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The Betty Kwan Chinn Foundation has secured $130,000 in community donations to expand Betty’s Blue Angel Village, a 30-unit transitional housing project made up of retrofitted shipping containers at West Washington and Koster streets in Eureka. 

The donation, which includes a $50,000 contribution from Eureka Natural Foods and another $80,000 from community partners, will allow the Betty Kwann Chinn Foundation to add 30 new independent units to the village.

Local leaders and city officials gathered at the Betty Kwan Chinn Day Center this morning to celebrate the news, which just so happens to coincide with Chinn’s 46th anniversary of service to Humboldt’s homeless community. 

“We are blessed, Betty, to have you in our presence and serving [our community] the way that you have,” said Chuck Petrusha, foundation board president. “We’re all just so grateful. I know you don’t want [this announcement] to be about you, but it is, and it’s about the selfless giving that you’ve always done and the way that you do it without any judgment — I think that’s the part that I’ve learned from the most.”

Chinn vowed to serve the community “until the day I die.”

“We’re gonna provide more services for the people who need it, like a little tiny houses,” she said, referring to the Bayside Village transitional housing project on Hilfiker Lane, which began welcoming residents last summer. “I will keep going, and then I have [my staff] behind me and the board behind me. … And I want you all to know it’s not really about Betty, it’s community and unity that make it work.”

The fundraising campaign was largely organized by Kathleen Lee and Julie Fulkerson, who were able to raise $80,000 through monthly donations from local contributors. Fulkerson thanked Chinn for her commitment to the city’s most vulnerable community, and shared a story to illustrate “what Betty’s about and what Betty does.”

“About 20 or 30 years ago, I was in San Francisco at a conference having a very lovely dinner at a very lovely restaurant, and we were sitting behind these big glass windows having very delightful meals,” she said. “On the other side of the glass, literally inches away, were people asleep on the sidewalk or eating out of little food bags. … What I know about Betty is she takes that thin sheet of glass away between the differences. She doesn’t see the differences; she sees everyone as a real living human being.”

Slattery

Eureka City Manager Miles Slattery credited Chinn for being “instrumental” in connecting the unhoused community municipal social services, including Pathway to Payday, a free four-day workshop that builds interview skills and connects applicants with potential employers. 

“It’s not a typical thing that cities get into providing social service programming,” Slattery said. “Betty’s been crucial for that.”

Eureka Natural Foods owner Rick Littlefield told the Outpost that he has long-admired Chinn’s approach to housing the homeless because she’s able to balance compassion with accountability. Betty’s Blue Angel Village emulates those values, he said, because it gives residents a safe place to live while they get back on their feet, but encourages them to take responsibility of themselves.

“The thing with Betty, and what’s very different than a lot of the homeless outfits, is that she requires that the people that participate to follow through on their commitments,” Littlefield said. “She works with them and tries to be helpful, but if they don’t [follow through], she cuts them loose. That’s the reason she has so much success, I think, because there are consequences, and in life there are consequences. … We want to help, but they have to do their part.”

Today’s announcement comes almost exactly 10 years after Chinn first established the retrofitted shipping container village, which began as a partnership with the Humboldt Coalition for Property Rights to help transition the city’s homeless population into temporary housing amid a newly declared shelter crisis and ongoing concerns over the homeless encampment in the Palco Marsh known as “The Devil’s Playground.” 

At the time, the proposal drew criticism from local business owners who worried that the camp would exacerbate ongoing issues with crime and drug user in the heart of Eureka’s downtown business district. But one month after people started moving into the container village, Chinn announced that most residents had already found full-time employment and several others were on their way to securing permanent housing. A few months later, the village was moved to its current location on West Washington.

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