Dear Editor,

I continue to be amazed at your publication’s lack of due diligence and objective reporting. You continue to spread untruths about the Housing for All and Downtown Vitality ballot initiative and Citizens for a Better Eureka.

First, I want to clarify that the CEQA lawsuits and the Housing for All Initiative are PRO HOUSING. Neither the CEQA lawsuits filed by Citizens for a Better Eureka nor the Housing for All and Downtown Vitality initiative prevent the building of housing units on downtown parking lots.

The lawsuits request that the City do what it is already legally required to do and comply with CEQA when approving projects. CEQA compliance ensures that environmental impacts, if any, are analyzed and, where necessary, mitigation measures are imposed to reduce those impacts. The ballot initiative says the developments must preserve the public parking spaces that our local downtown businesses rely on. None of our efforts stop the proposed developments.

Last month, Citizens for a Better Eureka filed requests for injunctions in the four CEQA cases that were filed against the City. We did this because the City should pause, reconsider its parking lots development plan, and allow the City voters to provide guidance on the issue. However, it seems the City is determined to push it through.

While we are doing everything we can to win the injunctions motions, we also know there is a strong chance the court will not rule in our favor. Whatever the outcome, it won’t hinder our efforts going forward to save downtown Eureka and its businesses while continuing to bring much-needed housing to the city of Eureka.

We believe there are better options for solving our housing crisis than harming our downtown businesses. For instance, the proposed residential zoning overlay for the former Jacobs Middle School site included in the initiative provides a pathway to increase the housing supply in Eureka, bringing down its cost and making it more affordable – especially for working- and middle-income families. We were pleased to see a developer’s plan to purchase the site and encouraged to see so many of our neighbors agree with us that it is a good site for housing at last month’s Town Hall meeting.

We are pro-housing, pro-business, and pro-citizens, using our voices to push back on ill-conceived plans that will harm our city.

Sincerely,

Mike Munson
Citizens for a Better Eureka Member
Eureka Housing for All and Downtown Vitality Initiative Co-Sponsor

###

Dear Mr. Munson:

As is all too common in letters like this one, you decline to specify the “untruths” that the Outpost is allegedly passing off, leaving it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what you could be talking about. You protest that the two groups you have made yourself the semi-public local face of — one of them fighting on the legal front, the other on the electoral — are “pro-housing” (or, rather, “PRO HOUSING”). This would kinda sorta lead one to conclude that the Outpost, somewhere, called these groups “ANTI HOUSING.” This is not the case. In the entire 13-year history of the Outpost, the phrase “anti-housing” has appeared exactly twice, both times quoting opponents of your endeavors. You can’t object to that, can you? We have quoted the “Housing for All Initiative” proponents calling themselves by that name far more times than two.

It could be that you are cheesed off by the fact that we have not full-throatedly adopted this branding, which, after careful and costly market research, you and your colleagues seem to have decided is your best chance of getting the public to vote your way. Since we do not scream from the rooftops that your group is “PRO HOUSING” at every opportunity, we are failing in our duty of “objective reporting.” Maybe you think that “objective reporting” implies a magical world in which everyone gets to be exactly what they claim to be, no questions asked. It would be a strangely hippieish, airy-fairy fancy coming from someone who, for my money, runs the best steak house in town, but it does seem just possible.

But the Outpost cannot call these efforts “pro-housing” for a pretty simple reason: Their aim is to stop approved, permitted and in some cases largely funded downtown housing developments. The fact that you wish to exchange this bird in the hand for a notional, speculative possibility of housing elsewhere someday — or on structures erected above the downtown parking lots, adding God knows what costs to development — can’t really alter the fact that you want to stop these housing developments now. The lawsuits, which you here come dangerously close to admitting to be a baseless stall tactic, are particularly unhelpful in this regard. So “pro-housing” is too far, alas, and no number of glossy mailers featuring stock photos of multiracial children cavorting on the streets of Anytown, U.S.A. is likely to change that.

Instead, the Outpost’s regular shorthand descriptors of your efforts are that they are “pro-parking” and that they “seek to stop downtown housing developments,” or some variation of that latter phrase. These have the benefit of being true, and they accurately describe the genesis and goals of these initiatives. More than that, they are defensible enough political positions by themselves. Why can’t you own them?

As for the “due diligence” of our reporting: We have been in frequent contact with the Tennessee-based Gail Rymer, your public relations consultant — or, rather, the public relations consultant that Security National employs on your behalf — and she has been invariably quick and candid and helpful in answering questions, to the degree that she is allowed to be. Money well spent. Indeed, it was she who sent us the letter above, even though you have my email address and still owe me a response to a question I had for you three months ago.

Patiently,

Hank Sims
Editor
Lost Coast Outpost