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As COVID-19 tore through California, Jennifer Hark Dietz had a decision to make. The state was making perhaps its biggest push ever to get people off the street, offering up billions of dollars for cities and organizations like hers to turn old motels into new homes.

It was risky. The Homekey program came with up-front cash and a promise to move fast and cut red tape. But it also meant taking on old buildings with little vetting, which had the potential to put a developer in a deep financial hole.

At first the gamble paid off. In just a few months, Hark Dietz’s nonprofit, People Assisting The Homeless, was housing people in the old 40-room Hollywood Orchid Suites in Los Angeles. She called it “a “shining light” for what seemed possible with the radical new program.

But then came a pale pink Travelodge in the suburb of Gardena. The city of LA had already bought the motel for $9 million, and Hark Dietz said her team didn’t have a chance to vet or tour the site. They’d only seen online photos and basic inspection reports before they took it over in December 2020. A city consultant estimated that it would take about $50,000 to start moving people into the roadside motel.

“Of course,” she said, “we know now that’s not the case.”

More than five years and nearly $3 million later, the motel — which turned out to need all new windows, plumbing and electrical, among other issues — was still vacant earlier this year. There was plywood over some of the windows, and someone graffitied a ghost on one side.

The boom-or-bust results in Los Angeles underscore how little is known publicly about a generational project with a high price tag and even higher stakes. Some projects were huge successes. Others were total failures. Dozens remain stuck in limbo. CalMatters found there’s been little public accountability for any of it.

Launched by Gov. Gavin Newsom in the summer of 2020, Homekey awarded more than $3.8 billion to local governments to convert motels and other buildings into homeless housing, thrusting many local governments into a new role running multimillion-dollar real estate projects. Cities and counties could hire outside contractors to help or do the work themselves, skipping some of the usual building process for the sake of speed.

It was unlike anything the state had ever done, largely because it sprang from desperation. Homekey launched during peak COVID, five months before vaccines were available, and after cities had already moved thousands of unhoused people into motels through Project Roomkey, another Newsom program. But those rooms were temporary, and officials were scrambling to prevent a mass exodus back to the streets.

With Homekey, local officials across the state bought and gutted Motel 6s, Best Westerns and roadside inns. They got more creative as the program evolved: Tiny homes sprouted in Silicon Valley, and Santa Cruz retrofitted an old dentist’s office. In Southern California, housing took shape in a former Tri-Delt sorority house, an earthquake-stricken church and a hostel that once served as a refuge for Japanese Americans returning from World War II internment.

Live Oak Apartments in Ukiah on Feb. 26. Live Oak offers its residents access to common spaces, such as a community garden and meeting rooms for visitors. Photo by Manuel Orbegozo for CalMatters

“What we’re doing here today is multiples of what any state in American history has committed to address this crisis of homelessness,” Newsom said at a 2021 press conference announcing a major Homekey expansion.

The program came with little built-in oversight. Earlier this year, state lawmakers killed a bill to audit Homekey. No state agency has publicly analyzed the program in detail to find out what’s working and what’s not.

The challenge now: A new and more complex phase is already underway with up to $2 billion from the voter-approved Prop. 1 mental health bond. But no one has publicly accounted for how many of the program’s original projects stalled out and how many succeeded.

To find out what happened, CalMatters filed more than 100 public records requests with cities and counties that were awarded Homekey funds. We asked for key details on 250 projects announced through the end of 2024, covering all but a handful of projects for which less public data was available. Those state and local records — along with dozens of visits to Homekey sites, plus interviews with people who built and lived in them — create a first-of-its-kind window into how it all played out.

Among our findings:

• Homekey made producing housing simpler. But it came at a cost. Homekey provided billions of dollars in housing funding up front, allowing some developers to sidestep the usual webs of investors and lenders and finish much faster than normal. But fewer funders also means less oversight. With rushed vetting, some projects got bogged down in delays, blown budgets or worse. At least one Homekey developer was forced out of business by an unwieldy project. Another is facing fraud charges.

• When Homekey worked, those involved stress that it really worked. Nearly 13,500 people now live at Homekey sites, according to the state Housing Department. For small and rural communities, such as Glenn County, the program provided crucial cash for their first-ever homeless housing. Officials from Mendocino County to Ventura say they were able to stabilize people longer term by adding stronger ties to public services and extra investment in resources such as counseling.
• Those successes magnify the opportunities squandered. Projects involving about 3,000 homes — roughly 1 in 5 promised by the program — weren’t finished as of the end of last year. Another 2,000 units have people living in them on a temporary basis but haven’t been converted into permanent housing, the program’s main goal. In 10 instances involving 500 more units, the state publicized grants that later were canceled or that never materialized because local officials or developers backed out.
• A lack of transparency raises familiar questions about the program’s future. State officials stress that they have extended deadlines and improved vetting for the program’s latest bond-funded iteration, Homekey+. But they refused to publicly provide details about that vetting process. And as homeless services providers have long warned, there remains no guaranteed state funding to keep existing or planned Homekey projects going.

Yes, many Homekey projects opened late or over budget. But, officials emphasize, they still opened.

Newsom said he considers the program a “phenomenal success.”

“We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of projects all across the state of California that they’re trying to manage and organize and operate,” he said when CalMatters asked about it at a recent press conference. “And I imagine each one of them brings its own opportunities and own challenges as we move forward and implement at a scale we’ve never implemented in the state’s history.”

Taryn Sandulyak knows that better than most. The Bay Area developer thought Homekey might be her big break, but it ultimately put her out of business. She sees a fundamental mismatch at the heart of the program. It wanted high quality, high speed and low budgets.

“You can only have two of those,” Sandulyak said. “You really can’t ever have three. That’s the issue with Homekey, is they give you not quite enough money to do it, and they want you to do it really, really fast and really, really well.”

The chasm between Homekey successes and failures isn’t a simple, one-size-fits-all story. But it does provide an outline of what it will take to make good on California’s big effort to finally make a dent in its homelessness crisis.

‘Failing was not an option’

On the west side of Ventura, just as the surf town creeps up into the hills toward Ojai, sits what used to be one of the city’s worst nuisance properties: a nearly 100-year-old apartment building once known, in a nod to local drug slang, as the “Booyah Mansion.”

The city’s housing authority, Ventura Housing, cobbled together enough money in 2019 to buy the building. But it didn’t have enough cash to fix all 300-something code violations at the crime-ridden property — until Homekey came along.

“We had some scary stuff go on here,” said Karen Flock, Ventura Housing’s real estate development director. “This property failing was not an option.”

Now known as El Portal, the 29-unit apartment complex today serves as a lifeline for a mother with 9-year-old-twins, one severely autistic. It’s a refuge for a woman who lived for six years in a city-funded Tuff Shed. Another neighbor still keeps his shopping cart from the street in his apartment as a reminder of what he’s been through, and why he can never go back.

Cynthia Gomez, 60, at her home in El Portal apartments in Ventura on Feb. 26. Gomez, who was formerly homeless, now lives in a studio apartment. Photo by Julie Leopo-Bermudez for CalMatters

Ventura and other cities and counties that were able to pull off Homekey projects relatively on time and on budget credit a variety of factors for their success. Some grantees provided services themselves rather than contracting them out, better integrating public resources. Others raised extra money for on-site social services or worked closely with first responders to head off concerns about crime and stabilize residents.

Jeffrey Lambert, CEO of Ventura Housing, said the crucial thing was realizing early that Homekey money alone isn’t nearly enough. Instead, the city combined it with other public and private funding, staffing and resources. Projects that failed or got stuck in limbo often fell apart after they ran out of money.

“Homekey works,” Lambert said, “because of all the stuff added on top of it.”

For housing researchers such as Ryan Finnigan, deputy director of research at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, the real strength of Homekey was not the building minutiae. It was the attempt to challenge the state’s status quo of painstakingly slow housing development while people keep pouring onto the streets.

“If we’re not willing to try a new approach,” he said, “then we’re not going to learn as much about how we can be more creative, how we can work with more urgency than the current systems.”

As fraught and full of delays as the construction process can be, getting a project completed is often just the first hurdle for Homekey. Once a project opens its doors, it typically needs significant resources in addition to the state funding. Mendocino County credits much of its project’s success to extra services for residents, which aren’t paid for by the state grant, said Megan Van Sant, a senior program manager for the county who oversees the Homekey site.

At the former Best Western hotel now known as Live Oak Apartments, there’s a therapist on retainer for tenants, plus a dog trainer paid to work with problem pets. Both try to help residents resolve any issues that come up before they escalate into grounds for an eviction.

To provide those extras, the county runs the project itself, rather than contracting with an outside service provider as many Homekey projects do. Two county staffers work full-time inside the building, using their connections to do everything from enrolling residents in Medi-Cal to pairing them with mental health services.

All that is expensive.

“I think the state should continue to support these projects,” Van Sant said. “The state asked communities to do these projects, and they cost more to do well than what you can earn in rent.”

Resident Sherry Collins inside her room at Live Oak Apartments in Ukiah on Feb. 26. Photo by Manuel Orbegozo for CalMatters

Sherry Collins, 66, moved into the project three years ago, at a time when she was terrified of what would come next. Her husband had died, her health was failing, she couldn’t work, and she couldn’t afford to keep living in her cabin in the tiny coastal city of Fort Bragg.

Now she feels like she’s home. Collins decorated the window of her room with little red and pink hearts and adopted a kitten with extra toes, whom she named Mr. Handsome. She continues to deal with health challenges after losing a leg to diabetes about a year ago. The building has only four units accessible for people with disabilities, making it a challenge to accommodate everyone, but one recently opened up for Collins, where she can more comfortably shower.

“They have been awesome to me,” Collins said. “They’re more like family.”

Never-ending projects

For Sandulyak, Homekey was too good to refuse.

Five years earlier she had co-founded Firm Foundation Community Housing, which helped Bay Area churches turn their parking lots and backyards into tiny homes for homeless residents.

Homekey was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dramatically scale up that vision by using millions in state funds to house dozens of people in Vallejo. It would be the small nonprofit’s most ambitious project by far.

Sandulyak never suspected that by applying for Homekey, she had doomed her organization.

Firm Foundation was awarded $12 million in 2022 to build a 47-unit modular apartment building called the Broadway Project. Over the next four years, nearly everything that could go wrong did.

Some problems had nothing to do with Homekey. The general contractor went bankrupt, and the nonprofit tapped to operate the facility squabbled with the city, leaving the project in limbo for a year. The state wouldn’t let Firm Foundation pick a new partner to run the housing, which Sandulyak says further delayed the opening.

Other problems were directly related to Homekey. By design, the program forced cities to take a much more hands-on role with housing development than they were used to. Vallejo wasn’t prepared for that responsibility. It fumbled its attempt to get a key federal grant and failed to set up important safeguards that protect affordable housing projects from financial risks.

Soon, Sandulyak had $2 million in bills and no way to pay them. With construction three-quarters done, the project ran out of money. Firm Foundation was forced to stop work.

It became such a nightmare that the Vallejo City Council asked for an independent audit to find out what went wrong and why. The audit blamed both the city and Firm Foundation for allowing the project to run out of money before it was finished. Firm Foundation vastly underestimated the project’s cost, and the city bungled efforts to secure additional funds.

In some ways, the audit found, the very nature of Homekey helped set the project up for failure.

One big problem was the timeline. Homekey required projects to finish construction within one year of their award, and to move people in 90 days after that. To meet those deadlines, Firm Foundation created budgets before the architectural drawings were even done, contributing to serious cost underestimates, the audit found.

The audit also found a lack of oversight at the Broadway Project, which it said is typical of Homekey projects. Normally, a single affordable housing project uses funding from multiple sources, including the city, the county, the state, federal funds, tax credits, private banks and more. The more funders and investors, the more eyes watching and holding the developer accountable. With Homekey, the city applying for the grant typically takes on all those risks by itself, the audit found.

The official ribbon cutting at the grand opening of Broadway Village in Vallejo on March 5. Photo by Nathan Weyland for CalMatters

On a recent Thursday morning, Sandulyak gathered with city officials and her construction partners in front of a crowd to celebrate what they, at times, had thought would be impossible: the Broadway Project was finally open. Behind them rose the terracotta-colored wall of the sleek, new, modular apartment building. A red ribbon waited in front of them.

On the count of three, Sandulyak helped Vallejo’s assistant city manager snip the ribbon. The crowd cheered.

The project ended up coming in two and a half years late and 70% over budget. Despite those setbacks, the audit found it still cost less per unit and was built more quickly than the region’s average affordable housing project.

At right, Firm Foundation Community Housing Executive Director Taryn Sandulyak at the grand opening of Broadway Village in Vallejo on March 5. Photo by Nathan Weyland for CalMatters

But it cost Sandulyak everything. She laid off three of her four employees, and she plans to lay off the last one and dissolve her organization. The nonprofit is still on the hook for more than $1 million in unpaid bills related to the project.

Despite her pride in the finished building, Sandulyak wonders how much more housing her nonprofit could have built — if only she’d never applied for Homekey.

Still, 52 people now have somewhere to call home.

“I’m unshaken in my belief that that is worth it,” Sandulyak said.

One of those people is 62-year-old Terrence White, a former refinery worker who was forced into early retirement by an injury and can’t afford market-rate rent. Now, he pays $294 a month and finally has his own place.

“It feels wonderful,” he said.

The Homekey gold rush

During the frantic first two years of Homekey, when many experienced affordable housing developers were sitting out the untested new program, an LA company called Shangri-La Industries stepped in to help fill the void. It scored nearly $115 million in contracts to build 500 homes for homeless Californians in cities from Salinas to San Bernardino.

But a federal indictment and a separate civil lawsuit allege that millions in state funds instead went to fund a lavish lifestyle for the company’s chief financial officer.

Among the charges attributed in court records to Shangri-La’s former CFO, Cody Holmes: $46,000 in monthly rent for a Beverly Hills house with a pool. Designer gifts for a girlfriend, including a $127,000 diamond necklace and a $111,000 crocodile Birkin bag. A $5,000-a-month lease on a Ferrari Portofino. Another $53,000 for Coachella passes, and $44,000 for flights on private jets.

All this while many of the desperately needed motel rooms sat empty.

Homekey set a low bar for contractors to qualify: They had to have worked on at least two affordable housing projects that included at least one homeless tenant.

Shangri-La easily cleared that hurdle. But had any state or local officials done more digging, they might have seen warning signs.

Shangri-La’s construction business was sued twice for breach of contract in 2018 and 2019, court records show, after two firms alleged that it failed to pay them. The company was also a contractor on a troubled LA veteran housing project, where records first reported by KCRW show Shangri-La partners sold the property to themselves, increasing the project’s budget by $8 million.

With Homekey, federal prosecutors allege that Holmes “knowingly submitted fake bank records” to the state Housing Department to boost Shangri-La’s credentials — financial claims that state officials apparently failed to verify with the banks. Holmes has pleaded not guilty, and an attorney representing him declined to comment.

As the company took on the Homekey projects, property records show that entities connected to Shangri-La or its partners paid around $13 million for actress Milla Jovovich’s Beverly Hills mansion, adding to a portfolio that included a $7 million oceanfront home in Long Beach purchased two years earlier.

In a separate civil fraud case, state prosecutors allege in court records that Shangri-La went behind the state’s back and took out undisclosed loans on the Homekey buildings, giving up control of the sites and violating their contract with the state. That became a major problem when the company defaulted on the loans.

For several of the properties, no one had filed crucial paperwork to ensure that they remained affordable housing. After the buildings ended up in foreclosure, some were scooped up by companies with no commitment to homeless housing.

Homekey contracts tasked local officials with vetting projects and reviewing contractors’ organizational documents, budgets and other key details. But records show state officials also reviewed Shangri-La’s financials, and once they paid out the Homekey money, they failed to verify that paperwork was completed to restrict the buildings to affordable housing.

The state Housing Department and several local governments that hired Shangri-La for Homekey projects declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.

Andy Meyers, the former CEO of Shangri-La, acknowledged in an interview that he had “a lack of control” over his company. He has sued Holmes for fraud. He also blamed the local and state officials.

“My CFO had a lot of wrongdoing,” he said. “But it was a confluence of events that caused each project to go bad.”

Meyers said officials’ failure to file the proper affordable housing restrictions, which were also required by his lender, triggered a financial disaster that led his company to default on some of the properties. On two projects that Shangri-La did open in San Bernardino and Salinas, he estimated that the company incurred around $11 million in unexpected costs.

“We have spent so much money following their guidelines and following their timetables,” he said, “and they never followed their guidelines or timetables.”

Monterey County Supervisor Chris Lopez rallied support for a Homekey project in his hometown of King City. He thought Shangri-La made sense for four projects in the county, since it had already opened one Homekey site in Salinas.

But it didn’t take long for constituents to start asking why rooms were sitting empty behind chain-link fences.

“The longer it went on without seeing any movement, the flag started to get raised,” Lopez said. “I was starting to hear less and less communication and more sort of finger pointing.”

Local officials like Lopez had to start from scratch, raising millions more dollars to revive the projects as encampments swelled. It took 10 different deals totaling $16 million to open the King City project in March, three years behind schedule.

The full trail of Shangri-La’s deceit stretches from the state’s agricultural heartland to the edge of the Southern California desert. A $27 million Thousand Oaks hotel project sits abandoned today, robbing a region of 77 homes while it had a decade-long housing waitlist. Another $16 million project scrapped in Salinas would have provided 58 homes. Officials still plan to salvage 200 homes in other parts of Monterey County. The only two Shangri-La projects that stayed open during the legal battle, two motels in Southern California, were full of people who were plunged into messy foreclosure disputes.

The Quality Inn & Suites building, a former Shangri-La project, stands vacant in Thousand Oaks on Feb. 26. Photos by Julie Leopo-Bermudez for CalMatters

Carrie Harmon, San Bernardino County’s director of community development and housing, said in an email that “the county entered into this effort in good faith, relying on representations that later proved to be inaccurate.”

Even some of those whose Homekey projects went well say they’re not surprised that things went sideways. In Mendocino County, Van Sant said the state’s oversight was limited to quarterly progress reports. Once the money was spent, the state stopped asking for any information at all.

“They gave us a bunch of money, made us do some paperwork, and then they’re out of here,” Van Sant said.

For Colleen Robinson, public officials’ failure to see the red flags with Shangri-La was life-changing.

Robinson, now 62, survived years on the street after losing her job and fleeing a bad relationship. The All Star Lodge in downtown San Bernardino was her chance to start over. Shangri-La did manage to renovate and open that project in late 2022.

Two years later, the bank foreclosed. Because no one had put the affordable housing restriction on the property, the new owner told Robinson and other tenants that it was going to quadruple the rent. She said the new owner neglected the building; weeds and stray cats reclaimed the parking lot, police sirens blared, and neighbors died with little explanation.

“This would give hell a run for its money,” Robinson said.

Harmon said the county was still trying to buy the building and figure something out, but Robinson didn’t wait around to see how the saga ended. On a Thursday in February, she packed up and boarded a Greyhound bus for Iowa, where one of her children lives.

Homeless veterans still waiting

An unfinished motel conversion in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles on January 27. The project is expected to finish more than a year after the original deadline, city records show.

Some Homekey projects still haven’t opened.

Santa Cruz County has three badly delayed Homekey projects, one of which will be more than four years late when it is slated to finally be finished at the end of next year. For that project, the county obtained more than $6 million to convert rustic vacation cabins under a grove of redwood trees into housing for homeless veterans. The state initially set a completion deadline of 2023, but the project ran out of money before it crossed the finish line, forcing construction to stop.

There were many reasons why, but one stands out: underestimating the cost, said Robert Ratner, director of Santa Cruz County’s Housing for Health division.

The developers had never undertaken a project this large, and that inexperience contributed to the budgeting error, Ratner said. But so did the design of Homekey, which capped what the state was willing to pay per unit at about half what it takes to build affordable housing in some parts of California.

The idea was that projects would be cheaper because they were converting existing buildings, while also cutting out extra layers of bureaucracy that add time and expense. That led developers to low-ball budgets, which came back to bite them when the savings weren’t as great as anticipated, Ratner said.

Once the budgeting error was made, neither the state nor the county caught it, Ratner said. The county assumed that the state would scrutinize all Homekey applications and throw out any that didn’t seem viable, Ratner said. But it appears that in reality, the state was relying on the counties to do that vetting.

Santa Cruz County had little experience analyzing whether a construction project was adequately budgeted. Typically, the county relies on other funders, such as construction lenders and tax credit investors, to do that job. But those investors weren’t present here.

When asked whether he and his colleagues had done their due diligence to make sure the projects were realistic, Ratner was straightforward.

“I would say no,” Ratner said. “I can’t say yes with a straight face at this juncture.”

Other projects just never happened.

A $14 million Homekey award was supposed to help breathe new life into the Hotel Travelers, a rundown, century-old building in Oakland’s Chinatown, as housing for people returning from incarceration. But once the developer got a look at the building, that plan fell apart. An inspection revealed such severe issues with the building’s construction that the developer determined it would be “morally untenable” to proceed. Oakland returned the grant.

In total, CalMatters found at least 10 cases where a Homekey award was announced, only for the grantee to later withdraw their application, return or redirect the money, or have the state claw it back. Some instances had more public explanation than others.

City officials in Fresno voted down their own project. Long Beach was unable to come up with a suitable location for $2 million worth of brand-new tiny homes left sitting in storage. Projects in Marin and Mariposa counties evaporated when real estate deals fell through, and the state rescinded its grant for a project in Salinas after a nonprofit partner pulled out.

Newsom’s legacy and a financial cliff

Despite the vastly different outcomes at Homekey projects around the state, there’s no plan for a comprehensive audit to see what worked and what didn’t — a decision that raises the question of whether the state has done enough to grapple with Homekey as it forges ahead with the new version of the program, Homekey+.

Earlier this year, lawmakers nixed a public accounting proposed by Assemblymember Leticia Castillo, a Republican from Corona.

“While the program has expanded housing options, critical questions remain about its long-term impact and cost-effectiveness,” a summary of Assembly Bill 505 said. “It is unclear how many Homekey-funded units remain occupied after one year, how many individuals successfully transition to stable, long-term housing, and whether Homekey’s cost per unit is competitive.”

The bill was never publicly debated. It died in January.

The state did do one audit of multiple homeless services programs in 2024. It didn’t get into Homekey delays or what actually happened to people living in the buildings, but it analyzed the costs of eight projects. Based on that small sample, the auditor concluded that Homekey was “likely” cost-effective, with an average cost of $144,000 per unit, compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars more it can cost for new construction in California.

The challenge is that when Homekey plans fell short of ambitions at job sites around the state, the consequences were often murky. In extreme cases, where cities acknowledged that projects failed to materialize, the state has clawed back grants. But usually, the main penalty for blown deadlines or other missteps is that the state may hold it against a local government or developer the next time it applies for funding — a dynamic that provides no public transparency.

Gary Wish stands outside El Portal apartments in Ventura on Feb. 26, 2026. Photo by Julie Leopo-Bermudez for CalMatters

What happens next will be left up to a new state housing agency set to be launched this summer, the California Housing and Homelessness Agency. That effort is expected to include a new development committee to “provide centralized, coordinated guidance to state housing policy and funding decisions.”

For now, the state’s Housing Department maintains that it “monitors each project closely” if issues arise or deadline extensions are granted. Even with widespread delays, the agency maintains that “Homekey has helped build more and faster.”

The state said it is learning as it gives out the new Homekey+ funding. After seeing so many projects miss the one-year deadline, the state doubled the timeline for new construction to two years. Homekey+ projects that serve veterans now can propose bigger budgets for new builds, potentially addressing the issue of under-budgeted projects running out of money.

Officials also said they’re scrutinizing applications more closely now, including looking carefully at whether applicants are budgeting enough funds for their proposed projects, said California Health and Human Services Secretary Kim Johnson.

“We are improving our own vetting process, if you will,” she said during a recent news conference, “to ensure these projects are successful in delivering.”

The state’s housing department maintains that Homekey accomplished a major feat: building thousands of units despite a global pandemic, labor shortages, supply chain issues and other challenges.

“It is tremendously rewarding to see so many vulnerable Californians housed so quickly, and to have voters expand the successful Homekey model to house and support veterans and others facing behavioral health challenges,” Assistant Deputy Director Cari Scott said in a statement.

As the state’s housing policies shift, there’s one big question left for people like Van Sant in Mendocino: Will there be enough money to keep Homekey projects running?

Most of the projects have a pay-as-you-go model, versus standard 10- or 15-year affordable housing financing — a calculation that leaves a financial cliff looming for thousands of Homekey homes.

“If [Homekey] is going to be a long-term, permanent, successful program,” Van Sant said, “I think the state’s going to have to find a way to find some ongoing funding for it.”

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Data reporters Erica Yee and Kate Li contributed to this story.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter speaks during The Western Growers California Gubernatorial Candidate Forum in Fresno on April 1, 2026. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters

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

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Katie Porter is taking her L’s in stride.

The Democratic former congressmember from Orange County released an ad this week addressing her lowest moment so far in her race for governor: a video showing her yelling at a staffer who came into the frame of her Zoom interview, telling her to “get out of my f–king shot.”

The video came out in October on the heels of another viral video in which Porter argued with a reporter and threatened to walk out of an interview.

Porter was widely panned as being unable to control her temper. She took a hit in the polls and hasn’t climbed back since.

In the new ad, she references it: “Now, will you please get out of my shot?” she says lightheartedly with a crowd of laughing, whiteboard-wielding supporters behind her.

It’s a risk for her campaign, designed to show Porter can make fun of herself and isn’t avoiding talking about her perceived weaknesses. If the yelling incident was the worst thing about her, the ad suggests, there’s not much to be afraid of.

But it’s also a reminder that she doesn’t have much to lose in the final weeks of a race that has largely passed her by.

Last fall, Porter, a UC Irvine law professor, was one of the more recognizable names in the field, with national liberal accolades for refusing corporate donations, flipping a Republican congressional seat in the 2018 blue wave and for grilling CEOs in Congressional hearings.

But the progressive, who supports single-payer health care, free child care and college tuition and higher taxes on large corporations, has struggled to sustain a liberal base. Many coveted factions of the state’s Democratic establishment, including major labor unions, have coalesced around former U.S. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, billionaire Tom Steyer, or at one point, now-disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell.

Addisu Demissie, a Democratic strategist who ran Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2018 campaign and his successful campaign against a recall in 2021, said he’s surprised Porter hasn’t won more Democratic support after Swalwell’s exit a month ago. In polls, voters have instead flocked to Becerra while Sacramento power players like Planned Parenthood of California, SEIU, the California Medical Association and the California Teachers Association have split between him and Steyer.

The videos “arrested any momentum she may have had,” Demissie said. “That matters in a race like this, where fundraising matters and elite opinion certainly matters. I think that has hamstrung her.”

‘There’s this perception that women should not exhibit anger.’
— Sacramento State University professor Kimberly Nalder

Now, Porter is the only woman left in a crowded field of eight, apparently losing the race based on personality. Her fundraising over the past four months has been lukewarm, with campaign donors giving her just under $3 million — less than she raised in the second half of last year.

To experts, it shows voters and political insiders continue to hold female candidates to higher standards than men.

“One thing that has hurt her is evidence of her anger coming out,” said Sacramento State University professor Kimberly Nalder, who researches gender and politics. “There’s this perception that women should not exhibit anger, but it’s perceived as strong when men do it.”

Porter tries calculated restraint

The videos were particularly damaging for Porter because they appeared to confirm longtime speculation that she’s a harsh boss and a “scold.”

She’s repeatedly asked about them during forums and debates. One political strategist told CalMatters Porter could secure the “angry woman vote” but not much else.

Porter has said the incidents captured on video were mistakes, that she apologized to the staff member she yelled at and that they continued to work together. She told the San Francisco Chronicle that the staffer recently sent her a text expressing support. Last month, the Washington Post reported, 30 former staffers signed an open letter calling the videos “a caricature built from a few clips on a bad day.” The letter’s organizer, Maine congressional candidate Jordan Wood, did not respond to an interview request made to his campaign.

In recent weeks she’s sought to more directly counter the temperament questions. During two televised debates in the past two weeks, she made calculated displays of restraint, holding back several times as the other candidates — all men — squabbled around her, and, at times, interrupted her.

“I can’t believe that on a stage with 30 minutes of interrupting and bickering and name-calling and shouting and disrespect for everyone up here who’s stepping into public service, that anyone wants to talk about my temperament,” she said during a debate Tuesday night on CNN.

“You are actually interrupting them, too,” Republican candidate Chad Bianco retorted, though Porter had waited for the moderators to call on her.

In an interview last month, Porter would not say whether she thinks sexism has stalled her, but said as the only woman in the race, and a single mother of three, she relates to voters.

“I can’t really comment on how every voter thinks about everything,” she said. “Women understand better what it’s like to push the shopping cart, what it’s like to have to write that check for that permission slip. Those are decisions that I’ve made. I think I have an ability to relate to Californians precisely because I’m a mom.”

Progressives have questions

She’s also struggled to attract solid liberal support as she appeared to vacillate on key progressive issues.

In Congress, Porter was a vocal supporter of “Medicare for All,” but last year she told Politico single-payer health care was unrealistic for California.

The proposal is estimated to cost the state nearly $400 billion and would need federal approval — a non-starter with President Donald Trump. Yet supporting single-payer remains a progressive rallying cry, and a litmus test for the left.

During the state Democratic Party convention this spring, Porter reversed herself again and resumed her support for single-payer.

She also raised eyebrows by courting the support of billionaire crypto executive Chris Larsen, who is spending his money this year fighting proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy. He donated to Porter’s campaign last year before revoking his support in March when she endorsed a San Francisco ballot measure to raise taxes on corporations with highly paid CEOs. Larsen, who supports Republican Steve Hilton, declined to comment through a spokesperson.

And she shocked labor leaders last month when she criticized the state’s agricultural overtime law. In a room full of farmers in Fresno, she got applause for saying regulations like the law that grants farmworkers overtime after 8 hours each day “don’t make sense.” Growers have tried for years to overturn or limit that law; early studies have found many have responded by cutting workers’ hours and hiring other contractors.

Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation, which has jointly endorsed Porter, Steyer and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, saidPorter had previously given the federation a different answer about farmworker rights.

The comments prompted a flurry of weekend phone calls with union leaders before Porter clarified on social media that she supports the eight-hour workday.

“It was an educational experience for her,” said Gonzalez, who said she agrees Porter has been judged too harshly on temperament as a female candidate. “You can’t just be told something by business and just change your position on something, especially without coming and talking to us.”

Labor groups were also perplexed earlier this year when an independent political spending group supporting Porter’s candidacy received a $150,000 donation from Uber, which also gave to Hilton and a group supporting Swalwell. In response, the California Teamsters, which has endorsed Porter but opposes autonomous driving that Uber supports, withdrew its own $100,000 contribution. The union spent that money on its own ads supporting Porter.

A spokesperson for the political action committee, Danny Kazin, would not answer questions about who was directing the PAC’s activities. Uber spokesperson Zahid Arab did not respond to questions about the PAC or explain why the company supported Porter.

Porter denied that soliciting support from business has hurt her standing with progressives.

“I will talk to every Californian, every union, every business, every nonprofit, every entity, every local leader,” she said. “The job of the governor is to listen and to learn and then to make good decisions. I think it’s important that I’ve been talking to entities, including some that I haven’t had the chance to work with before.”

In the meantime, many progressives — even those who previously backed Porter — have flocked to Steyer. Assemblymember Alex Lee, a Cupertino Democrat, was one of Steyer’s earliest progressive backers in the race. Two years ago, he supported Porter in her quest for a U.S. Senate seat but said Steyer won him over this year campaigning against “the corporate status quo.”

“I have no regrets endorsing Katie Porter for the U.S. Senate where I think she would’ve been a great senator,” Lee said in a text message.

Steyer previously opposed single-payer but in December became a vocal proponent, earning him the endorsement of the Nurses Association. The state’s two major teachers unions also back him and SEIU jointly endorsed him and Becerra.

“It’s disappointing to me that some organizations and people that I really respect are not supporting Katie and are supporting Steyer,” said Sal Rosselli, president-emeritus of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, a longtime Porter backer.

Rosselli said he anticipated some of Porter’s perceived weaknesses and said it’s good that “she’s not so tight in Sacramento.” He said he hopes Porter’s new ad addressing the video would help turn things around.

“If a guy did that, this would not be happening, in terms of that reaction,” he said.

With great sadness, we announce the passing for Frederick William Lewis. He was a devoted father, brother, grandfather, cousin and friend to many. He was born in Hoopa on April 24, 1969 and peacefully began his last journey on May 2, 2026 at St. Joe’s Hospital in Eureka , surrounded by loved ones.

Fred received his AA in Substance Abuse Counseling from CR in 2012. He chose this field from being clean and sober for several years. He wanted to be able to help people in the battle with addiction the same way he was helped. One of his many mottos was “No matter the age or how many doubts or setbacks, if you really want it, go out and work for it.” That’s exactly what he did.

One of his many great qualities was being caring and compassionate towards not only his loved ones, but complete strangers. Every Thanksgiving he would make plates with all the leftovers and hand them out to the homeless. He loved to help anyone in need. The youth, elders or people he saw were struggling. He had the biggest heart and left a huge impact on anyone and everyone he came across. He could light up an entire room with his big dimpled smile and his infectious laugh. He was the type of person who’d give the shirt off his back to give to someone in need. No matter the situation, he would always find a solution and make it happen, with a smile on his face.

Some of the things he loved to do was fishing, cutting wood, going to our ceremonial dances, picking root and other traditional materials, while teaching others. He spent most, if not all of his time outdoors, with family and his closest friends. Being around his friends brought him peace and solace, they were all a huge part of, not only his life but his sobriety. His friends were a big part of his foundation. With a huge heart Fred started his own, not so little tribe, which includes, from his wife Laura. Josh (Brody), Daniel and his wife Janelle (Jaydin and Jeziah) and Derek (Jordahlea). He continued to grow his family with Tina came, Ayela and her fiance Sean(kyleigh and kohl), Hawk and wife Corrina( Angel, Halo, Malachi and Zaykima). They even had L.T and her husband Jake (Jorden and Odin), Poh-lik-lah and wife Cayla (Pj), Ameila and her fiance Thomas (Jack, Faith and Jordahlea). Lastly with Bonnie, who he spent many years with, they had destiny and their grandson Tyler.

At this point the family would like to acknowledge his circle was huge and there is no way to thank everyone individually. His circle contained his family, friends from downriver, upriver, Hoopa, the coast, the 12-step community and countless others. Please know we might not know you but we appreciate the space you had in this life.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Athena (Pat), Franklin Sr., and Gary Willison; his siblings Darrell Thorton Jr., Franklin Lewis Jr., MaryAnn Kathleen, and Athena Willison; his grandbabies, Zaylah and Zakima Erickson; his nieces Jillian and Jerry; loving cousin Celinda Lewis; and lastly, two women who shaped his childhood, Donna Bailey and Rebecca Ferris.

He was survived by his siblings Carolyn Lewis (Angie, Rebecca, and Sophie); Frank’s kids; Ginette Lewis and kids; Preston Lewis and kids; Kira, Jacqeline, and kids; Tanya (Erika) and kids; Derek and son; Talissa and daughter; and Sarah. GaryDean Lewis (Koo, Sammi, Spencer), Nora Lewis, Shantelle Willison and husband Mike (Russell, PerGish, and Chegemmem), Nikki Rube and husband Edward (Calvin, Nate, and Gerrious), Linda Daniels and husband Cody (Marissa, Jayce, and Jesse), Micheal Willison (Micheal Jr. and Sawyer), and Michelle Rocha and husband David Sr. (Hannah and David Jr.). Special mentions: his great-nieces and nephew Melissa and Mariah, Samuel Jr. Campbell; great-niece Mya Schonchin; his son-in-law Mat; sister-in-law Tambi Schonchin; and lifelong friend Laura Bailey. Plus many, many more!

There will be a public viewing at Goble’s Mortuary on Saturday the 9th from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. in Fortuna .

Frederick’s services will be held May 10 at the Tish Non Building in Loleta, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Officiating will be Ted Hernandez. It will be potluck style, if possible bring a side. Everyone is welcome. We encourage everyone to bring memories, songs, stories and smiling faces. Let us come together and send Fred on his journey home to the creator.

Lucille Dorene Bonnikson was born June 17, 1934-ish (she’d kill us if we gave away her actual age) in Fortuna (“Rohnerville,” as she would say) to George and Grace Somerville. With family by her side, she went to be with the Lord on March 26, 2026. Lucy was the youngest of three children and never failed to share her knowledge of being the baby with her grandkids by teaching them how to get their older siblings in trouble!

When she was 15, Lucy met her soulmate, Norman Bonnikson, at the skating rink. They married a couple of years later and built their house on the plot of land they were given by her parents. Lucy and Norman had Pam, and a few years later, Rick followed.

Having outgrown their “little house” on Church Street, Norman and Lucy decided to build a larger house in Campton Heights, where Lucy lived for the rest of her life. The family was completed with the birth of Mike, 10 years after Pam.

Tragedy struck when Norman was killed in an accident at Pacific Lumber Company in 1968. Lucy would never date or marry again. Following the loss of Norman, Lucy joined the work world and began making life-long friendships with her coworkers. At Ben Franklin’s, she was part of a dynamic trio with her friends Joan Woodhurst and Judy Meadors. Her final work place was Wendt Construction, where she was part employee and part company mom. She was known for her Friday lunches that she made from scratch and her endless supply of cookies and candy.

Outside of work, Lucy was usually up to something fun. Whether it was family road trips with her brother Bob and sister-in-law Val, hijinx with her partner in crime Betty Ross, Reno trips with Joan, or dinners with her bookend and arranged best friend Doris Scalvini, Lucy was always having a good time.

Lucy’s greatest joy came from her family. She was always so proud of her children and their achievements. Lucy loved her grandkids got the pleasure of having all four of them come over in the morning before school during their Toddy Thomas years for breakfast of silver dollar pancakes or toast with butter dunked in coffee. She never missed a presentation, sports game, showmanship event or school event with her grandkids in it. She was blessed with five great-granddaughters who are always on the go! She loved keeping up with their adventures. Lucy loved having the family gathered together at her house. She always hosted Christmas Eve with her house decked out in decorations and full to bursting with presents, food and cookies. Christmas will never be the same without her. Without question, her family is her greatest legacy.

Lucy was preceded in death by her parents, George and Grace Somerville; her husband, Norman Bonnikson; son Rick Bonnikson; her sister Viola Georgia and brother-in-law Johnny; brother Robert Somerville and sister-in-law Valerie Somerville. She is survived by her children Pamela Berry (Jay Pollard) and Michael Bonnikson (Trudy); grandchildren Amanda Berry (Scott Grothe), Brandi Butler (Brian), Til Bonnikson (Bre) and Calley Bentancourt (Kyle); and great-grandchildren Quinn Scott, Lainey Butler, Lucy Butler, Isla Bentancourt and Loni Butler, as well as numerous beloved nieces, nephews and friends.

The family would like to extend their deepest gratitude to Lucy’s medical team at United Indian Health, Redwood Memorial, Hospice of Humboldt, and the entire staff at Fortuna Rehabilitation and Wellness Center.

A celebration of Lucy’s wonderful life will be held at the Nazarene Church in Fortuna, on June 6th at 3 p.m. Please wear bright colors and bring your wit as we celebrate this colorful and funny lady with stories and laughter.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests you donate to Sequoia Humane Society to help the next Muttley, Mollie, Annie or Louie get their forever home.

During a fairly short meeting this evening, the Arcata City Council decided to approve spending about $120,000 to fix two sinkholes on city property. 

The city owns a 3-acre parcel at 4700 West End Road, which it uses as its corporation yard. Two culverts that direct some of Janes Creek that run through the property have failed, which resulted in two sinkholes 30 and 18 inches wide opening up. The city engineer, Netra Khatri, told the council that his team knew about the issue soon after the holes formed and assessed it as “emergency” work, because the broken culverts could easily cause more sinkholes, potentially under the road. Repair work will start next week.

Funding for the project will come out of the city’s reserves. The lowest bid the city got for the project was $121,000; Khatri said the most he expected the project to cost is $200,000 total. The sinkholes are on the site of an old mill, which may have introduced contamination into the creek. Arcata will work with a contractor specializing in “hazardous work” to ensure their safety.

The portion of the creek that once flowed through the culverts will be rerouted through the city’s property, and daylighted for a short section before it rejoins the rest of Janes Creek. Khatri said he wasn’t worried about flooding.

The council voted unanimously to approve the project.

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They also adopted Humboldt County’s Regional Climate Action Plan (RCAP), which was developed in collaboration with local cities and other government agencies. It includes an array of strategies and measures that, together, are designed to meet certain state and local goals. They’re aimed at reducing the county’s greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030, and 85% below that mark by 2045, while also achieving carbon neutrality.

CONTEXT: Humboldt County Supervisors Adopt Long-Awaited Climate Action Plan, Set Greenhouse Gas Emissions Threshold

The council members lauded the community development department, which had been assisting the RCAP’s development since 2019, and the city as a whole, which had already implemented many of the recommended strategies to combat climate change. 

However, city staff noted that total adherence may be hindered by a lack of funding and staffing. 

“I really can’t stress enough how resource-limited we are,” said Emily Benvie, the city’s deputy community development director. “We do a lot with a little already as it is.”

The RCAP’s success will lay with the community at large, Benvie said. It may be difficult to make many of them change their behavior or consuming habits; for instance, she said, a homeowner who wants to electrify all of their appliances may simply not have the money to do so. 

“Not all of these measures are really within the city’s control,” she said. “…But we can certainly do the best we can to create an environment that supports these changes.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Hoopa Man Arrested for Murder After Fatally Stabbing His Uncle, Sheriff’s Office Says

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A man accused of fatally stabbing his uncle was charged with murder today. 

31-year-old Travis Watson, a Hoopa resident, was charged with murder by the Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office. He additionally faces a special enhancement for use of a deadly weapon, a knife.

He pleaded not guilty in court today.

This follows his arrest Saturday. Watson called police after the stabbing, reporting he had been physically attacked by his uncle and in response, “a stabbing occurred,” according to a press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office.

The victim, 34-year-old James Luther Vernon Williams, died from his injuries at the scene, a residence on Pine Creek Road in Hoopa.

“Based on the investigation, including statements and physical evidence collected at the scene, Watson was arrested,” according to the sheriff’s office.

At his arraignment Wednesday afternoon, judge John Feeney read the charges levied against him. Watson pleaded not guilty to the murder charge and denied the enhancement.

Feeney set his bail at $1,000,000.

Humboldt County Conflict Counsel’s office was appointed to represent him. Defense attorney Meagan O’Connell requested a hearing for supervised release to coincide with the preliminary hearing, which was scheduled for May 15.

Watson was previously convicted of battery and child abuse, according to court records.

He was convicted of misdemeanor battery in 2025 and misdemeanor child abuse in 2017 in Humboldt County. Two domestic violence restraining orders filed against him include allegations of stalking, violence and threats, in late 2023 and early 2024.

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PREVIOUSLY: 

• Five Old-Growth Redwoods Were Cut Down in Lower Redway. How Could That Happen?
• SoHum Residents Protest the Removal of a 252-Foot Old-Growth Redwood From a Lower Redway Property
• Removal of Lower Redway Old-Growth Redwood Temporarily Halted Amid Safety Concerns

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Following months of pushback from environmental advocates over the removal of an old-growth redwood in Lower Redway, the county is now requiring the landowner to obtain a special permit before the 252-foot tree can be cut down — a weeks-long process that will require a public hearing before the Humboldt County Planning Commission.

This is the latest in a five-month controversy over the removal of several old-growth redwoods from a corner lot, owned by CalFire employee Robert Scarlett, at Oakridge Drive and Briceland Road in Lower Redway. 

Concerned that the centuries-old redwoods posed a hazard to his house, Scarlett secured a hazard tree exemption from CalFire to have the trees chopped down. When tree removal began late last year, environmental activists urged the county to intervene, arguing that the trees were protected by a county-designated “Q Zone” that prohibits the removal of old-growth redwoods near the John B. DeWitt State Natural Reserve. The dispute ignited a debate between the county and CalFire, which, as the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, has permitting and enforcement jurisdiction over timber operations on timberland.

Just last week, several people showed up to protest the removal of the last remaining old-growth redwood on the property, a 252-foot tree estimated to be between 350 and 370 years old. County officials and local law enforcement intervened after several hours, halting operations and informing Scarlett that he would have to block the road to fell the tree safely, which requires an encroachment permit. 

Asked why the county had decided to require Scarlett to obtain a special permit as well, Humboldt County Planning and Building Director John Ford told the Outpost that the county just confirmed that its jurisdiction overrides CalFire’s in the Q Zone.

“In 2020, some redwoods were removed, and the county attempted to enforce against the removal,” Ford wrote via email. “We were told by both the County Forest Review Committee and CalFire that we did not have jurisdiction where a CalFire permit was being issued. That has been our understanding. Recently, I had a meeting with CalFire, [which] explained that we did have jurisdiction in the Q-Zone. Our understanding of county jurisdiction was incorrect, but that has been corrected.”

Asked about next steps for obtaining the special permit, Ford said the county will send out notices for the upcoming public hearing, which has yet to be scheduled. Under the best circumstances, Ford said, it will be “several weeks” before a decision is made. If the decision is appealed to the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, it will take even longer.

Reached for comment on the matter, Scarlett advised the Outpost to contact his attorney, Tonya Farmer, who provided the following statement via email: “Mr. Scarlett will continue to proceed in accordance with applicable law. Because this remains an evolving matter, we will not be commenting further at this time.”

Those opposed to the tree’s removal are celebrating the news. Redway resident Sue Maloney said she’s “hopeful that the last remaining 10-foot diameter, 252-foot-tall redwood that was slated to be destroyed will remain standing and old-growth redwood dependent critters will still have a home.  

“There is only one reason to live in Lower Redway, and that’s because you want to live among the ancient redwoods,” Maloney wrote in an emailed statement. “The purpose of the Q-zone is to protect irreplaceable old-growth redwoods from being liquidated for profit. We believe the landowner and the registered professional forester, both CalFire employees, abused the exemption process, and our Humboldt County officials chose to shirk their responsibilities.”

“We are deeply saddened that four large redwoods were allowed to be destroyed, but we are elated that the county appears to finally be willing to give this issue the process it deserves,” she continued. “We urge the county not to weaken the [Q Zone] ordinance.”

The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors will review the county’s Q Zone at its June 2 meeting.