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Note: The Outpost has changed the names of the CARE Court participants in this story to protect their identities.

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Eight months ago, 41-year-old John Anderson was living in a makeshift shelter in the forest, struggling to cope with untreated schizoaffective disorder. Now, he has his own apartment in Eureka and the mental health support needed to rebuild his life.

“It’s teeny-tiny, but it’s so nice to have a place of my own,” he proudly told Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Kelly Neel at a recent hearing. “And it’s all thanks to CARE Court.”

Anderson is a passionate advocate for CARE Court, a voluntary court-based treatment program for adults with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other psychotic disorders. Enacted through the state’s Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Act, the program is specifically designed for people who have lost their housing or become incarcerated due to untreated mental illness and either aren’t willing or lack the decision-making capacity to seek treatment on their own. 

In CARE Court, county attorneys and behavioral health staff work with each participant to create a CARE agreement, a voluntary treatment plan that includes behavioral health care, medications, a housing plan and other supportive services. In rare cases, the court can order a CARE plan, an involuntary agreement that can lead to court-ordered conservatorship. Each case is initiated by a petition, which can be filed by family members, first responders, mental health clinicians or the individual seeking assistance. The court’s role is to oversee the case, monitor progress and provide accountability.

“A lot of people don’t know that they have the ability to do better until they’re forced into a situation where they actually see themselves begin to make accomplishments.”
— A CARE Court participant

When Gov. Gavin Newsom first announced the new policy in 2022, he described CARE Court as a “paradigm shift” in state’s homeless strategy that would bring people with serious mental illness off the streets and into supportive housing. However, the program has failed to live up to expectations in most California counties, with less than 4,000 total petitions submitted since the first phase of the program launched in October 2023, according to data from the state Judicial Branch.

Interestingly, Humboldt County has one of the highest referral rates per capita, with 55 petitions filed and one graduation recorded since the second phase of the program rolled out in December 2024. It’s not clear how many of those petitions were for unhoused people. There are 33 local cases still moving through the system.

“It’s just an amazing program,” Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Timothy Canning said in a recent interview. “We’ve certainly had some folks come through the program [who] didn’t do so well, but we’ve had a number of other people who have done extraordinarily well and really gotten their lives back on track. … I think a lot of its success is owed to the behavioral health department here in Humboldt. The way they’ve implemented the program [has resulted in] just amazing outcomes.”

Given his success with the program thus far, Anderson has become a sort of poster child for Humboldt’s CARE Court. After he graduates, he wants to sign on as a peer coach to help support other people going through the program.

“I’m really great at working with others [and] building them up,” he told the Outpost in a recent interview. “Now that those doors have been open to me and I know how to apply, I want to help other people who are going through similar struggles.”

Anderson started CARE Court in September 2025, just a few months after he was arrested on felony charges for threatening an elderly couple walking through the forest. He was living in the woods at the time, the result of losing both his job and his apartment. As Anderson recalls, he was deep in psychosis and “screaming at the world” when he was overheard by the couple, who took his shouting as a threat and called the police. He described his arrest as “a blessing in disguise.”

“I didn’t want to deal with life for a year. I was just trying to remove myself from everybody and everything … but there ended up being more people around than I was used to, and they thought I was yelling at them,” he explained. “The court deemed me incompetent [to stand trial because] I wasn’t in the mental state to speak straight or aware of everything that was happening. I was placed in a state psychological ward for people with disabilities … where I was properly medicated and brought out of psychosis.”

Once Anderson was medicated and stabilized, a psychiatrist went over the details of his diagnosis — schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type — when it finally clicked. He had been medicated for short, sporadic intervals before his arrest, but had stopped taking medication “because the side effects became worse than the disability.” It wasn’t until his stint at the state hospital that he actually understood his diagnosis.

“With somebody like me, the disability isn’t constant,” Anderson explained. “Half the time I’m normal — I don’t appear to have a disability at all, mentally or emotionally — but when the emotional dystrophies start to affect the psyche … the chemicals of the brain chemistry [become] unstable… and then the brain functions erratically and incorrectly. I wasn’t aware of any of these details about my diagnosis until after I got into the system, and they put me into this state mental health hospital.”

“A lot of people don’t know that they have the ability to do better until they’re forced into a situation where they actually see themselves begin to make accomplishments,” he added. “This approach is only effective if the individual has the motivation for their future and their self-stability.”

The state hospital submitted Anderson’s CARE Court petition on July 14, and his agreement was finalized two months later. In his case, the program is being used as mental health diversion under Penal Code 1001.36 to resolve his criminal charges. He’s set to graduate from CARE Court in September 2026.

‘CARE Court is a Godsend’

I was invited to observe a few CARE Court hearings last month to learn more about the dynamic between participants and the county staff who lead the program. (CARE Court participants and their family members agreed to be involved in this story on the condition of anonymity.) That’s where I met Anderson and Jason Johnson, a 40-year-old man from Southern Humboldt who’s just two months into the program.

Johnson’s parents filed a petition in October, and the court entered his CARE agreement in December. Judge Neel and the county attorneys representing Johnson didn’t get into the details of his case, but said he’s using CARE Court as an avenue to resolve criminal charges. His diversion plan is slated for approval next month.

“We’re here today to check in and encourage him to stick to his treatment plan,” Deputy County Counsel Heather Durand told the court during Johnson’s progress review hearing. 

At one point in proceedings, Humboldt County Public Defender Luke Brownfield leaned over to his client and asked if he needed help with anything. Johnson quietly explained that he recently lost his job and had been pretty lonely living by himself. “I’m OK,” he shrugged.

His father, who was the only person other than me seated in the gallery, stood up and explained to the court that he and his wife were hoping to move their son to Eureka, but said they were having a hard time finding a renter or buyer for their house in Southern Humboldt. He noted that his son had been ostracized from his small community after his “break with reality” and hoped he could make a fresh start in Eureka, where he’d be closer to mental health resources. 

“We can use all the help we can get,” he said.

Without missing a beat, Durand said the county could help him find housing. Looking up at Judge Neel, she asked if the court would add housing to Johnson’s priority list and provide an update at his hearing next month. 

CARE Court Clinician Jordan Lampi asked if it would be possible to relocate Johnson down to Sonoma County, where his parents live, if he’s approved for diversion. Judge Neel said that could probably be arranged, but his father seemed hesitant. 

“He’s just doing so well here,” he said. 

Speaking to me directly, his father explained how difficult it can be for parents to advocate for their adult children when they’re experiencing a mental health crisis and navigating the judicial system. “We couldn’t even talk to his lawyer,” he said. “CARE Court is a godsend.”

He urged me to call him if the state ever threatened to dismantle the program.

The final hearing of the day was for 55-year-old Mark Thomas, whose CARE agreement was being submitted to the court for consideration. After a criminal arrest late last year, Thomas was committed to a state hospital after being deemed incompetent to stand trial. The state hospital had submitted the petition on his behalf. At the time of his hearing last month, he had not been approved for diversion and was still in custody.

Thomas’ wife and elderly mother sat in the gallery as Brownfield went over the next steps for his treatment plan. “We just want what’s best for him,” his mother said, adding that she and his wife want to stay informed of his treatment plan but don’t want to serve as his primary support. “We want a trained person [in that role] because we don’t think he’ll listen to us.”

The court agreed and also assigned Thomas a medical case manager to oversee his medications. His next hearing was scheduled for two weeks later.

‘We’re Going to Use This to Help People’

Sitting in a conference room on the second floor of the courthouse, I asked the CARE Court team — Brownfield, Durand, Lampi and Meghan Sheeran, a behavioral health clinician with the county’s Comprehensive Community Treatment (CCT) program — to try to explain why Humboldt’s program has been such a success and how it differs from other California counties.

“I gotta admit … I didn’t even want to do CARE Court,” Durand said. “I had a really negative attitude about the legislation because I didn’t think it was going to work. … I remember in, like, October 2024, telling Luke [Brownfield], ‘This is dumb, this is never going to work.’ And he looked at me, and he said, ‘We’re going to use this to help people, right?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m going to try.’ We just didn’t know what to expect.”

In the weeks leading up to CARE Court’s statewide launch in December 2024, counties that hadn’t implemented the program braced for thousands of petitions to flood their systems. The local team had already been hard at work identifying people in need, many of whom had been in and out of jail or living on the streets for years.

“I think all the counties were preparing, but we already had a list of names assembled prior to implementation,” Durand said. “When December hit, we started filing petitions right away. And, from what I understand, other counties were waiting for the floodgates to open … but that didn’t happen. We had heard in the press and from the governor’s office that there were going to be thousands of cases statewide, but that just didn’t happen. … I guess we had a different mindset for whatever reason, and we just hit the ground running.”

Durand and Brownfield attributed their success, at least in part, to their ability to work well together, despite the fact that they’re generally on opposing sides of the courtroom. 

“We both want people to get help,” Durand said. “And I want to point out that we’re not giving people a pass. We’re talking about people who … are just going to reoffend because they have not been set up to succeed. … We’re trying to stop that. It’s going to save the taxpayers a ton of money and it’s going to protect the public because these people actually get treatment instead of just being thrown out on the street.”

As a behavioral health clinician, Sheeran says CARE Court has given service providers the ability to reach a segment of the population that was previously inaccessible. 

To illustrate her point, Durand drew three squares on a sheet of paper — “assisted outpatient treatment” on the left, “CARE” in the center and “LPS conservatorship” on the right. She explained that CARE Court provides another option for people who need more support than an AOT outpatient treatment program can offer, but don’t qualify for conservatorship because they aren’t considered gravely disabled, meaning they can still meet their basic needs for food, clothing and shelter.

(Note: The definition of “gravely disabled” was recently expanded to include “personal safety and medical care” as basic needs. “Gravely disabled” is also defined as “a result of a mental health disorder, impairment by chronic alcoholism, severe substance use disorder, or a co-occurring mental health disorder and severe substance use disorder.”)

“For shelter, if you got a tent and a sleeping bag and you’re camped out somewhere — that’s considered a shelter under the law,” Durand said. “What we’re talking about [in terms of grave disability] is someone who’s lying on the sidewalk without anything, and it’s 34 degrees and raining outside. … Those are the people who end up on LPS conservatorship.”

AOT Outpatient treatment, on the other hand, applies to people who are “capable enough to schedule appointments and take medication with assistance,” Durand continued. “There is help with managing medication, but they’re able to manage on an outpatient basis. In my opinion, CARE targets this in-between population: the people who aren’t sick enough to end up [in a conservatorship] but who aren’t well enough to take care of themselves.”

The problem is, CARE agreements are almost always voluntary, unless they’re tied to a court-ordered diversion agreement or a person is determined to be gravely disabled. A petition can be filed on someone’s behalf, but that doesn’t mean they have to stick with the program. 

“Many of these people have had behavioral health staff try to help before, but it’s the same thing over and over again,” Sheeran said. “I can’t say ‘You must do this [program].’ I can say, ‘If you don’t, your long-term outcome is not good. Please, let us help you.’ An not every individual we’re working with is getting that picture … but we just have to keep coming back, right?”

“Every year we lose people on the streets, and anything we can do to prevent that, I would love to do,” she added. “They all deserve a whole group of people out there trying to turn things around and give them their best life.”

Durand acknowledged the public sentiment that the county isn’t doing enough to help people living on the streets. The 2024 Point-In-Time County identified 1,573 unhoused people county. Some of those folks qualify for CARE Court, but many others don’t. 

“I think [there’s] a community perception of ‘Why do you have all these people out here walking around on the street and sleeping in the alcoves? They’re clearly mentally ill — why aren’t you helping them?’ They have a right to live their life the way they want to,” she said, emphasizing again that the county can’t force people into treatment unless they are gravely disabled. “I really do think [CARE] is a really valuable tool.”

It’s still a relatively new program, and the CARE Court team hopes it will become more successful as time goes on and more funding becomes available to support staff. In the meantime, they’ll continue to help who they can, like Anderson.

“Before CARE Court, I didn’t have the opportunities I have now, and they opened up all the doors to the different outlets in the community that I needed for aid,” he said. “We need to focus more on the success rates and realize how big a deal it is, even though the statistics are small.”

Well, Humboldt County’s First False Spring of the season has come to an end, looks like. It was fun while it lasted, and it’ll be fun again when Second and Third and Fourth False Springs come around.

The next six days, though? Rain likely, rain, rain, showers, rain and rain, according to the National Weather Service’s forecast for Eureka.

Up in the hils: Snow! The NWS just issued a Winter Storm Watch that warns of snow — possibly heavy snow — down to 2,000 feet between Monday and Wednesday.  The big dump will likely occur Monday night, says the NWS, so be prepared for chaos on the highways Tuesday.

Though not immediately fun, we are duty-bound to remind you that precipitation is a Good Thing, particularly in winters such as this one, when we’re trailing a bit on the rainfall scale. We’re currently two inches behind the average rainfall year, and it seems like the coming flurry will get us up to par.

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As the first home rolled off the factory floor in Kalamazoo, Michigan — “like a boxcar with picture windows,” according to a journalist on the scene — the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development proclaimed it “the coming of a real revolution in housing.”

For decades engineers, architects, futurists, industrialists, investors and politicians have been pining for a better, faster and cheaper way to build homes. Now, amid a national housing shortage, the question felt as pressing as ever: What if construction could harness the speed, efficiency, quality control and cost-savings of the assembly line? What if, rather than building homes on-site from the ground up, they were cranked out of factories, one unit after another, shipped to where they were needed and dropped into place? What if the United States could mass-produce its way out of a housing crisis?

In Kalamazoo, that vision finally seemed a reality. The HUD chief predicted that within a decade two-thirds of all housing construction across the United States “would be industrialized.”

The year was 1971, the HUD Secretary was George Romney (father of future Utah senator, Mitt), and the prediction was wildly off.

Within five years, Operation Breakthrough, the ambitious, but ultimately costly, delay-ridden and politically unpopular federal initiative that had propped up the Kalamazoo factory and eight others like it across the country, ran out of money. The dream of the factory-built house was dead — not for the first time, nor the last.

By some definitions, the first prefabricated house was built, shipped and re-assembled in the 1620s. Factory-built homes made of wood and iron were a mainstay of the colonial enterprises of the 19th Century. Housing and construction-worker shortages during the Second World War prompted a wave of (ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to mass-produce starter homes in the United States. The modern era is full of those predicting that the industrialization of the housing industry is just a few years away, only to be proven wrong.

This year, state legislators in California believe the turning-point might actually be here. With a little state assistance, they want to make 2026 the Year of the Housing Factory. At long last.

California gets ‘modular-curious’

Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat and one of the legislature’s most influential policy makers on housing issues, is leading the charge. Since the beginning of the year, she has organized two select committee hearings under the general banner of “housing construction innovation.” The bulk of the committee’s attention has been on factory-based building — why it might be a fix worth promoting and what the state could do to actually make it work this time.

The hearings are ostensibly intended to gather information, all of which will be summarized in a white paper being written by researchers at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. But they’re also meant to build political momentum and legislative buy-in for a coming package of bills. Both the paper and bills are due to be released in the coming weeks.

Wicks has “select committee’d” her way to major policy change before.

In late 2024, she cobbled together a series of state-spanning meetings on “permitting reform.” Those provided the fodder for nearly two dozen bills the following year, all written with the goal of making it easier to build things in California, especially homes. The most significant of the bunch: Legislation exempting most urban apartment buildings from environmental litigation. Gov. Gavin Newsom enthusiastically signed it into law last summer.

Now comes phase two. Last year’s blitz of bills, capping off years of gradual legislative efforts to remove regulatory barriers to building dense housing across California, has, in Wicks’ view, teed up this next big swing.

“Over the last eight to 10 years or so the Legislature and the governor have really taken a bulldozer to a lot of the bureaucratic hurdles when it comes to housing,” said Wicks. “But one of the issues that we haven’t fundamentally tackled is the cost of construction.”

Factory-built housing can arrive on a construction site in varying levels of completeness. There are prefabricated panels (imagine the baked slabs of a gingerbread house) and fully three-dimensional modules (think, Legos). Interest in the use of both for apartment buildings has been steadily growing in California over the last decade. Investors have poured billions of dollars into the nascent sector, albeit with famously mixed results. In California’s major urban areas, but especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, cranes delicately assembling factory-built modules into apartment blocks has become a more familiar feature of the skyline.

Factory-built housing Drake Avenue Apartments sits under construction at 825 Drake Avenue in Marin City on Feb. 7, 2026. Photo by Jungho Kim for CalMatters

Randall Thompson, who runs the prefabrication division of Nibbi Brothers General Contractors, said he’s seen attitudes shift radically just in the last couple of years. Not long ago, pitching a developer on factory-built construction was a tough sell. But a few years ago he noted a growing number of “modular-curious” clients willing to run the numbers. Now many are coming to him committed to the idea from the get-go.

Policymakers are interested too, debating whether public policy and taxpayer money should be used to propel off-site construction from niche application to a regular, if not dominant, feature of the industry. Evidence from abroad is fueling that optimism: In Sweden, where Wicks and a gaggle of other lawmakers visited last fall, nearly half of residential construction takes place in a factory.

The renewed national interest is part of a “back to the drawingboard” energy that has pervaded policy circles at every level of government in the face of a national affordability crisis, said Chad Maisel, a Center for American Progress fellow and a former Biden administration housing policy advisor.

Yes, the country has tried and failed at this before, most notably with Operation Breakthrough. Yes, individual companies have gone bust trying to make off-site happen at scale. “But we haven’t really given it our all,” Maisel said.

Henry Ford, but for housing

If the goal is to bring down building costs, rethinking the basics of the construction process is an obvious place to start.

Over the last century, economic sectors across the United States have seen explosions in labor productivity, with industries using technological innovation, fine-tuned production processes and globe-spanning supply chains to squeeze ever more stuff out of the same number of workers. Construction has been a stagnant outlier. Since the 1970s, labor productivity has actually declined sector-wide, according to official government statistics. In 2023 the average American construction worker added about as much value on a construction site as one in 1948.

Thus the appeal of giving residential construction the Henry Ford assembly line treatment.

“When you go to buy a car, you don’t get 6,000 parts shipped to your house and then someone comes and builds it for you,” said Ryan Cassidy, vice president of real estate development at Mutual Housing California, an affordable housing developer based in Sacramento that committed last year to build its next five projects with factory-built units.

In theory, breaking down the building process into a series of discrete, repeatable tasks can mean fewer highly trained workers are needed per unit. Standardized panels and modules allow factories to buy materials in bulk at discount. The work can be done faster, because it’s centralized, tightly choreographed, closely monitored and possibly automated — but also because multiple things can happen at the same time. Framers don’t have to wait for a foundation to set before getting started on the bedrooms.

Off-site construction reliably cuts construction timelines by 10 to 30 percent, according to an analysis by the Terner Center. Some even rosier estimates have put the figure closer to 50%.

That can translate into real savings. “Factory-built housing has the potential to reduce hard (labor, material and equipment) costs by 10 to 25% — at least under the right conditions,” Terner’s director, Ben Metcalf, said at the select committee’s first hearing in early January.

But historically, it’s been very hard to get those conditions right.

The ghost of Katerra

The main hitch is an obvious one: Factories are hugely expensive to set up and run. Off-site construction companies only stand to make up those costs if they can run continuously and at full capacity. Mass production only pencils out if it massively produces.

That means factory production isn’t especially well-suited to industries that boom and bust, in which surplus production can’t be stockpiled in a warehouse and everything is made to order and where local variations in climate, topography and regulation require bespoke products of varying materials, designs, configurations and sizes.

All of which describes the current real estate sector.

“When you go to buy a car, you don’t get 6,000 parts shipped to your house and then someone comes and builds it for you.”
— Ryan Cassidy, vice president, Mutual Housing California

“In a world in which housing projects are approved one at a time under various local rules and designs and sometimes after years of piecing together financing sources, it’s hard to build out that pipeline for a factory,” said Metcalf at the early January hearing.

The particular financial needs of a factory also upend business as usual for developers and real estate funders.

Industrial construction “costs less overall but costs more in the short term. Everything is frontloaded,” said Jan Lindenthal-Cox, chief investment officer at the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund. All design, engineering and material decisions have to be finalized long before the factory gears start turning. Real estate investors and lenders tend to be wary of putting up quite so much money so early in the process.

The Accelerator Fund, a privately-backed non-profit, is hoping to ease some of those concerns by providing short-term, low-cost loans to developers in order to cover those higher-than-usual early costs. The hope is that traditional funders — namely, banks and investors — will eventually feel confident enough to take over that role “once this is a more proven approach,” said Lindenthal-Cox.

Such skittishness pervades every step of the off-site development process, said Apoorva Pasricha, chief operation officer at Cloud Apartments, a San Francisco-based start-up.

Scaffolding sits in front of a weather-resistant barrier on the exterior of factory-built housing, Drake Avenue Apartments, at 825 Drake Avenue in Marin City on Feb. 7, 2026. Photo by Jungho Kim for CalMatters

A subcontractor unfamiliar with modular construction might bid a project higher than they otherwise would to compensate for the uncertainty. Building code officials might be extra cautious or extra slow in approving a project for the same reason.

As the industry grows, “creating familiarity with the process helps drive that risk down,” said Pasricha. “The question is, who is going to be willing to pay the price to learn?”

Some would-be pioneers have paid it. In 2021, the Silicon Valley-based modular start up Katerra went spectacularly bankrupt after spending $2 billion in a hyperambitious gambit to disrupt the building industry. Katerra still hangs over the industry like a specter.

Brian Potter, a former Katerra engineer who now writes the widely-read Construction Physics newsletter, said he too was once wooed by the idea that “‘we’ll just move this into a factory and we will yield enormous improvements.’”

These days, he strenuously avoids terms like “impossible” and “doomed to fail” when asked about the potential of off-site construction. But he does stress that it’s a very hard nut to crack with limited upside.

“Beyond just the regulatory issues, which are real, there are just fundamental nature of the market, nature of the process, things that you have to cope with,” said Potter, whose recent book, The Origins of Efficiency, digs into how and why modern society has succeeded at making certain things much faster and cheaper — and not others.

Certain markets in California could be a good fit for factory-built construction, he added, but not for the reasons that off-site boosters typically lead with.

Construction costs in the Bay Area, specifically, are notoriously expensive. Many of the region’s most productive housing factories are located in Idaho. That arrangement might make financial sense, said Potter, not because of anything inherently cost-saving in the industrialized process, but because wages in the Boise area are just a lot lower.

That raises another potential impediment for state lawmakers hoping to goose the factory-built model: Organized labor. In a familiar political split, while California’s carpenters union has historically been open to the idea of off-site construction, the influential State Building & Construction Trades Council has been hostile.

Will the state step in?

Neither Wicks, nor any other legislator, has released legislative language yet aimed at supporting the industry. But in committee hearings, developers, labor leaders, academics and other off-site construction supporters have repeatedly pitched lawmakers on the same three themes.

Building out the pipeline is one. The state, supporters say, could keep the factories humming either by nudging affordable developers that way when they apply for state subsidies or by out-and-out requiring public entities, like state universities, to at least consider off-site when they build, say, student housing.

Insuring factories against the risk of a developer going bankrupt (and vice versa) is another common proposal. Developers and investors are hesitant to schedule a spot on a factory line if that factory’s bankruptcy will leave them in the lurch. Likewise, factories tend to charge high deposits to make up for the fact that developers go out of business or get hit with months-long delays. One solution could involve the taxpayer playing the role of insurer.

Third: Standardizing building code requirements. The state’s Housing and Community Development department already regulates factory-built housing units. But once a module is shipped to a site, local inspectors will often do their own once-over.

Some of these proposed fixes are specific to the industry. But some are regulatory changes that would make it easier to build more generally.

That might suggest that policy should ideally focus on making it easier to build stuff more generally, “not on a specific goal,” said Stephen Smith, director of the Center for Building in North America, which advocates for cost-cutting changes to building codes. For all the emphasis on building entire studio apartments inside factories, he noted that plenty of steps in the construction process have entered the modern era.

“You find walls built in factories, you see elevators, you see escalators,” said Smith. “You need to consider the small victories and think of it as a general process of (regulatory) hygiene.”

Wicks has heard all of the arguments for why emphasizing factory-based construction won’t work.

“I don’t think factory-built housing is going to solve all of our problems. I think it’s a piece of the solution,” she said. “We’re not talking about actually funding the building of factories. We’re talking about creating a streamlined environment for these types of housing units to be built.”

In other words, it can’t hurt to try again.

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The Trump administration formally rescinded the legal foundation of federal climate policy Thursday — setting up a new front in California’s long-running battle with Washington over emissions rules.

“Today, the Trump EPA has finalized the single largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States of America,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said at a White House press conference. “Referred to by some as the holy grail of federal regulatory overreach, the 2009 Obama EPA endangerment finding is now eliminated.”

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the federal government may regulate greenhouse gases if they were found to endanger public health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a scientific determination that greenhouse gases indeed were a threat. By withdrawing its own so-called “endangerment finding,” the EPA is abandoning its justification for federal tailpipe standards, power plant rules and fuel economy regulations.

California opposed the withdrawal of the endangerment finding when it was proposed last year, and is expected to sue over the decision.

California Air Resources Board executive director Steven Cliff testified at the time that the move ignored settled science.

“Thousands of scientists from around the world are not wrong,” Cliff said in his testimony. “In this proposal, EPA is denying reality and telling every victim of climate-driven fires and floods not to believe what’s right before their eyes.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement Thursday that California would take the Trump administration to court over the decision.

“Donald Trump may put corporate greed ahead of communities and families, but California will not stand by,” Newsom said. “We will continue to lead because the lives and livelihoods of our people depend on it.”

Other states and environmental groups have also indicated they could sue. They include Massachusetts, which was part of the coalition of states that sued to force the federal government to curb greenhouse gases nearly two decades ago.

Eliminating the federal basis for regulating planet-warming gases will not halt California’s climate policies, most of which – from California’s market-based approach to cutting carbon pollution to clean energy mandates for utilities — rest on state law.

In fact, the decision may open the door for California to set its own greenhouse gas standards for vehicles, a possibility that lawmakers and regulators are actively weighing.

The reversal in federal policy could also undercut arguments that federal law blocks state lawsuits against oil companies and boosts interest in expanding California’s authority over planet-warming pollution within its borders.

California prepares for a fight

Ann Carlson, a UCLA law professor and former federal transportation official, has argued that aggressive federal action against climate policy “could, ironically, provide states with authority they’ve never had before.”

Writing in the law journal Environmental Forum, Carlson theorized that California could attempt to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks directly under state law.

Federal law has preempted most states from setting local vehicle emission standards; California has, through a series of waivers granted under federal clean air law, obtained permission to set stricter standards than the federal government does.

This could help California’s efforts “in the long run,” Carlson wrote in an email Wednesday, “but of course withdrawing the United States from all efforts to tackle climate change is a terrible move. We should be leading the global effort, not retreating.”

In California, where cars and trucks account for more than a third of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, California regulators at the air board and lawmakers are weighing in. When asked last year by CalMatters whether the air board would consider writing its own rules, Chair Lauren Sanchez said, “All options are currently on the table.”

“This is definitely a conversation,” Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, a Democrat from Irvine, said during a Wednesday press conference held by the California Environmental Voters. “So stay tuned.”

Ripple effects in court and Sacramento

If Washington formally exits the field of carbon regulation, states may argue they have broader room to pursue liability claims tied to wildfire costs and other climate impacts, experts said.

California has sued major oil companies as recently as 2023, in an attempt to hold them responsible for climate impacts. Oil companies have frequently cited federal oversight as a reason to dismiss climate-damage lawsuits against them.

“California is struggling with wildfire costs, for example, which are linked strongly to a warming climate,” said Ethan Elkind, a climate law expert at UC Berkeley. “I think that opens up a lot of legal avenues for states like California.”

The federal pullback has prompted lawmakers to consider expanding the Air Resources Board’s powers.

Assemblymember Robert Garcia, a Democrat from Rancho Cucamonga, this week introduced a bill aimed at affirming the state’s power to curb pollution from large facilities that generate heavy truck traffic, such as warehouses and ports, which concentrate diesel exhaust in nearby communities.

“It’s no secret that the federal government and California are not seeing eye to eye — we’re not on the same page,” Garcia said at Wednesday’s news conference. “This is an opportunity for our state, for California to step in.”

Maximo Gordon Edward Macanas, 37, of McKinleyville, passed away tragically after being swept into the ocean on January 31. He was recovered on February 3. Born on April 26, 1988, in French Camp, California, Max was the son of Brian Macanas and Anna Macanas. He graduated from Galt High School and then promptly made his way to Humboldt County, where he spent the rest of his days fishing, hunting and providing for his family.

Max graduated from Humboldt State University with a degree in Wildlife Biology and spent most of his career in private wildlife consulting with Tanner Environmental Services. During the off-season, he also worked at Humboldt Pawn in Eureka. Max met his wife, Hannah, in October 2010, and they were married in 2015. They began fostering in 2021, welcomed their youngest son in August 2023, and adopted their oldest son in July 2025.

Max’s love for the outdoors began in childhood and grew into a lifelong passion that guided where he lived, worked and how he raised his family.

Max lived his life exactly how he wanted to: rooted in the outdoors and devoted, above all else, to his family. A fisherman first, he moved to this area because of the rivers and the ocean. He loved fishing Redwood Creek, the Trinity, the Klamath, the Smith and the Mad River. The Mad River became what he called the “family river,” with many outings to the mouth, the hatchery and countless spots in between.

Max also loved deer hunting, as well as upland and waterfowl hunting. He enjoyed training and taking his bird dogs out for grouse, quail and literally anything that was in season (and no, his good hunting spots will not be disclosed). If he wasn’t hunting or fishing, he was mushroom hunting, hiking and exploring this beautiful place.

While doing all of that, he was also a deeply present and devoted father. He loved storytime, playtime at the park, taking the boys fishing and so much more. He showed his boys what devotion meant in all aspects of life, especially to family. He was a true partner and loving husband. There are no words to describe the void left by his passing. Max was funny, loyal and loved everyone so deeply.

Maximo Gordon Edward Macanas is lovingly survived by his wife, Hannah Macanas; their children, Moses Reed and Samuel Gordon Maximo Macanas; his parents, Anna Macanas and Brian Macanas; his siblings, brother Aaron Macanas, sister Briann Stea and brother Henry Macanas; his nieces and nephews, Alianah, Tristan, Hudson, Maverick and Violet; several foster children (current and former); and many dear friends.

He was preceded in death by his grandparents, Maximo Santos Macanas, Diann Macanas and Suzanne Vlavianos; his great-grandparents, Gordon Henry Eggert, Patricia Eggert, Mary Janet Vaughn, Isidoro Macanas and Julia Macanas; his aunt, AngElla Macanas-Dobson; his cousin Brettnee LeAnna Rubsam, who passed as an infant; and his beloved hunting dogs, Daisy, Sadie and Boy.

Max was incredibly knowledgeable and capable, and he held a deep respect for the ocean. In his memory, the family asks that everyone respect the power of the ocean and practice water safety at our local beaches. Sneaker waves are unpredictable and can affect even the most experienced outdoorsmen.

A celebration of life will be held on Saturday, February 28, at 3 p.m. at the Moonstone Beach House. All who cared for and respected Max are welcome. Please join us for light refreshments and remembrance. If you have photos or stories of Max you would like to share, they may be posted at this link or emailed to macanasfamily2026@gmail.com. These memories will be deeply meaningful for the boys as they grow and learn about their dad.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you consider buying a fishing license and think of Max whenever you go fishing. For those who have asked how to help, a fund has been created to support Hannah Macanas and the children at this link.

Max is a beloved son, husband, father, uncle, cousin and friend. He will be remembered for his deep love for his family, his passion for fishing and the outdoors, and the way he showed up for those he loved. His love lives on in his children and all who knew him. He is deeply missed.

Our beloved grandmother, mother, sister and friend, Sharon Darlene Martin, passed away peacefully in her sleep on January 5, 2026, surrounded by love and the memories of a life well lived.

Sharon was born on September 1, 1953, to Robert and Mary Lou Dake in Blue Lake. She deeply loved her hometown and treasured the many lifelong friendships she formed while growing up there. She graduated from McKinleyville High School and carried those early connections with her throughout her life.

Sharon was married to Ralph Martin, and together they welcomed her only son, Jamie, in 1969. In 1973, she welcomed her daughter, Heidi. Later, she shared her life with Joe Luiz, and in 1978 they welcomed her daughter, Nikki. Above all else, Sharon was a devoted mother whose love for her children never wavered.

For many years, Sharon worked as an office manager at Ag Sales in Arcata, where her quick wit, humor, and kindness quickly made customers friends. She had a deep love of books and could rarely be found without one close by, sometimes finishing two or more books in a single day. She loved new beginnings, babies, animals, and tending to her plants and flowers. Gardening brought her peace and reflected the same care and patience she showed people throughout her life.

In her younger years, Sharon loved to dance and play pool and was happiest where there was music and laughter. Later in life, she cherished traveling with her sisters and cousins, where many memories were made, and she enjoyed spending time at the casino. She loved being around people, especially her grandchildren. Watching a movie with Sharon always meant hearing her commentary — often including her predictions of the ending — and her unmistakable laugh. She had a way of filling a room and making everyone feel welcome.

Sharon never met a stranger. She made people feel seen, safe, and loved. She was the kindest soul and never judged anyone. When people were nervous, stressed, or unsure, she would simply smile and say, “They can’t eat you,” and somehow everything felt easier.

She faced many hardships in life, but they only deepened her compassion and strength. Her heart remained soft, generous, and open. She welcomed countless children and friends into her home and treated them as family. She was endlessly proud of her grandchildren and loved them fiercely.

Sharon was preceded in death by her beloved son, Jamie; her partner, Terry Lawler; her parents, Robert Dake and Mary Lou and Domingo Santos; her brother-in-law, Allen Mann; and many cherished friends and family members.

Sharon is survived by her daughters, Heidi Varshock (Dave) and Nikki Naughton (Chris), and by Ariel Santos, whom she lovingly raised as her own. She is also survived by her grandchildren, who were the highlight of her life—Jaysea Jennings, Bryr Steinle (Alexis), Sydney Varshock, Cody Slater, Bryson Lawler, Kenia Robles Hernandez, Riley Lawler, Brooklyn Lawler, and Austin Lawler — and a great-grandbaby on the way. She is further survived by her sisters, Lorelei Woods (Mark), Karen Mann, and Kristina Plisik (Mike); her brothers, Rick Santos (Rebecca), Brett Santos (Suzette), and Randy Santos; her bonus sons, Tommy Lawler, Robbie Lawler, and Dustin Lawler; many nieces and nephews whom she loved dearly; along with extended family, cousins, and many dear friends who became family.

A celebration of life will be held on March 14, 2026, at 2 p.m. at Azalea Hall in McKinleyville. There will be food, music, laughter and love — just the way Sharon would have wanted it. All who knew and loved her are welcome.

Sharon will be remembered for her generous heart, her laughter, her love of books and plants, her resilience, and the way she welcomed everyone exactly as they were.

We would like to extend a very special thank you to Shonna Conner for the love, patience and unwavering care she gave our mom. We are forever grateful.

Cathern Lee Stuefloten, born Jan. 15, 1952, passed away suddenly on Dec. 29, 2025.

To many she was mom, grandma, sister, aunt and cousin. Everyone who knew her called her Mama Katie. She was a loving, free spirit who made friends anywhere she went.

Mama Katie was born in Woodland and she had lived everywhere between Sonoma County and Humboldt County. She loved her little dog Maple and took her everywhere with her. She loved the sun, moon and stars the most, but loved the ocean just as much. She loved to be camping in warmer places as much as she could. She loved to color and crochet. You could find her carrying either or sometimes both anywhere she went, and she loved the casinos even if she only had $1. Loved the Rolling Stones and skulls.

Mama Katie is survived by her children: Randy Crandall, his wife, Ada Crandall and their children Joshua Caswell, Jessica Crandall, Joe Crandall, and Jenna Crandall; her daughter Belinda Rivera, her husband, Rufino Rivera, their children Dustin Osborn, Theresa LaRose Ward, Sebastian Rivera and Rufino Rivera Jr.; her daughter Margaret Johnson and her children Timmy Ireland, Austyn Smith, Zeanna Johnson and Thomas Taylor-Johnson; her stepdaughter Amanda; twin sister Kathleen Phrampus and her husband, Dan Phrampus; sisters Beth Brinkerhoff, Wendy Buckley, Linda Lutz, Margie Jones, Judy Nocks; and her brother Tom Brinkerhoff. Also survived by many nieces, nephews, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and cousins.

Preceded by her mother, Patsy LeAnn Brinkerhoff, and father, Elmer Ray Brinkerhoff; her partner Tom Koontz; and her grandson Coltin Lee Osborn.

Mama Katie was cremated on Jan. 8, 2026. Anyone wishing to donate towards her celebration of life can send to her daughter-in-law Ada Crandall at $misfitcrandalls or contact by email adacrandall@gmail.com. Celebration of life to be determined.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Katie Stuefloten’s family. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.