Dresser. | Photo by Ryan Burns.

Casey Dresser is a 48-year-old electrician who moved to Eureka from the Bay Area about a year and a half ago. He sees a lot of potential in his new hometown, but he feels like the city is in a rut. Recently  — very recently, in fact — he decided to run for mayor to see if he can do something about it.

Yesterday afternoon, Dresser sat in a metal folding chair in the parklet outside Ramone’s Bakery and Cafe in Old Town, the sleeves of his brown plaid shirt rolled up to reveal strong, heavily tattooed forearms. During our interview he occasionally poked at the teabag floating in his large to-go cup with a stir stick pinched between the fingers of his (also tattooed) hands.

“I’ve never been interested in politics,” he said. “And I just kind of started paying attention recently [after] seeing what’s going on here and seeing a lot of the problems that are getting ignored.”

Like what, specifically?

“Well, one of the biggest things is there’s drug addicts everywhere on our streets, and it’s just being allowed to go on,” he said. “I don’t see anyone making any attempt to address it.”

The Outpost noted a few of the City’s existing programs, which include Uplift, the Community Safety Engagement Team (CSET) and Crisis Alternative Response Eureka (CARE). Mayor Kim Bergel highlighted these programs while discussing her re-election campaign recently.

Dresser said he’s familiar with those efforts.

“Problem is, a lot of these people aren’t choosing to utilize those programs,” he said. “These people are choosing that lifestyle.”

Dresser has recently been sharing his viewpoints on Facebook. For example, he recently wrote:

We need a different approach to the drug addicts that are ruining this town for everyone and chasing away tourists. We have been rewarding their behavior and encouraging it for too long and it is not helping anyone.

I want zero tolerance for people using drugs, littering and sleeping on our streets. We have options. People can go to rehab and get assistance getting back on their feet. If they choose not to get help, they will have the choice of jail, or leaving town.

During our interview, however, he momentarily backed away from the notion of forced treatment.

“I mean, that’s kind of fascistic, right? Like, ‘You have to get clean,’” he remarked.

Still, he believes something more must be done to address the issue.

“I just feel that these people, the drug addicts we see every day … I just feel [like] they’re really dragging down the quality of life here,” he said. “Friends I have that come visit are like, ‘Dude, I’m never coming back, man.’”

Dresser moved here from the East Bay. He said he lived in Oakland for about a decade and also spent time in Berkeley and, most recently, Castro Valley, where his son (born in 2013) was living with his ex (the boy’s mom). He said Castro Valley recently cracked down on people using drugs, littering and otherwise “disrespecting the town” by giving “a green light” to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department.

He said Eureka needs to send a similar message: “It’s not okay to sit and shoot up on our sidewalks, poop on our sidewalks and throw garbage,” he said. “If you don’t choose to utilize [Eureka’s existing] programs, then you got to go.”

What exactly would that look like? Dresser mentioned Humboldt County’s longstanding Transportation Assistance Program (TAP), which helps people relocate to other communities where they have friends, family and/or employment opportunities. But the program is voluntary, and the transportation assistance is only provided after Social Services staff verifies that there’s a friend, family member or agency at their destination to receive and support them.

“Right, it’s voluntary now,” Dresser said. “But, I mean, you have to go. We’ll get you to where family is. We can get you somewhere else. But I just don’t see any benefit to this town or to these people [in] allowing them to just sit and kill themselves on the streets.”

‘I have a history’

At this point in the interview, Dresser offered a surprising revelation. 

“I have a history,” he said. “I’ve been through addiction. I’ve been homeless.”

Asked to elaborate, Dresser said he’s been “on and off homeless” a few times in his life, including a two-year stretch around 1999-2000 and another period about a decade ago. As for the drug use, he said he’s been clean for three years now. Before making that change he was living in his car.

Asked how he managed to turn his life around, Dresser said he simply reached his limit.

“It wasn’t easy back then,” he said. “[People] weren’t like, ‘Here’s a tiny home that you can sit [in] and get loaded in.’ You know, ‘We’re gonna have people come deliver you clean socks and bring you clean needles’ and things like that. It was hard. It was a struggle, and I just, I couldn’t do it anymore.”

Dresser went through a detox program on his own volition, he said, and he understands that while there may be programs that help people find housing and get jobs, it’s often the first step — that initial week or two of kicking drugs — that’s the hardest to take.

He recently talked to staff at the Eureka Rescue Mission to learn more about the services available there, and he hopes to talk to other local service providers soon. But he only recently started investigating the situation in a serious way.

“I just decided to do this [run for mayor] like a week ago,” Dresser said. “So I haven’t had a chance to do a lot of, you know, to talk to a lot of the people that I would like to talk to and find out what services are being offered.”

Based on his own experience of being homeless and talking with others in the same situation, Dresser said he’d estimate that about 90 percent of the people he spent time with chose to be unhoused and on drugs. 

[NOTE: Evidence suggests that the main causes of homelessness are structural and systemic crises like affordable housing shortages, poverty, and untreated health conditions. Statistically very few people choose to be homeless.]

“A lot of people choose that lifestyle, and that’s fine,” he said. “I mean, if that’s the lifestyle you choose, hey, it’s your life.”

But wasn’t he just saying that it’s not fine? Doesn’t he want a zero-tolerance policy? What can be done when an unhoused person or a drug user doesn’t want to get on a bus out of town, or when they don’t have friends and family who are able to help them in another community? What does “zero tolerance” look like at that point?

“I would say we have to figure out some way then to utilize the jail,” Dresser responded. “And I would also suggest making the TAP program not voluntary.”

Isn’t that kidnapping?

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, if you’re sending someone who’s already … .” He paused briefly. “I don’t know. I would have to look into that.”

We asked how he would respond to people who point to evidence that harm-reduction programs are effective and have been shown to lower disease transmission, prevent fatal overdoses and connect people to treatment without increasing drug use.

“I do not believe that,” he responded. “I’ve seen no evidence of it.” Turning sarcastic for a second, he continues, “Yeah, sure. ‘Oh, this data says this; this data says that.’ I’ve been on the streets. I’ve seen it. I don’t believe it. And I’ve seen the evidence of what HACHR [the Humboldt Area Center for Harm Reduction] does. I’ve seen the videos of them selling drugs out of their office.”

(In 2020, following a series of undercover operations, the City of Eureka alleged HACHR was complicit in drug sales and use on-site. HACHR denied the claims and maintained a strict zero-tolerance policy against illegal drug activity on its premises. The City Council later temporarily banned the organization’s syringe-exchange program. HACHR continues to operate under state authorization.)

Dresser is far from alone in his frustration with seeing unhoused people downtown. Some of these people are experiencing mental illness. Some openly use drugs in public. Some scream — whether at themselves, at strangers or at the universe can be hard to tell. For Dresser and many others in the community, the continued visibility of such people can be infuriating. They voice their anger at Eureka City Council meetings and online, lambasting the current council and mayor for their perceived inaction and enabling. 

Dresser pointed to the City Council’s decision in May of last year to reject a proposed ordinance that would have increased penalties for living in unauthorized homeless encampments, upgrading certain violations from infractions to misdemeanors. 

Those who view that decision as an egregious misstep have found an ally in Dresser.

“Some of the people who pushed me to do this [run for mayor] will remain nameless because they do not want their names in this, but I know a lot of business owners around here who are suffering greatly,” he said. “They’ve seen what I say about ending the homeless problem, and they’re the ones who are like, ‘Yes, please run.’ I mean, this is destroying our businesses.”

But if there’s no room in the jail for nonviolent offenders, how do you solve that problem?

At this question, Dresser remained silent for a full 15 seconds. He sat back in his chair and looked into the middle distance, his lips pursed.

“I think we would have to adjust,” he said after the long pause. “We would have to adjust things. I don’t know. Like I said, I’ve never been a politician, so I don’t know what my powers are.”

What can a mayor do?

In Eureka, like many other California cities, mayor is a largely ceremonial position. The mayor presides over council meetings but doesn’t cast a vote unless it’s to resolve a tie. He or she appears at ribbon-cuttings and the like. The current salary for the gig is $625 per month.

“I just didn’t find that out until after I threw my hat in,” Dresser acknowledged. “So I don’t know what-all I really can do, but I know I can influence things. And once I have a better idea, we can say, ‘Hey, I mean, this is what we can do.’”

Dresser said he’d like to find out why other cities, such as Fortuna and Rio Dell, don’t seem to have as many visible homeless people on their streets. He’d also like to speak with the Eureka Police Department to learn more about the laws and enforcement options. 

As for other priorities, he said he’s like to see more jobs in Eureka, and he feels that cleaning up the streets and reducing red tape can go a long way toward accomplishing that. 

We asked whether he’d considered running for a seat on the city council, rather than mayor, given his evident interest in policy. Dresser lives in the First Ward, where three candidates are already vying to replace Councilmember Leslie Castellano, who is termed out. 

“I thought about it,” Dresser said. “Like I said, I already cast my hat in the ring for mayor — and then I found out that, you know, it is what it is. So yeah, I’m already doing this.”

Yesterday evening, a few hours after the interview concluded, Dresser sent a follow-up message via Facebook. He said the conversation got him “thinking deeper about how to approach these situations, and reassessing my ideas.”

“If we are not learning and growing, we are stagnant,” he continued. “I will be reaching out to a lot of people locally and farther away and gathering as many ideas as I can over the coming weeks. I am open to all ideas. If you or anyone you know has any suggestions, I would love to hear them. But I refuse to throw my hands up accept that this is just how it’s going to be.”

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