This Sunday, the city of Eureka will hold the second of its series of Town Hall meetings on community health, and particularly on homelessness, substance abuse and mental health. These Town Hall meetings are part of Mayor Kim Bergel’s initiative to focus on those hot-button issues.
To preview this Sunday’s event — which goes under the title of “Dynamics of the Unhoused” — Bergel and City of Eureka mental health clinician Jacob Rosen recently met with the Outpost’s John Kennedy O’Connor to talk about what they hope the meeting will accomplish.
The Town Hall meeting takes place from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in Eureka City Hall —- 531 K Street. More details at this link. There will be tacos!
Video above, rough transcript below.
###
O’CONNOR:
Well welcome to another Humboldt Conversation. I’m really pleased to say today we’re back with two guests that we’ve chatted with before and that’s of course Eureka mayor, Kim Bergel and Jacob Rosen. And Jacob, you work in the mental health awareness team. Remind us again what your role is and your title.
ROSEN:
So my title is managing mental health clinician, and I work for Crisis Alternative Response of Eureka.
O’CONNOR:
Now, we had a previous conversation about the work that you’ve done, and Kim, when we last chatted to you you just actually done your first workshop for mental health. But you have another one coming up this weekend which is the reason we want to come back and chat with you.
BERGEL:
That’ll be Sunday right here in council chambers. Doors open at 1, 1:30 to 4:30 is the event. There’ll be tacos and some excellent experts that you can ask questions from.
O’CONNOR:
So what is the goal from this particular workshop that’s going to be happening?
BERGEL:
So again, I would say that the goal generally is to engage the public and give them an opportunity to ask questions and be heard and answered. Because unfortunately, council, that’s something that we don’t do, which I understand why. But it’s nice to be able to have those opportunities to express your frustrations and all of those things and have those questions answered in real time.
O’CONNOR:
And Jacob, how is your department partnering with the city on this particular?
ROSEN:
So we’ve really wanted to push it, right? I mean, the idea of being able to do something like this, it also falls under the client advocacy piece. And so being able to start this conversation and make it more public and involve the community, a lot of these issues really require community buy-in to start generating solutions. And so participating in this is kind of a no-brainer for us just because it furthers so many of our goals, whether we’re talking about mental health or homelessness or substance use. We really want to engage the community in that discussion and bring everyone into the fold so that we can help people better.
O’CONNOR:
Now it is obviously very much a community focused event. Who is this actually for?
ROSEN:
The community. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, we, you know, when I came to the city and after the first council meeting that I sat in on and saw, you know, I noticed that there was a lot of passionate frustration. There was a lot of folks who very obviously care for the community and want things to be better, but maybe don’t know, you know, whether it’s where to put that energy or how to apply that energy to improve it. And so, you know, one of the things I was thinking is, well, let’s channel that. How do we kind of take this energy that is, I think, well intended and then turn it into something that can be a little more functional? And I think that, you know, starting that dialogue is the first step, right? If we’re not communicating, we’re not able to talk about solutions. We’re not able to talk about how to apply this. And so that was really kind of the idea behind let’s create that forum and use the setting to engage the community better.
BERGEL:
I would say too, I think it’s an opportunity to dispel some of the myths that are out there about specific populations or specific issues. As I said, we have a panel of experts. We have Jacob here. And so that really opens the doors for positive communication, respectful dialogue.
O’CONNOR:
And as you’ve said, it is very much for the community, so you don’t need to be homeless, you don’t need to be perhaps in any kind of distress or…
BERGEL:
You’re welcome. If you don’t love Eureka, you’re welcome. We just love to see you and engage with you. Absolutely.
O’CONNOR:
This is the second forum, the second workshop. Is it going to be different from the first or is it somebody who attended the first and there’s a reason for them to attend the second?
BERGEL:
Oh yes, the topic is completely different and still the same. Just a different focus. Would you like to speak to that as well? Yeah.
ROSEN:
So the topic this time, we’re calling it dynamics of the unhoused. And the reason we went with dynamics in particular, we wanted to focus in on the idea that for folks who experience homelessness, there’s medical issues, there’s mental health issues, there’s substance use issues, there’s issues accessing social services, where, you know, they can get more support to get out of that state of homelessness. And so we really wanted to kind of cover the gamut. The first one, we really covered mental health specifically and kind of like, what is mental health and how do we talk about this? And, you know, that is a piece of this next discussion. And yet this, I think, is kind of zooming out a little bit more and focusing on kind of all the pieces that go into that.
O’CONNOR:
Great. And Kim, of course this is something that’s very very much a passion of yours, it’s something you really wanted to take on as Mayor. Are you seeing any sort of changes, any shift in attitude or even in the community since you’ve been really pushing this?
BERGEL:
Well, I am hopeful. I have had people reach out to me on both sides of the of the issue. And so again, I think it’s just important to keep having these conversations because you know Rome wasn’t built in a day, right? Things aren’t going to change overnight. But if we continue, continue to have these conversations, my hope is that we’ll be able to shift some of the the narrative and really start looking at how we as a community can work together. Because we know this, that community problems, we need community solutions. We need people engaged. We need people’s opinions. We need people’s solutions. And we need to know where they’re at, you know, with their frustrations, so that we can build these relationships that are so important for a healthy community.
O’CONNOR:
Now, I agree entirely and I think it’s very important that we at Lost Coast as well are supporting you in this as well, because we we see some negativity … people say well they you know people should help themselves it’s not up to the city I disagree with that fundamentally and I assume you do you both do too. It needs to be…
BERGEL:
Yeah, I think it’s both and, you know, but I do think that, you know, when people are willing, they’ll get the help that they need. And as a community, we do all need to be educated and understand some of the things that are happening, you know, from an expert’s perspective instead of from, you know, this brief or this very narrow view that we see from where we sit.
O’CONNOR:
Okay, so remind us again, the date, time, place? Thanks.
BERGEL:
Time, the date.
ROSEN:
Sunday, June 4th from 1 to 4.30.
O’CONNOR:
And you’ve got a panel of experts as well. And of course, you’ll both be here. And there’s tacos.
BERGEL:
Tacos! And then NAMI and Hope Center again will be tabling. Yep. So there’ll be good information there too for people that want to engage in that regard.
O’CONNOR:
Well Mayor Kim, Jacob, great to see you both again. Thank you so much for sharing a Humboldt Conversation with us today. Thank you so much for having us. And thank you for joining us for a Humboldt Conversation. We’ll hopefully see you all the next time. Until then, bye bye. Thank you.
CLICK TO MANAGE