Fortuna Police Department press release:

On April 22, 2025, officers from the Fortuna Police Department, with assistance from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office, responded to the 1300 block of Rohnerville Road in an effort to locate Jesse Allen Hanson (Age, 44).

Over the past week, the Fortuna Police Department has been actively investigating a series of burglaries that occurred within city limits. Through the course of these investigations, Jesse Hanson was identified as a suspect in several of the incidents. Additionally, Hanson had an outstanding felony warrant for his arrest.

Officers located Hanson in the 1300 block of Rohnerville Road and took him into custody without incident. During the arrest, officers recovered items in Hanson’s possession that had been reported stolen in connection with the recent burglaries.

Hanson was transported and booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on his outstanding warrant, as well as the following charges:

• PC 459 – Burglary
• PC 460 – Burglary of an Inhabited Dwelling
• PC 666.1 – Theft with Two Prior Convictions
• H&S 11395 – Possession with Two Prior Drug Convictions
• PC 496(a) – Possession of Stolen Property
• PC 1203.2 – Violation of Probation
• PC 484g – Fraudulent Use of a Credit Card
• VC 10852 – Tampering with a Vehicle
• PC 594(a)(1) – Vandalism
• PC 487(a) – Grand Theft

The investigation is ongoing and if anyone has any information related to the recent thefts, please contact the Fortuna Police Department (707)725-7550.

The Long, Drawn-Out Fall of the Visitors Bureau

The Humboldt County Visitors Bureau has been undergoing a strange, protracted fall over the last several years. There was a time when it was the premier – and kind of the only – local organization that promoted Humboldt County’s tourism economy. What did they do? They bought ads in Sunset magazine and such. They’d wine and dine travel writers who came to town. They were, for a while, just absolutely laser-focused on the redwoods, and their bread-and-butter number one tourism target was retirees cruisin’ ’round the country in their RVs. Maybe they’d like to take a spin down through the big trees! Local governments couldn’t throw money at the Visitors Bureau fast enough.

But then, in 2019, the city of Eureka – which was actually coughing up a pretty large percentage of the bureau’s budget – decided that it was going to cut off the organization off, arguing that it didn’t do enough for Eureka proper. Simultaneously, the bureau’s longtime director, Tony Smithers, suddenly died. And then, a couple of years ago, county government started to think that maybe it should get off the Visitors Bureau train as well. Some complained that the HCVB wasn’t keeping up with its mandated reports to the county. Others thought that the bureau was siphoning off too much money that was eventually passed on to regional tourism bureaus and chambers of commerce. Others thought the county’s economic development division could do a better job itself.

But the county put off a final decision on the matter. And then it put it off again. Until, finally: Today.

Going into the meeting, Humboldt County government contributed only about $145,000 per year to the HCVB. The money comes from the transient occupancy tax – the so-called “bed tax” paid by hotel guests (and renters of Airbnbs, and camping spaces) – and from 2022’s Measure J. These days, a number of arts agencies and town-based organizations – chambers of commerce and the like – together receive much more of those funds, in aggregate. These agencies – from Garberville, Orick, Willow Creek, Loleta, Arcata and McKinleyville — all paraded through Supervisors’ chambers this afternoon with their annual report of activities, to much enthusiasm from members of the board.

Then it came time to make a decision about the HCVB. The staff report on the item recommended yanking their funding and instead awarding it to the county’s own economic development division, to be used as the board directs and to support Project Trellis. (Read that staff report here.) It would require a 4/5 vote.

Julie Benbow, the current executive director of the Visitors Bureau, stood up during public comment and gave it the ol’ college try.

“This is one last rallying cry,” Benbow said. “Maybe you think, instead of giving the $143,000 somewhere else, that you actually reinvest it in the bureau for another six months, and that way we can maintain all the things that we do outside the community and keep Humboldt’s reputation alive as a premier destination.”

But the conversation had clearly moved beyond. Employees of the county’s economic development department ran down a list of things that the board had already requested of them – an airport marketing plan, a business retention plan – that have no current source of funding behind them.

Also: Supervisor Mike Wilson sort of verbally subtweeted the agency, with an impassioned speech about how tourism marketing should perhaps not be so determinedly square. He spoke in praise of the work of the Ink People, another recipient of county bed tax funds.

“I’ve been a proponent for a long time — in terms of investment with relationship to tourism — just being a cool place to go visit,” Wilson said. “And it’s not just about redwood trees, which are awesome, and people do do that, but it’s also about your vibe. It’s about what’s happening when people visit. It’s about the spontaneous interactions that they have through the community, and if there’s an arts event here or a cultural event there, and even if they’re kind of in weird and sort of like remote spots within the community, and people run across that, those are the stories that basically generate sort of a broader understanding.”

Supervisor Rex Bohn hinted that, all things considered, he would prefer to see the Visitors Bureau continue to get some kind of funding. He reminisced about past reports from the bureau, and recalled how good it felt to see in them that the county had been written up in the New York Times, or things like that.

“I still like the Visitors and Convention Bureau,” he said. “Nothing against [the] economic development [division], but, I mean, you know, I don’t know. I’d rather keep them funded six months.”

But Bohn seemed more or less on the fence, and Supervisor Natalie Arroyo went ahead and made a motion to go with staff recommendations – to pull funding from the HCVB and reroute it to the county’s own economic development efforts.

That’s when Supervisor Steve Madrone stepped in with the most serious challenge to the proposal. He was all about yanking funding from the bureau, but as he did earlier in the meeting – see below – Madrone sought to use the proceedings to divert funding back to his home district. He proposed using some of the HCVB money to up contributions to the Arcata and McKinleyville chambers of commerce, and to give $20,000 to the Trinidad Chamber of Commerce, which is not currently funded through the bed tax. Trinidad deals with a lot of tourists in the summer, so that would be only fair. He asked Arroyo if she would be open to that amendment.

It turned out that she was not. She said that the ad hoc subcommittee that she and Supervisor Michelle Bushnell had served on had started work on the current list of recommendations many months ago, and hinted that it was a little bit late in the game to pull new proposals out of thin air.

“If we’re going to kind of open up the whole process again to analyze the return on investment and who’s doing what where, I think it would be a whole different conversation,” she said. “But I came to this conversation today with [the idea] that this is the staff recommendation and being able to, by and large, support it. So I’d like to stick to that.”

Madrone – again, as he did earlier in the meeting (again, see below) – said he would hold firm and vote no unless Trinidad gets some scratch. He noted his special leverage in this particular matter.

“I’m sure you’ll probably be able to get another second, but we do need four-fifths,” he said. “So we’ll see where we go with this.”

But if Bohn still held any qualms about defunding the Visitors Bureau, Madrone’s intervention had erased them. The motion passed 4-1, with Madrone dissenting.

That Measure Z Windfall

If you read yesterday’s preview, you may be wondering what the board decided to do with that $400,000 quasi-windfall of Measure Z funds that showed up all of a sudden. Money from Measure Z – a sales tax generally aimed at public safety — had previously been earmarked for brush-clearing along county roads. But now we have Measure O, another sales tax aimed at transportation, and everyone agrees that the brush-clearing should more appropriately be funded by that.

The regular distributions, as graded by the county’s Measure Z advisory committee, were probably not going to be that controversial. The city of Eureka was going to get about $32,000 to buy some safety gear; Fortuna would get nearly $200,000 to fund a program to place a police officer in local schools; Rio Dell would get about $100,000 for a community services officer; and the Humboldt County Fire Chiefs Association would get nearly $1 million for fire suppression efforts across the county.

But what do we do with that extra cash that we didn’t expect to have? There were three options:

Option 1: Give it all to county agencies, with a big bunch to the Sheriff’s Office and the rest to the District Attorney, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Probation Department.

Option 2: Give most of the money to those internal county agencies, but also give a little bit more than it would otherwise give to the Humboldt County Fire Chiefs Association.

Option 3: Give all the money to Measure Z applicants that were otherwise rejected for lack of funding. These applicants included Wild Souls Ranch, a horse therapy outfit in Loleta; the Bear River Band of Rohnerville Rancheria, which runs an Office of Emergency Services; and the City of Trinidad, which wants some cash to repair its water system.

During discussion, it was clear that the board was veering toward Option 2. But Madrone said that he would withhold his aye unless Trinidad got some money for its water system. There was some pushback against this, centering around the idea was that this was stretching the notion of “public safety” pretty far, but eventually Bushnell agreed to add some money — $40,000 – for the project.

This didn’t sit will with Bohn, who waited a few moments before deciding how he would vote.

“We’re paying for infrastructure for an incorporated city,” Bohn said. “I wouldn’t care who it was, but I’m just saying we went so far off the path and again, we’re going to have to do it again.”

“Valid criticism,” Wilson remarked.

But Bohn voted in favor anyway, because, he said, of “fire and the public safety and everything else.”

As the vote was announced (5-0) Bohn’s sotto voce could be heard grumbling into a hot mic, saying “It’s more political…” before Bushnell’s bright “Thank you!” to the staff drowned him out.

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Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District press release:

Eureka will welcome the Europa 2 from Hapag Lloyd Cruises with 460 passengers and 370 crew to Humboldt Bay on Sunday, April 27th, docking at 7:00 AM. The ship will enter Humboldt Bay at 5:30 AM and will be met with a private welcome party at Schneider Dock. The ship is expected to depart at 7:30 PM.

Ship guests will have the option to experience Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Old Town Eureka, Blue Ox Millworks, Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate Factory, an oyster tour and tasting at Humboldt Bay Provisions, and kayaking in Trinidad Harbor with Kayak Trinidad.

The cruise visit and welcome party are a collaborative effort planned by the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District, the City of Eureka, Eureka Main Street, Humboldt County Office of Economic Development, Visit Humboldt, Humboldt Bar Pilots Association, and Zerlang and Zerlang Marine Services. Special thanks to Chet Albin, Dave Schneider, and Schneider Dock.

The Europa 2 is a German ship on a West Coast tour; it departed from Los Angeles on April 13th and travelled north to Vancouver with stops in San Francisco and Astoria before heading south and stopping in Seattle on its way to Eureka. The ship will also dock in Santa Barbara and San Diego before returning to Los Angeles on May 1st.

The ship is expected to be visible around 5:30 AM on Sunday; local citizens can watch the arrival from the Del Norte Street pier, the Park and Ride at Herrick Avenue and the Samoa boat ramp at the north jetty.

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Yesterday, an employee of Pretzelmaker at the Bayshore Mall emailed the Outpost with a news tip nearly as hot and delicious as those salted knots of freshly baked dough.

“Mall Robbery Harry Ritchies,” the subject line read. The body of the email offered details: “An individual ran up to a jewelry display case, smashed it, and ran off with a tray of about 5-10 rings. Not sure how much everything was worth … .”

About $20, turns out.

According to Laura Montagna, public information officer with the Eureka Police Department, the fake-jewel thief launched his brazen caper around 12:30 Monday afternoon, and it went down exactly as our pretzel-making friend reported.

Officers responded to the scene but were unable to locate the suspect. Nor has the department released a description.

Since the jewelry was fake and there were apparently no weapons involved, this might well have been a misdemeanor, “but the glass display was broken and that is going to be a vandalism charge,” Montagna said.

Anyone with information on this underachieving jewel bandit is asked to call the Eureka Police Department at 707-441-4044.

As we mentioned earlier today, Highway 36 having a little tantrum again. An active slide has resulted in the full closure of the roadway just west of Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park and, as of this writing, there is no estimated time of reopening. 

From Caltrans:

Route 36 remains fully closed east of Swimmer’s Delight in Humboldt County due to an active slide.

Early estimates indicate traffic may not resume for days, but we’ll keep you updated when there’s more information.

To give you some idea of what we’re dealing with, Caltrans sends along the video above of road crews quickly moving their bodies away from slide activity as trees come crashing down behind them. 

Yeah, it’s gonna be a while, travelers. 

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Any Californian can purchase naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal medication, directly from the state at a discounted price, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced Monday.

The medication is available online for $24 for a two-pack of the nasal spray, roughly half the market price of the drug. Previously, the discount was available only to government organizations and businesses.

“Life-saving medications shouldn’t come with a life-altering price tag. CalRx is about making essential drugs like naloxone affordable and accessible for all — not the privileged few,” Newsom said in a statement. CalRx is a Newsom initiative to bring down the cost of prescription drugs.

California has spent more than $1 billion fighting the opioid epidemic, which killed more than 8,900 people last year, according to preliminary data from the state health department. That represents a 13% increase in deaths from 2023.

The Naloxone Distribution Project and Access Initiative is part of the strategy to stop overdoses, which began spiking in 2019 as fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opioid, infused the market. The rate of fentanyl-related overdose deaths began declining last year, according to state data.

More than 6 million naloxone kits have been distributed to local governments and organizations since 2018, according to state data. About 355,000 overdoses have been reversed.

In 2024, Newsom’s office announced a new supplier for the state initiative, Amneal Pharmaceuticals, which agreed to sell the steeply discounted drug to California. Days prior, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a $273-million multistate settlement with the New Jersey-based company over its alleged failure to report suspicious opioid orders that contributed to the country’s epidemic.

“By getting this lower price, we are making the financial savings and able to use our dollars to buy more product, which of course is ultimately very much about saving lives,” said Elizabeth Landsberg, director of the Department of Health Care Access and Information, last year.

Naloxone is one of two current efforts by the state to make generic drugs more affordable under Newsom’s effort to lower the costs of pharmaceuticals. California has a $50-million contract to manufacture generic insulins for CalRx. That project is more than a year behind schedule.

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Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

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With more than 187,000 people sleeping on California’s streets and in its shelters, the state’s homeless services industry is struggling to hire enough qualified workers to help them.

Last year, Santa Monica College set out to fix that: It heralded the state’s first-ever community college program aimed at training the next generation of homeless service workers. But the program has fallen victim to many of the same challenges that have long stymied progress on homelessness in California, including unreliable funding, high attrition rates and political turmoil.

In fact, it’s not clear if the much-needed program will persist.

“We know the value added when somebody is adequately trained before they’re deployed,” said Vanessa Rios, a senior advisor for workforce development with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which funds the community college program. “It would be a disservice to our system should we not fund and support this effort. Where the dollars (will) come from, I don’t know.”

It’s the front-line jobs, where staff interact face-to-face with unhoused clients, that often are the most difficult for agencies to fill or keep filled. That includes doing outreach in encampments, staffing homeless shelters, and working as a case manager trying to find permanent housing for clients.

More than 8,000 people worked in the homeless services sector in Los Angeles County in 2022, a report by consulting firm KPMG and United Way of Greater Los Angeles found. But the county still had more than 1,300 open positions and would need more than 2,200 workers on top of that — so, more than 11,500 altogether — to meet the needs of Los Angeles County’s homeless population.

Even compared to other major U.S. cities such as Atlanta, Chicago or Houston, homeless service workers in Los Angeles have a higher turnover rate, according to a more recent KPMG report.

It’s an issue all over the state. Most nonprofits that provide homeless services in California can’t help everyone who asks, in part because they struggle to recruit and retain staff, according to a 2024 study by the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

The new community college program was supposed to fill those holes by giving students the specific skills they need to succeed in homeless services. But amid perennial state budget uncertainty and questions about the region’s homeless services, Rios couldn’t say if her team will be able to fund another round of students at Santa Monica College.

The state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention fund initially supported the program with roughly $750,000. That fund is the main source of flexible money that California cities and counties use to combat homelessness. Once the $750,000 runs out, it’s not clear whether it will be renewed. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget, released in January, did not include any new money for Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention, although the Legislature could still add some.

That uncertainty is a major problem. For years, nonprofits, cities and counties have said a lack of consistent state funding hampers their ability to fight homelessness. While Newsom has poured billions into the cause, it has largely been in one-time grants — not the predictable, ongoing funding that service providers say they need in order to plan long-term programs.

At the same time, the agency that funds the community college program is in crisis. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority — a joint agency of the city and county of LA — has all but imploded. Earlier this month, the LA County Board of Supervisors voted to pull its money out of the joint agency, following a scathing audit of its work. Three days later, the head of the agency said she would resign. Now, the city is considering pulling out as well.

Santa Monica College in Santa Monica on April 16, 2025. Santa Monica College launched a new Homeless Service Work Certificate Program last year in partnership with Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Photo by Alisha Jucevic for CalMatters

“We’re hopeful that we’re able to secure funding in the future,” said Patricia Ramos, dean of academic affairs for Santa Monica College. “But nothing is guaranteed.”

Rios said her team is looking for additional money to support the college program, including from the state and philanthropic partners. If the community college program does continue, it wouldn’t accept another class of students until spring of 2026.

‘Can I do this?’

When Tamyra Simpson saw a LinkedIn advertisement about the Santa Monica College program, she thought it was “too good to be true.”

Growing up, her grandmother, a substance use counselor, would pick up Simpson at her childhood home in Pasadena and travel to Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, where they’d serve food to homeless people on Thanksgiving.

“The women in my family, they’ve always been service-oriented,” she said.

Simpson works as a nanny in the wealthy Los Feliz neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles, but said her goal is to eventually work in homeless services.

She was one of about 70 people who applied for admission into the inaugural Santa Monica College homelessness services program, and one of just 27 students who were ultimately selected, said Steven Sedky, who oversees the program. Students take multiple courses over the span of two semesters, where they learn about the history of homeless services, effective practices to help homeless clients, and even strategies to avoid burnout. The program culminates in a paid internship at a relevant nonprofit or agency in Los Angeles County.

Tamyra Simpson at Santa Monica College in Santa Monica on April 16, 2025. Simpson is part of a new Homeless Service Work Certificate Program launched at Santa Monica College last year in partnership with Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Photo by Alisha Jucevic for CalMatters

Only about half of the students are left, Sedky said — an attrition rate “much higher than we initially anticipated.”

Students dropped out for a variety of reasons, he said. One student lost housing, while other students struggled with the commute to class, which includes in-person meetings on Wednesdays.

On Wednesday mornings, Simpson starts her nanny job at 7 am. Then, around 8 am, she begins the hour drive to Santa Monica. If traffic is bad, it can take up to an hour and a half. After class, a little after noon, she drives back to Los Feliz and works another five hours as a nanny.

“I really ask myself, ‘Can I do this?’” she said. “But there’s so much value in this program, this experience. I don’t think I would have changed anything if I could.”

After she graduates in June, she’ll face a job market rife with its own challenges. An entry-level position at LA-based homeless services nonprofit The People Concern, for example, typically pays between $21 and $25 an hour, said CEO John Maceri. Simpson said she makes about twice that much working as a nanny.

“LA is an expensive place to live,” Maceri said. “It’s hard to survive.”

“This sector does not pay livable wages unless you’re in senior management,” said Celina Alvarez, executive director of Housing Works. She helped create the Santa Monica College program and teaches a class there. “We’ve got to do better by (the workers). They are first responders. They don’t even have access to mental health support, considering they experience and witness a tremendous amount of human suffering on a daily basis.”

Alvarez said between 10 and 15 of the 73 total jobs at her organization are vacant.

At The People Concern, which will host two Santa Monica College students as interns, about 85 jobs are open — about 10% of their total positions. Once the interns complete the program, Maceri said his organization would be happy to hire them.

“The quality of the work is only as good as the quality of the people doing the work,” he said. “And we need more folks in the homelessness response system workforce.”

A difficult job

Low pay isn’t the only thing that makes people wary of jumping into a career in homeless services. The work is extremely grueling and difficult. Burnout is common. A lack of resources makes everything worse. Workers can try their best to help someone, but if there are no shelter beds or housing available, they can’t do much. That can be very frustrating, Maceri said.

“Sometimes people have a fantasy of what the work is like, and then get into it and realize ‘Oh, this is different than what I thought,’” he said. “I think most people want to help, but the intensity of the work day in and day out is a lot to handle.”

A lack of adequate training makes it even harder, as workers may not know how to respond to the specific challenges they encounter in the field. Alvarez gave an example of a newly hired case manager at her organization: The case manager went to a client’s house to pick up the client for a psychiatric appointment. Before they left, the client injected themself with an unknown substance. The big-hearted case manager didn’t know what the client had injected but took them to their appointment anyway — a dangerous move that could have ended with the client becoming aggressive or even overdosing in the caseworker’s car, Alvarez said.

Existing degree programs don’t train workers for the realities of what they’ll face in the field, such as navigating the bureaucracy of hospitals and nursing homes, or how to reunite a homeless individual with family, Rios said.

The program also tries to prepare students for burnout, by providing counselors who debrief with students after they go out in the field, and teach them techniques to cope with what they see.

Loma Linda University campus on April 22, 2024. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters

But there are some intractable problems this training program can’t fix.

For social workers, who have a master’s degree, it’s more lucrative to work as a therapist in private practice. Even other low-paying industries, such as child welfare, offer special grants or fellowships. In Los Angeles, the county’s decision to gut the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority makes it even harder for graduates to imagine this industry as a stable career choice.

Still, as a current student, Simpson is hopeful that the community college program will continue.

“As an inaugural cohort, there are going to be missteps. We’re essentially the guinea pigs,” she said. “At its core, it’s an incredible opportunity.”

She said she’s well-aware of the pay cut that an entry-level job in homeless services might require, and that she’s willing to keep her full-time nanny position as long as it takes to find other work.

Given the number of job vacancies, it’s unlikely that she’ll wait very long.