Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

On Sept. 20, 2025, at approximately 12:20 p.m. Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to a local business to meet with a 52-year-old female victim of an alleged sexual assault that occurred earlier that morning in the Loleta area.

During their investigation deputies learned that the suspect was identified as Amos Lee Nuckols, 56 years-old, of Eureka, and a driver for a local transit company. Nuckols was driving in the area of Little Fairfield St. in Eureka with a client in the vehicle, when encountered the victim seated on the side of the road.   He then stopped and offered the victim a ride, which she accepted.  He then reportedly drove his client to the Ferndale area where he was dropped off and then drove the victim to a secluded area in Loleta where the alleged sexual assault occurred.  

Deputies contacted the North Coast Rape Crisis team and requested an advocate respond to the scene. The advocate responded met with the victim and transported her to a local hospital for treatment and provided her with additional victim assistance resources.

Based upon the victim’s statement and the initial investigation deputies arrested and booked Nuckols at the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on the following charges:

• P.C. 220(a)(1) Assault with intent to commit a specified felony
• P.C. 243.4(d) Sexual Assault

This is an active criminal investigation, and no further details will be released.

Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.

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New data from the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Public Health Branch shows a significant decrease in opioid overdose deaths over the last two years — the lowest numbers reported since 2020. 

During a biennial update on the county’s syringe exchange program at Tuesday’s Humboldt County Board of Supervisors meeting, Public Health Officer Dr. Candy Stockton largely attributed the decrease in local overdose deaths to increased access to overdose-reversing drugs like naloxone, commonly referred to by the brand name Narcan.

“Our participants have reported nearly 280 overdose reversals in the last year,” Stockton said. “It’s actually critically important if you think about the total number of deaths that we had in Humboldt County from overdoses last year was about 50, [and] looking at how much higher that would have been without the overdose reversals that we had as a result of our naloxone distribution.”

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office reported 32 drug overdose deaths in 2020, which ticked up to 53 in 2021. In that same time period, fentanyl overdose deaths increased by 377 percent — jumping from nine in 2020 to 34 in 2021 — launching Humboldt into a fentanyl epidemic. There were over 80 local drug overdose deaths reported in 2022, as seen in the chart above, but that number steadily declined in 2023 and 2024.

“Our overdose death rates have been decreasing slowly over the last three years, but we are still losing 50 of our friends, family members and community members to overdose,” Stockton continued. “The numbers for this year look on track to be at that same level or slightly higher this year. This overdose prevention work remains critically important in our community.”

Stockton also reported a “drastic decrease” in the local hepatitis C rates over the last five years, something she attributed, in part, to local syringe exchange programs. 

“The combination of both being able to treat and cure hepatitis C and slowing the spread among individuals who are infected has really helped us as a community combat this serious illness,” Stockton said. “[These programs] help reduce the incidence of HIV and hepatitis C transmission, as well as helping to reduce overdose deaths in people who use drugs.”

“[There is] lots and lots of data going back, showing that [syringe exchange programs] do not increase drug use, as is sometimes a concern for people,” she continued. “We also know that areas that have active syringe service programs across the country have actually lower incidence of syringe litter in their community, lower incidence of needle stick injuries for law enforcement officers, and decreased crime levels compared to areas that do not have those programs.”

Following staff’s presentation, Fifth District Supervisor Steve Madrone acknowledged that “we’ve all been touched in our families by addiction and these drugs in one way or another,” and thanked DHHS for their work.”

“I think the data does show that [these programs are] having a positive effect,” he added. “We’re not Portugal, so we don’t have heroin shops and other kinds of things. We don’t hand out drugs; we hand out equipment to try and make things safer. I mean, there’s some interesting data in countries like Portugal and other places that have taken it to a whole ‘nother level further, but we don’t do that in America.”

First District Supervisor Rex Bohn was more skeptical.

“I appreciate the work you’re doing … [and] I’m just an old man looking here, but we’re going to give away smoking supplies in the unincorporated community so they can smoke an illegal product, but we’re not doing any more tobacco licenses?” he asked rhetorically. “But as we move forward with the fentanyl use, a lot of that is going to be enforcement. … If they can’t get the product, maybe they’re going to think about coming in and getting help with that.”

Similarly, Board Chair Michelle Bushnell said she hasn’t been “greatly supportive” of needle exchange programs in the past, due to concerns over monitoring and lenient parameters. 

“It’s not that I don’t agree with the process or the concept, I just wanted some more — I guess more? I don’t know what the word is — I wanted it to be monitored more,” she said. “I do appreciate the work, and I do recognize that the drug overdoses have gone from injectables to more pill form now, which is unfortunate, and hopefully someday we can find solutions for that as well.”

Supervisors Natalie Arroyo and Mike Wilson both expressed support for the program, with Wilson making a motion to approve and file the report. The motion passed in a 5-0 vote.

Staff’s full presentation can be found at this link.

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The City of Eureka is among a group of plaintiffs that prevailed over the Trump administration in federal court Tuesday.

The plaintiffs, a group of local organizations and governments that receive millions of dollars of federal grant money, accused the Trump administration of imposing “unauthorized and vague conditions” on their grant funding. Yesterday, a federal judge agreed, issuing a preliminary injunction that bars the administration from making grants conditional upon fulfilling Trump’s policy goals.

The president’s administration was trying to force grantees to comply with a series of recent executive orders that prohibit recipients from promoting “woke” beliefs and practices, such as DEI, “gender ideology” and elective abortion, while requiring them to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts. The City of Eureka is among many jurisdictions to have passed a sanctuary ordinance prohibiting the sharing of immigration-related information with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The plaintiffs in this suit, led by the City of Fresno, challenged the actions on constitutional grounds, arguing that they violate the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the Fifth Amendment, Separation of Powers, the Spending Clause and the Tenth Amendment.

The City of Eureka joined the lawsuit last month. City Manager Miles Slattery told the Outpost via phone that while the city has not yet received any grants that would have been contingent on those new conditions, it regularly received Community Development Block Grants and federal transportation grants.

“We’re looking at a $5 million grant for transportation [currently],” he said.

With yesterday’s ruling, which follows a temporary restraining order granted last month, Judge Richard Seeborg found that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their case. Only Congress has the authority to impose conditions on federal grant funding, he noted. And he found that the administration’s grant conditions likely violate the Separation of Powers; they’re unrelated to the expertise of the granting agencies; and the vagueness of the conditions would encourage “arbitrary and discriminatory” enforcement, among other issues.

The order applies to these federal agencies:

• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
• U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
• Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
• Federal Transit Administration (FTA)
• Federal Highway Administration (FHA)

It’s unknown whether defendants’ attorneys will now seek a permanent injunction. The Trump administration could also appeal the ruling. You can read the decision full at this link.

Press release from the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities:

Next week, September 29 through October 5, 2025, the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities (CRTP), Tri-County Independent Living, the Humboldt Transit Authority, and the Humboldt County Association of Governments are organizing the annual Week Without Driving on the North Coast. The Week Without Driving is an invitation for anyone who wants to participate – but particularly for elected and appointed officials, transportation planners and engineers, and other decision-makers – to get some first-hand experience of what it is like to live without the option of driving, here in our local communities.

In July of this year, Week Without Driving founder Anna Zivarts gave a well-attended public talk in Arcata about the nondrivers in every community, the importance of meeting the transportation needs of nondrivers, how communities can work better for nondrivers (and everyone else), and valuing the expertise of nondrivers. Nondrivers include people with disabilities, kids, older people, immigrants, people with suspended licenses, and people who can’t afford to own or operate a vehicle. Humboldt County’s nondrivers include at least 36,000 people without a driver’s license, as well as an unknown number of people who have a license but can’t drive for financial or other reasons.

For participants in the Week Without Driving, the challenge is to not drive themselves in any car. If participants do end up driving during the week, they are encouraged to reflect on why they ended up driving, and what they would have done if they didn’t have that option. Local decision-makers who sign up to participate in the Week Without Driving are also invited to ride along with a local transit rider on one of their regular routes to gain additional first-hand insights into using the local transit system.

This is the third national Week Without Driving. Hundreds of organizations across the country are hosting local Week Without Driving activities and events.

Local Leaders Sign Up to Participate

As of this release, 46 local residents in Humboldt County have signed up to participate in the Week Without Driving, including elected officials and other local leaders. The Humboldt Transit Authority also issued a formal proclamation recognizing the Week Without Driving at their September 3rd Board of Directors meeting.

Following is a partial list of local leaders who have pledged to participate:

• Robin Baker, McKinleyville Family Resource Center co-executive director
• Philip Beaudry, Eureka Transportation Safety Commission member
• Alysia Bixler, Redwood Community Action Agency projects coordinator
• Mary Burke, McKinleyville Municipal Advisory Committee member
• Caitlin Castellano, Eureka senior planner
• Katie Collender, Humboldt Transit Authority Deputy general manager
• Mario Fernandez, Eureka City Council member
• Caroline Griffith, Eureka Transportation Safety Commission chair
• Ashton Hamm, uxo architects worker-owner
• Frank Herrera, Cal Poly Humboldt Social Justice Equity & Inclusion Center coordinator
• Morgan King, Cal Poly Humboldt climate action analyst
• Maggie Kraft, Area 1 Agency on Aging executive director
• Meredith Matthews, Arcata City Council member
• Mark Mueller, Eureka Transportation Safety Commission member
• Nanette Nickerson, Caltrans District 1 senior transportation engineer
• Bonnie Oliver, McKinleyville Municipal Advisory Committee member
• Joben Penuliar, Caltrans District 1 complete streets coordinator
• Greg Pratt, Humboldt Transit Authority general manager
• Saskia Rymer-Burnett, Caltrans District 1 transit planner
• Sarah Schaefer, Arcata City Council member
• Matt Simmons, Arcata Planning Commission chair
• Emily Sinkhorn, City of Arcata director of environmental services
• Oona Smith, Humboldt County Association of Governments senior regional planner
• Jessica Welch, Cal Poly Humboldt Library organizational development & engagement coordinator

There is still time for anyone interested to learn more and sign up to participate at https://transportationpriorities.org/weekwithoutdriving.

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Press release from CalFire Humboldt-Del Norte Unit:

What: Professionally controlled prescribed burn planned for the consumption of invasive beach grass involving approximately 9 -10 acres each.

When: The prescribed burn is planned for Wednesday, September 24th, 2025.

Where: Ocean Ranch southwest of Table Bluff. Four miles northwest of Loleta. Lake Earl Wildlife Area. Five miles north of Crescent City.

Why: These burns are part of a multi-year prescribed fire study for invasive plant management and hazardous fuels reduction. The treatment will help to enhance the health of the native plant communities, aid in the control of non-native plant species, protect and enhance habitat for multiple dune species, and aid in the reduction of hazardous fire fuels.

Who: California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), CAL FIRE.

During these prescribed fire operations, residents may see an increase in fire suppression resource traffic, smoke will be visible and traffic control may be in place. Please be cautious for your safety as well as those working on prescribed burns.

Learn more how you can prepare for wildfire by visiting: www.ReadyForWildfire.org.

For more information, please contact the CAL FIRE Humboldt – Del Norte Unit Public Information Officer line at: (707) 726-1285.

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From the Eureka Police Department:

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

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California counties are reporting decreases in homelessness, suggesting the state is finally making progress in solving one of its most difficult and persistent problems.

But even as Gov. Gavin Newsom and local officials are celebrating, the money that made those wins possible is at risk of evaporating.

President Donald Trump’s administration this month tried to block organizations that don’t support its social agenda from accessing federal homeless housing funds — causing experts in the field to worry that politically liberal California could find itself blacklisted from crucial dollars.

Cuts to state homelessness funding are also on the horizon, and some local jurisdictions are pulling back funds as they struggle with their own budget deficits. That has counties, nonprofits and industry experts worried California’s homeless counts will soon go right back up.

“I do think that we’re doing something right,” Sharon Rapport, director of California state policy for the Corporation for Supportive Housing, said of the recent decreases. “That all may come to a crashing end with a lot of concerns with what’s happening at the federal level, federal policy changing and funding cuts happening.”

Of the 29 places in California that reported an official homeless census this year, more than half saw a decrease compared to 2024, according to an analysis of point-in-time counts by the Hub for Urban Initiatives. That includes drops of about a quarter in Contra Costa and Sonoma counties, 20% in Santa Cruz County, 16% in Ventura County and 14% in Merced County.

San Diego and Los Angeles counties each saw a decrease of less than 10%. For LA County, this marks the second year in a row that homelessness is down.

But funding worries loom like a black cloud over those promising results. As purse strings tighten, service providers will have to cut staff, programs and bed capacity, meaning they can help fewer homeless people. For years, California cities, counties and nonprofits have been pushing the Newsom administration to provide an ongoing source of homeless funding, so service providers can plan ahead without worrying each year about how much money they’ll get.

Some organizations already are feeling the squeeze.

From December through July, Union Station Homeless Services in Los Angeles County turned away 700 families who needed housing, said CEO Katie Hill.

“We just don’t have anything available for them,” Hill said.

The county cut housing vouchers as the city and county struggled with financial fallout from recent wildfires, falling property tax revenues and increasing legal payouts.

Other organizations are closing their doors for good. Downtown Streets Team, which helps unhoused residents in 16 California cities find housing while earning money cleaning up local streets, plans to close next month after two decades of service.

“The financial and political environment we operate in has shifted dramatically in recent months,” CEO Julie Gardner said in an emailed statement. “During this time, (Downtown Streets Team) lost several significant contracts and grants, creating a multi-million-dollar loss in overall funding. When combined with other factors, including rapidly rising operational costs, these losses made it impossible to continue running the organization in a financially sustainable way.”

‘I just don’t think we’re going to see that funding’

Congress in 2023 appropriated $75 million for something called the Continuum of Care Builds grant, which was supposed to help support the construction of new homeless housing. Former President Joe Biden’s administration started the application process for those grants in 2024. When Trump took the helm in 2025, his administration re-started the process with new criteria, making applicants apply again.

Then, at the start of September, the Trump administration made everyone apply a third time — with a very different set of criteria seeming to disqualify organizations that support trans clients, use “harm reduction” strategies to prevent drug overdose deaths or operate in a “sanctuary city.”

Applicants had to attest that they don’t deny the “sex binary in humans or promote the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic.” They had to promise not to distribute drug paraphernalia or allow the use of drugs on their property.

“I do think that we’re doing something right. That all may come to a crashing end.”
— Sharon Rapport, director, California state policy for the Corporation for Supportive Housing

Applicants also had to attest that they operate in a city, county or state that cooperates with federal immigration enforcement. Newsom has resisted Trump’s immigration crackdown at a state level, and recently signed a set of bills intended to further check ICE.

And applicants were required to operate in a city, county or state that prohibits public camping and enforces that rule. That one could be an easier lift: Arrests and citations for camping-related activities have soared in some California cities over the past year, after the U.S. Supreme Court gave cities more leeway to crack down, and Newsom encouraged cities to ban camping. But two recent statewide attempts to ban homeless camps from near schools and other areas fell flat.

The new funding rules were a major blow to Contra Costa County-based Hope Solutions, which was initially selected to receive $5.5 million to build 15 tiny homes for homeless 18-24-year-olds in Pittsburg. After staff spent at least 100 hours completing the project proposal, they learned this month that they’d no longer qualify because of the new criteria. The Pittsburg Police Department says it does not participate in immigration enforcement. In addition, the new program rules specify the money must go to buildings that serve elderly residents — an about-face that takes Hope Solutions’ youth project out of the running.

“It felt like a gut punch,” said CEO Deanne Pearn, “and really disheartening to know that we had spent so much time and asked so much of our county partners and others, and that that time could have been spent elsewhere.”

The camp where a person experiencing homelessness lives on a hillside above U.S. Route 50 in Sacramento, on Oct. 25, 2024. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

Hope Solutions is still moving forward with the project, which Pearn hopes the organization can fund with its own financial reserves. But that means the nonprofit won’t have that money for its next project.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness recently sued the Trump administration over the new grant conditions, claiming that all projects in California and three dozen other states would be ineligible for funds. Earlier this month, a federal judge sided with the Alliance, and temporarily barred the federal government from distributing those funds.

Now, that $75 million is frozen as the case moves forward.

While the new conditions at issue in the lawsuit apply only to one specific federal homelessness grant, experts worry it’s an ominous sign for California. Service providers expect applications to open this fall for the main source of federal homelessness funding — the Continuum of Care Program — which funneled about $600 million to California counties in 2023.

If that application poses similar requirements, California could be in trouble.

“Personally, I just don’t think we’re going to see that funding,” said Hill, of Union Station Homeless Services in Los Angeles County.

In a separate lawsuit, San Francisco and Santa Clara Counties sued the Trump administration over contracts that prevented recipients of federal homeless funds from using the money to promote “gender ideology,” “elective abortions” and “illegal immigration.” The counties won an early victory last month, when a judge temporarily blocked the administration from imposing those conditions.

Other federal cuts are looming, too. The Emergency Housing Vouchers program, which launched during the COVID-19 pandemic and now helps more than 15,000 Californians pay their rent, is expected to run out of money next year.

That’s not even counting the cuts to housing vouchers and other federal housing and homelessness programs Trump proposed in May, which are still being negotiated in Congress.

California turning a corner on homelessness

California appears to be decreasing its homeless population, according to the Hub for Urban Initiatives, a California organization that helps local communities shape their homelessness policy, apply for grants and survey their homeless populations.

The 29 California communities that counted and reported their homeless populations this year tallied a total of 131,209 people — a 4% decrease from what those same communities reported last year. That’s a significant step for a state where the homeless population has been stubbornly rising for years.

That data comes from the federally mandated homeless point-in-time count, where teams of volunteers count the unhoused people they see on the street on one night in January. The counts are imperfect, as volunteers can overlook people sleeping in out-of-the-way places, and different counties use different methods — while some places count every year, others count every other. Of the 44 “continuums of care” required to count in California (some small, rural communities combine multiple counties into one continuum of care), 14 didn’t count this year.

The federal housing department will release an official total for the state later this year.

Newsom trumpeted the initial decreases, taking credit for pouring money into homeless housing and other services. He’s not wrong.

Contra Costa County, which saw the state’s biggest drop in homelessness this year, attributes its success largely to the recent boost in state funding, said Christy Saxton, director of Health, Housing and Homeless Services for Contra Costa County. Over the past two years, the county increased its homeless shelter and housing capacity by more than a third.

A big piece of that was the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program, which Newsom launched in the 2019-20 budget year to fill what until then had been a void of state homelessness funds. For the past few years, that program gave cities and counties $1 billion each year.

Those funds support programs such as Contra Costa County’s Delta Landing temporary housing site in Pittsburg, which opened 172 units in 2021. Until then, that part of the county had about 20 beds for its unhoused residents, Saxton said.

But instead of making that state funding ongoing, Newsom’s administration opted to dole it out in one-time grants each year, leaving cities and counties continually guessing what next year’s budget will bring.

This year, that state program will get no new funding (because of the glacial pace at which the state distributes these funds, cities and counties have yet to receive money from the last round). Next year, the amount is set to shrink to $500 million.

“We are significantly concerned about the cuts that are coming,” Saxton said, “because it has taken an influx of money in order to see those decreases, and we need that to continue on now more than ever.”