing department. Homestead, a development startup looking to help homeowners split their lots under the new duplex law, has also deployed two employees to track and explain these ordinances to potential clients.

Zisser and Bonta said they plan to review complaints from these groups, developers and homeowners and step in when a law is broken. On which agency takes on what city, Bonta said, “We don’t spend too much time figuring out if it’s them or us, as long as it’s somebody.”

ADU déjà vu

Accessory dwelling units — the small studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms cropping up across California’s backyards — were technically legalized in 1982. But it wasn’t until 2016 that state lawmakers made it feasible for homeowners to actually build them by stripping away prohibitive local regulations and fees. Permits for these backyard units exploded over recent years, making up about 10% of new housing stock in 2020.

When the first laws to boost ADU construction went into effect in 2017, Sen. Bob Wieckowski, a Democrat from Fremont who has authored five ADU bills, was flooded with calls from homeowners struggling to get permits. The cries for help eventually translated to stronger enforcement: Now, cities have to submit their ADU ordinances, if they have them, to the state housing department for approval, and the attorney general can step in when the local rules don’t pass muster.

“You don’t want to spend all your money on enforcement,” Wieckowski said. “On the other hand, you can’t expect a homeowner to become the plaintiff in the lawsuit against their city.”

Cities often repeat the mantra of local control, and liken their fight against the state to David and Goliath, he said. “No, it’s the city who’s the Goliath.”

Regardless of cities’ resistance, Wiener said he expects new duplexes will take several years to materialize.

“You have to figure out, does it work on this parcel?” he said. “Is there an existing building there? Can I do a lot split? Do I have to hire an architect to see what can be designed? What will work and what won’t? And so people don’t just immediately file for a permit. It’s not surprising that it’s been a slow start.”

Housing crisis enforcement on social media

Cities and the state have been clashing over solutions to the housing crisis for years, but the new enforcement approach feels punitive for some local elected officials.

Susan Candell, a city councilmember from Lafayette and member of California Alliance of Local Electeds, a new group established last year to oppose “one-size-fits-all” housing solutions from the state, said cities were coming up with these hit-and-miss ordinances because the duplex law provides too much flexibility and not enough guidance. The housing department, coincidentally, has received a complaint about Lafayette’s restrictive ordinance, to which she responded: “We’ll take every advice. If we’ve fallen into a pit hole, I apologize.”

When Pasadena, a Los Angeles suburb, claimed in its ordinance that landmark districts would be exempt from SB 9, Bonta wrote a stern warning letter that such districts were not exempt — historic districts were — and that these could be interpreted as large swaths of the city. They also shared the warning on Twitter.

In a two-page letter response, Mayor Victor M. Gordo told Pasadena residents the state had got it all wrong, and the city was indeed in compliance. In his sign-off, Gordo “respectfully encouraged” the attorney general to get to know his city before tarnishing its good name on social media.

“By now, we should all understand that governance by Twitter is ineffective,” the mayor wrote.

The letter points to a wider shift in enforcement of housing law. Esoteric city council and planning commission meetings are now broadcast online by a growing number of YIMBY activists. Admonishments once delivered to city attorneys privately can now go viral on Twitter.

“By now, we should all understand that governance by Twitter is ineffective.”
— Victor M. Gordo, Mayor, Pasadena

“What I see is they’re enforcing laws that historically have not been enforced. Part of that enforcement is in the right vein, and part of it is haphazard,” said David Coher, a planning commissioner for the city of Pasadena.

He attributes the visible, if haphazard, enforcement to mounting pressure on the state from pro-housing activists.

“This is playing to an audience in a way that it never played to an audience before,” he said.

Chris Elmendorf, a UC Davis Law professor focused on state housing law, said the mayor’s statement belies itself.

“Even though there may not be a very systematic way of gathering information about what cities are doing, cities are more in the public eye than they used to be. And Twitter is a big part of that story,” he said.

Bonta told CalMatters the state wasn’t yet ready to file a lawsuit against Pasadena, but would if it didn’t reverse course. His office is already gearing up to fight a lawsuit from a group of four LA County cities, led by wealthy Redondo Beach, that claims the duplex law “eviscerated” cities’ land use control. Bonta recently filed a brief in defense of a similar bill that makes it easier for local governments to zone for denser housing near transit.

“The question is, what are the points of leverage?” Elmendorf asked. “What are the things that you can do efficiently that cities will honor and that will ultimately hold up in court? And I think that’s the stuff that is really, really unsettled.”

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

David Gene Jordan was born in Eureka on December 17, 1969, and was a resident of Eureka his entire life. He passed away at home on March 26, 2022 after a heroic battle with cancer.

David had an infectious smile, and he was loved by all who knew him. He was kind and generous and was always thinking of others, even during his illness.

He was a graduate of Eureka High School and attended Humboldt State University. He had various jobs, but found his niche at Costco in Eureka where he worked more than 18 years and made lifelong friends.

David was a devoted son to his mother, Phyllis Jordan, and his many family members. He was preceded in death by his loving grandmother and grandfather, Melvie and Herbert Baum, and his Aunt Deloris Benefield. He is survived by his mother, Phyllis; his grandmother, Lottie Houston; aunts Dena Motto of Reno, Nevada; Peggy Silva and Sandy Johnson of Eureka, and many cousins.

David enjoyed spending time with his family, fishing, weightlifting, buying and selling storage units, and he was a big fan of the 49er’s.

David requested his body be donated to science hoping, as always, he could help others.

A Celebration of Life potluck will be held Sunday, April 24, from 4:00 to 7:00 pm at the Wharfinger Building, 1 Marina Way, Eureka. (707) 268-1973.

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