One-fifth of the units at the Grove, the Arcata House Partnership’s low-income housing program, are damaged beyond usability — and AHP wants Arcata to help pay for the repairs. 

The Grove is home to 56 people, many of whom were once homeless. The building was, at one point, a Valley West-area motel until it was purchased by the Arcata House Partnership (AHP) several years ago. It took a $14.1 million state grant to complete the remodeling, and when it opened in late 2022 there were 60 units available for rent. 

Three years later, the situation has changed. Twelve of those units are in poor-enough shape that they’re unusable. Some of them need a new kitchen; some need the paint on the walls redone; one bathroom was severely damaged by a tenant who suffered a psychotic break and tore up the walls. The Coordinated Entry system, designed by the federal department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), requires that the housing programs they fund prioritize admitting people who stand to suffer the most if they’re homeless. If a candidate is elderly, has children, or is disabled, getting them housing is a higher priority to the HUD. People with a serious mental illness can be near the top of the list; sometimes they don’t adjust well to new living conditions. Darlene Spoor, AHP’s executive director, emphasized in an interview with the Outpost that most of the Grove’s renters are doing “really well,” and they’ve only had a few tenants who’ve adjusted poorly to living in the Grove.

With so much living space unusable, operations at the Grove have slowed. AHP hasn’t been able to process and house as many people as they’d like. The situation may worsen; Spoor estimated that an additional four units will probably be unlivable within a year. She thinks AHP will need around $3 million to repair everything, though she’d like to have another $400,000 or so to cover the costs of adding an ADA-compliant sidewalk and adding solar panels. 

AHP does not have the money to repair the rooms. Their funding has been unstable since the HUD changed their funding process last year, frightening AHP’s leaders to the point where they thought they might not be able to house their 31 people completely supported by HUD funds. Although the HUD later ended up giving the AHP $660,000 for their permanent supported housing programs in late 2025, that money will run out at the end of September. The income they make from the renters also doesn’t add up to much. All of the tenants pay 30% of their income (whether that’s from a job, Social Security, or General Relief), but some of them don’t earn any money and pay no rent. AHP also didn’t put aside any of the state money they used to build the Grove for later use, Spoor said. 

“When we chose to develop that project, we chose to move forward knowing that we didn’t have funds for all of it,” Spoor said. “We didn’t have funds for the ADA sidewalks, and we didn’t have funds for the solar. But it was more important for us to get people in and housed, and then look for all of the other things that we need now…it was more important to get people housed sooner than later.”

AHP is banking on receiving state funds Arcata might procure. This Thursday, the city council will decide if the state Community Development Block Grants Arcata will apply for should go towards replacing water meters or fixing up the Grove. The path from state coffers to AHP via the CDGB process isn’t a straight or a sure one; the city first has to decide that it will try and secure funding for the AHP project, then apply to the state for it, and then California has to choose that project out of the scrum of other similar, competing ones. There’s no guarantee that any of those things will happen. Arcata city councilmembers Stacy Atkins-Salazar and Alex Stillman both said they were leaning towards the idea at the council meeting last week; Meredith Matthews was more in favor of using the funds to replace aging water meters. (The other two members were absent.) Arcata doesn’t have a long, successful track record of using the CDGB funds for homeless services, director of community development David Loya told the Outpost, and because of the chaos at the federal level, many other cash-poor municipalities might apply for funds out of the same small pool. All of these factors complicate the plan immensely. 

Spoor is grateful for city hall’s past support, but said AHP will need more of it to continue operating. Spoor said using the CDGB grants will allow the Grove to stabilize long-term. All of their proposed projects are crucial to a lasting success, she said. 

“I live in Arcata,” Spoor said. “Do I think that the water service is critical? Yes, absolutely. Do I think it’s easier to find funding for water service elsewhere than it is for affordable housing right now? Because there’s no affordable housing money anywhere right now…I think it would be easier to find funding for water infrastructure.”

“As stressful as it is for me, imagine: finally, people get stably housed,” Spoor continued. “They’ve lived through the trauma of being homeless all those years, and now they have to worry about whether they’re going to be homeless again in October. That’s horrible. That is punishment. It’s cruel.”