Elections have consequences. What does four more years of Trump mean for our environment? (Hint: It’s baaaaaaaaaad.) But local elections were a lot better.

In Eureka: Measure F failed spectacularly, firmly clarifying that Eureka voters want more housing and approve of the city’s parking lots-to-apartments plan. The rejection of Measure F also hints that while money matters in politics, it only can get you so far. City Councilmembers Scott Bauer and Kati Moulton were re-elected too, which the EcoNews sees as an endorsement of the direction of the city and a rejection of the Take Back Eureka crowd (again).

In Arcata: Incumbents Stacy Atkins-Salazar, Sarah Schaefer and Alex Stillman appear to have won. (Political newcomer Genevieve Serna may still be within striking distance of Stillman.) What unites these candidates? All four of the top vote getters are firmly pro-housing and were supportive of the Gateway Area Plan. Two of the candidates most critical of Arcata’s housing ambitions failed to eclipse 8% of the vote. The EcoNews sees this as an endorsement of the pro-housing direction of the current council.

Zooming out to the state: Voters appear to have approved Proposition 4, the California climate bond, which will invest $10 billion into fighting the climate crisis. This money may be particularly important given likely disinvestment in climate action from a unified Republican Congress and White House.

The Alexander Coeur family first came to Humboldt in the 1880s, and started the Freshwater Store in 1894. Harold Coeur, a second-generation son, served in World War I, and third-generation son Gerald served in World War II. All three generations operated the Freshwater Store, from 1894 to 1967. This is a history of the Coeur family, their military service, and their service to the community through the Freshwater Store.

Born in France in 1854, Alexander Coeur later immigrated to Nova Scotia, where he met and married Nellie Harrigan. The newly married couple arrived in Humboldt County in 1880. Alexander Coeur obtained work as a mule train skinner and a horsewagon deliveryman with the Alexander Brizard Company, transporting domestic goods and merchandise from A. Brizard store headquarters in Arcata to the various Brizard stores located to the east in the gold and silver mining communities.

The Alexander Coeur family. Back row, from left: Nellie and Alexander Coeur and daughter Marie. Front row, from left: Ernest, Lena, and Harold (Gerald Coeur’s father). 1908.

The Brizard Company then appointed Alexander Coeur as Brizard store manager at New River (Old Denny) in Trinity County, where Coeur also became postmaster. From 1883 to 1896, Alexander Coeur was general manager at three separate Brizard stores located on the New River: at Francis; at Coeur (named for Alexander Coeur); and White Rock. By the 1890s, Alexander Coeur was ready to go into business for himself, and in 1894 he and Nellie Coeur purchased the Freshwater Store from the McGeorge Family. (Daughter Miss Edith McGeorge was an English teacher and vice principal at Eureka High School for thirty-plus years until 1936.)

The Freshwater Store was located at present day Freshwater, seven miles east of Eureka on the Kneeland/Freshwater Road with Freshwater Creek nearby. The Freshwater Store served a large area surrounded by Excelsior Lumber Company and Pacific Lumber Company timberlands. Travel to the Coeur Freshwater store was by train, mule, and horse and wagon.

According to an 1892 memoir by Hazel Mullin (spouse of Earl Mullin) on file at the Humboldt County Historical Society, the community of Freshwater had seven saloons during these years. She writes: “The white building next door was another saloon; there were seven in town.”

Alexander and Nellie Coeur had four children: daughter Marie (Lambert); son Harold; daughter Lena (Bowers); and son Ernest.

Harold Coeur (Gerald’s father) in “his winter clothes,” 1918, posted at Vladivostok, Siberia, WWI.

Harold Coeur, born in 1895, served in the U. S. Army during WWI, from 1917-1918, guarding for the allies the port of Vladivostok, an open seaport in Siberia, Russia on the Sea of Japan.

Upon his military discharge in 1919, Harold returned to Humboldt County and married Helen French of Eureka. Helen’s father, William (Bill) French, was a City of Eureka police officer, serving as traffic officer in the 1920s and 30s.

Harold and Helen Coeur took over the operation of Freshwater Store in 1920. Alexander Coeur died the following year.

Harold and Helen French Coeur had two children: Gerald A. Coeur and Virginia Coeur. Daughter Virginia married Francis Cook of Petrolia and settled on the Cook Ranch, where she raised three sons.

Gerald “Gerry” Coeur, born 1921, attended Garfield Grammar School in Freshwater, and then graduated from Eureka High School in 1940. As a Eureka High Logger Gerry lettered in four sports: football, basketball, baseball and track. In track he was Humboldt County track meet champion in 1939 and ‘40 in the one-quarter-mile run and second in the one- half-mile run. In football, as a sophomore halfback in 1937, he was a reserve behind the great Don Durdan and Len Longholm as the Loggers won the Northern California Championship by defeating San Jose 14-7. He was starting halfback in fall ‘38 and ‘39. In basketball, Gerry was a starting guard for two years. In baseball, he was a pitcher and outfielder for coach Les Mooneyham.

Gerry entered Humboldt State College in the fall of 1940 as a communications major. His academic goal was to become a radio announcer. In his sophomore year at HSC the events at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 drew America into World War II. In January 1942, Gerry hitchhiked to San Francisco with the intent to become a pilot in the Army Air Corps. At the Ferry Building on Market Street, however, the Army line was long. While waiting in the Army line, Gerry noticed a shorter line with a large sign “Fly Navy.”

Soon he was in the Navy line, then he was taking physical and mental tests. He passed and was advised: “We will contact you.” He returned to Humboldt and in February 1942 the contact came. Gerry traveled by railroad and bus to Bishop, California for the first of several flight-training programs. He completed ground school with mechanics of flying and transferred to the preflight course at St. Mary’s Moraga Campus for three months (no flying).

At Livermore he underwent eighty hours of primary flight training in a two-seat open cockpit Boeing Stearman. His flight instructor was Lt. James Cady of Humboldt County. Cady’s father had been tender of the Trinidad Lighthouse. Cady was an athlete at HSC and later coached and taught at Arcata High School.

Gerry was sent to Cuddihy Field at Corpus Christi, Texas, for flight school, including night flying and formation flying. At Kingsville, Texas he received advanced training in shooting flying targets, dive- bombing, and navigation. He was commissioned an Ensign U. S. Naval Aviator and was assigned to OpaLocka, Florida Naval Station for Navy fleet training in a Brewster Buffalo. Considerable time was spent on field carrier landings. From Opa-Locka he was sent to Chicago to make his first carrier landings on Lake Michigan. The Navy had two converted ferries, the Sable and the Wolverine. All Navy pilots headed for sea duty would make six carrier landings on one of these vessels.

After a short leave home to Freshwater, Gerry was assigned to San Diego Naval Air Station. In July 1943 he volunteered to go to Alameda to join the VF II “Sundowners” Fighter Squadron that had just returned from the Guadalcanal Campaign. Here he flew the newest and hottest Navy fighter — the Grumman Hellcat. The Grumman Hellcat had six 50-caliber machine guns in the wings, eight five-inch rockets under the wings, and could carry up to a one-thousand- pound bomb.

In Alameda, Gerry was close enough to fly home on his days off. “We had a good skipper,” recalls Gerry, “and we could take a plane on a 300-mile radius. At that time our local airport in McKinleyville was a small naval air station under Alameda command, so I could fly home.” On his way to the McKinleyville airfield, Gerry would announce his arrival as he flew over Freshwater by doing a loop and a roll over his hometown. “If the Navy had seen that,” recalls Gerry, “I would have been grounded and put on the end of a paintbrush!”

Gerry’s fighter squadron consisted of forty-five pilots and was joined by thirty-five dive-bomber pilots and thirty torpedo-bombing pilots. The three squadrons shipped to Hawaii and met the newly constructed aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-12) at Hollandia, New Guinea. Their ship had been named in honor of the previous Hornet (CV-8), which had been sunk at the Battle of Guadalcanal in the fall of 1942.

The Hornet moved to the Philippine Islands invasion supporting General Douglas MacArthur. Gerry’s fighter pilot squadron supported the invasions of Okinawa, Leyte Gulf, Manila Bay, Luzon, Lingayen Gulf, and Mindanao. They also flew strikes into mainland China and Indo-China.

As a pilot of the Grumman Hellcat, Gerry Coeur recalls that the Grumman plane had better armament and pilot protection than the Japanese Zero, made by Mitsubishi, when engaged in combat. He successfully shot down several Japanese Zeros and supported US ground troops on island invasions.

In January 1945 the USS Hornet, under the command of the third fleet commander, Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, moved to the South China Sea looking for Japanese shipping and hiding along the Indo-China coast. Gerry recalls that he and his air group sank five Japanese oil tankers, one destroyer, and one destroyer escort near Cam Ranh Bay on the Indo-China coast. Gerry Coeur, as a Lieutenant Junior Grade, was discharged from the Navy in December 1945.

Following the war, Gerry returned to Humboldt State College, where he graduated in 1948 with a degree in communications. From 1948-1952 he was a radio announcer and newscaster at KIEM radio, Sixth and E Streets, Eureka.

Then in 1952, Gerry became the third generation Coeur to own and operate the Freshwater Store. Of course, as the son of a family grocer, he had worked in the store before, but not with great success. As Gerry recalls:

When I was high school age I used to work for my Dad some. I was a delivery boy. My dad had a pickup for delivering groceries to ranches around Freshwater. Well, I had trouble with those pickups. I wrecked one, then another one. I was demoted to stocking the shelves. My dad took a pretty dim view of the whole thing.

But those problems were behind him, and Gerry successfully ran the store until 1967, when he sold the Freshwater Store. The longtime Coeur family institution had finally come to an end. The store building, now closed, still stands next to the Garfield School on Freshwater Road.

Gerry became a licensed stockbroker in Eureka in 1965, and retired from Lehman Brothers in 1988. Gerry and wife Dorothy (Rezzonico) had three children: Connie Lee; Jeff; and Marsha Coeur. Dottie died in 1988 after a successful career at College of the Redwoods. Gerry and his second wife, Georgann (Lenz), now live adjacent to the Baywood Golf Course at Bayside, where they enjoy community activities and playing golf.

The Coeur family operated the Freshwater Store for seventy-three years — a small enterprise, but in longevity second only to the famous A. Brizard Company as a “family grocer.” Through the Coeurs’ three-generation service as storekeepers, athletes, and soldiers, they have left a legacy. The Coeur family has earned our salute.

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Ed. note from 2024: A year after this article was published, Gerry Coeur died at age 93. The Freshwater Store building is still there. It looks to be in pretty nice shape.

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The story above is from the Spring 2014 issue of the Humboldt Historian, a journal of the Humboldt County Historical Society. It is reprinted here with permission. The Humboldt County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization devoted to archiving, preserving and sharing Humboldt County’s rich history. You can become a member and receive a year’s worth of new issues of The Humboldt Historian at this link.

Ed. note: The first post-election update — linked below — has not produced any noticeable, newsworthy changes in the results, with a couple of possible exceptions:

1. The Blue Lake insurgency ticket has increased its lead a tiny bit. Ryan wrote about that today.

2. Alex Stillman has crept up a little bit in Arcata, making Genevieve Serna a longer shot than she was previously.

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Press release from the Humboldt County Elections Office:

With 2,539 additional ballots counted, the Humboldt County Elections Office provides an update on the canvass process which ensures every vote is accurately verified and included.

The Humboldt County Elections Office has released its first post-election results update following Election Day, adding 2,539 ballots to the total count, bringing the total to 33,956 out of the county’s 84,741 registered voters.

Along with these updates, the Elections Office has officially begun the canvass period, a detailed review process that confirms the accuracy and integrity of the final election results. Running through Tuesday, Dec. 3, the canvass includes verification of all received ballots, including vote-by-mail, provisional and conditional ballots, to ensure every valid vote is counted before certification of the election.

The Elections Office has approximately 31,499 unprocessed ballots as of today, Friday, Nov. 8.

• Provisional: 2,004
• Vote-By-Mail: 29,461
• Ballots from Voting Locations: 34

Nearly all of these remaining ballots arrived on or after the Friday before Election Day, reflecting the trend of ballots being submitted close to or on Election Day. Of the 31,499 ballots that remain to be processed, 57 of the vote-by-mail ballots were received today, Friday, Nov. 8 and were postmarked on or before Election Day.

Under California law, vote-by-mail ballots postmarked by Election Day can be counted if they arrive within seven days after Election Day. Each mail-in ballot undergoes a careful signature verification process, with two election officials reviewing and comparing the signature on the ballot envelope to the voter’s registration record. If any discrepancies arise, voters are given the opportunity to resolve or “cure” the issue to ensure their vote is counted.

All valid vote-by-mail ballots will be counted regardless of the outcome or closeness of any race if they are postmarked by Tuesday, Nov. 5 and arrive by Tuesday, Nov. 12.

Canvass Process Ensures Accuracy and Transparency

As part of the canvass process, Humboldt County election officials conduct a manual tally to verify the accuracy of machine counts. Required by California’s Election Code, this step involves a hand count of at least one percent of ballots to confirm that electronic results align with the actual votes cast. This process identifies any discrepancies, reinforces the reliability of reported results and strengthens public trust in the electoral process.

Additionally, Humboldt County’s large college student population impacts the election process. Many students register locally, often close to Election Day, resulting in a higher number of provisional ballots. Provisional ballots are used when voter registration details require further confirmation. By processing these ballots after Election Day, officials ensure that all eligible votes are accurately included, while validating voter records with care.

The Humboldt County Office of Elections will continue providing updates each Friday to keep the public informed on ongoing progress. Final certification of the election results is expected by Tuesday, Dec. 3. Through each step of this process, the Humboldt County Office of Elections is committed to delivering a thorough, accurate election outcome that reflects the voice of its voters.

For more information on the results of the election, please visit the Elections Results webpage or call 707-445-7481.

UPDATE, 5:07 p.m.:

The first post-election report just came in, and it shows the challengers extending their lead on the incumbents, though the race remains close. With three seats up for grabs, Michelle Lewis-Lusso has the most votes with 136 votes, followed by John Sawatzky (123), Kat Napier (116), Adelene Jones (109), Christian Firor (106), Christopher Edgar (87) and Winona Pitts (61). 

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It’s 2024, and electoral politics in America have gotten bitterly acrimonious — not just at the national level but even in the idyllic rural community of Blue Lake. One local couple recently described this year’s Blue Lake City Council race as the most contentious they’ve seen in their 43 years as residents.

As with the country at large, the flames of discontent have been fanned by the intemperate winds of social media. In a letter to the city council and mayor, local resident Alex Ricca (one half of the local couple referenced above) described posts in one particular Blue Lake-focused Facebook page as “some of the most disgusting political rhetoric I have ever read in my life, and I’ve read some nasty stuff.”

Much of the controversy has swirled around City Manager Mandy Mager, with critics accusing her of ignoring public feedback in favor of her own agenda while her defenders (who include members of the city council) describe her as dedicated, passionate and effective.

The city is also experiencing growing pains, with community disagreements about growth — whether the city should pursue ambitious new business and housing developments (including a controversial mixed-use project proposed by DANCO) or resist the siren call of modernization in hopes of retaining Blue Lake’s quaint character.

There are three open seats on the Blue Lake City Council this election cycle, and seven candidates stepped up. That includes three incumbents: Mayor Adelene Jones, Christopher B. Edgar and Christopher Guy Firor, who was just appointed last month to serve out the remaining two years in the seat recently vacated by Elizabeth McKay. Think of them as representing the status quo.

Jones made her position clear in a Facebook post last month, urging voters to choose wisely. “Four of the seven candidates running for office are motivated by anger towards our wonderful City Manager Mandy Mager and they have no ideas or visions for our town. I recommend you vote for Adelene Johes, Christopher Edgar and Chris Firor for enthusiasm and moving our city forward.”

The other four candidates — Michelle Lewis-Lusso, Verda Winona Pitts, Katherine “Kat” Napier and John Sawatzky — represent a slate of disgruntled insurgents looking to oust the sitting councilmembers. Their mounting discontent was reinvigorated last month when the city council chose to appoint Firor to the vacant seat rather than Sawatzky, even though 63 people had signed a petition supporting Sawatzky’s appointment. 

Napier lambasted the council for that decision, and at the most recent City Council meeting she condemned Jones for her Facebook allegations. “These are vitriolic words,” she said. “They’re inflammatory, they’re divisive and they’re inaccurate. … It does not bring joy to Blue Lake. … Please stop using the city manager to hide behind and make her a target.”

When the final election night vote tally was reported by the Humboldt County Elections Office, some supporters of the challengers mistakenly took the results as final and started celebrating a bit prematurely. Those results — which represent just a portion of the ballots that must eventually be tallied — were incredibly close. Lewis-Lusso finished with the most votes (124), followed by Sawatzky (106) and Napier (99).

But two of the three incumbents are within a hair’s breadth of squeezing into the top three. Firor ended election night with 98 votes, a single vote behind Napier. (If he winds up winning this four-year term, it will supercede his recent appointment to the two-year vacancy and the council will need to make a new appointment early next year.) Jones is right behind with 97 votes. 

In other words, it would take just three votes for Jones to surpass Napier and just two for Firor to do so. And they’re each less than 10 votes behind Sawatzky. Even Edgar is potentially within striking distance, ending election night with 75 votes.

We’re expecting a new batch of results this evening. We’ll see whether the challengers extend their lead or the incumbents work their way into the top three.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Eureka Police Request Your Assistance Identifying This Bandana-Wearin’, Bike-Ridin’ Bank Robber

Press release from the Eureka Police Department:

On December 01, 2021, the Eureka Police Department responded to a silent panic alarm at Northern Redwood Federal Credit Union. Officers arrived on scene and learned the bank had just been robbed. The suspect fled the scene on bicycle. EPD Detectives and Evidence Technicians responded to the scene and took over the investigation. Through evidence collection and witness interview the suspect was identified as Timothy Thomas Mock. An arrest warrant was authored and issued for Mock.

During the investigation it was believed that Mock fled the state to avoid arrest. In October of 2024, Detectives learned that Mock was possibly living in Greenbelt, Maryland. An EPD Detective contacted the Greenbelt Police Department and requested their assistance in locating and arresting Mock on his warrant. On November 4, 2024 Mock was located, arrested and booked at the local jail in Greenbelt. Mock is waiting extradition back to California.

The Eureka Police Department would like to thank the Greenbelt Police Department for their assistance with this investigation.

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PREVIOUSLY: ‘Humboldt’ Singer Brett McFarland is Back With a Snappy New Song and Video About How Everything is Going to Hell

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In his latest single, “When the Country’s Gone,” local farmer/songwriter Brett McFarland expresses a deep concern about the state of the world and the future being left for the next generation. He touches on Humboldt’s long history of boom-and-bust economies and its enduring impact on the people who live here. 

The album, “Humboldt,” is part of a social impact project McFarland is working on to “raise awareness around environmental issues and inspire change,” according to a press release announcing the release of his new single. In the music video’s description on YouTube, McFarland highlights the Ancient Forest Alliance, an environmental organization dedicated to protecting old-growth forests, the Betty Kwan Chinn Homeless Foundation and Klamath River restoration efforts.

As good-intentioned as he may be, some of the lyrics in McFarland’s new song are a bit misleading, as noted by a few folks in our comment section.

As you know, dear reader, it is in our journalistic nature to poke holes in nice things in the enduring search for truth and clarity. To that end, we’re deploying LoCO’s False-O-Meter ™ to assess the validity of some of McFarland’s lyrics. We’ll rank ‘em on a scale from “As if!” to “Yeah! Checks out!” Let’s play!

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The music video opens with McFarland walking down one of the docks at the Woodley Island Marina, carrying his young daughter in his arms as he delivers the song’s opening line: “Well I love my child I’m a true believer but I wonder what kinda world we’re gonna leave her.” The camera pans down to an orange-capped syringe and a condom sitting atop a tangle of seaweed at the water’s surface. 

LoCO False-O-Meter rating: “Seems Sus”

Sure, littered drug paraphernalia can be spotted along Eureka’s streets – this unfortunate trend has been discussed ad nauseum at city council meetings and even inspired a local rap song, “Orange Cap City” by Hiway – but this sighting seems a little, uh, staged? I get it, the needle and condom floating in our beautiful Humboldt Bay are meant to highlight the degraded state of society and its impact on the environment but it’s a bit much, no? Alas, subtlety is a dying art.

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As the drum beat slowly ramps up, there are flashes of floating plastic water bottles, trash on the beach, an aerial view of a landfill, a strip mine, a redwood tree stump, a dried-up lake bed, wildfires, oil refineries, a wind turbine, the “Eye of Providence” on the $1 bill, clear cut forests, tent cities, a torn American flag, and then the screen goes black. 

“I used to think I knew but now I ain’t too clear how we’re ever gonna make it out of here,” McFarland sings as an aging fisherman unties his boat from the dock and heads out to Humboldt Bay. He is soon joined by McFarland and another guy ripping the harmonica at the back of the boat as the song takes off. “I don’t know what’s right or wrong but I’m gonna cry when the country’s gone.”

As the boat passes Schmidbauer Lumber, McFarland calls out Humboldt’s long history of boom-and-bust economies tied to resource extraction. “Well, the city man came with a big swingin’ dick singin’, ‘We make the problems only we can fix’,” he sings over a clip of a faceless businessman looking out over skyscrapers.“Yeah, they dug all the gold and they cut all the trees and now they’re coming back for the ocean breeze.”

LoCO False-O-Meter rating: “You’re Not Wrong, But…”

For nearly 200 years, boom-and-bust industries (gold, timber, fishing, weed) have dominated Humboldt’s economy. Those industries came with a lot of perks, but I think it’s safe to assume that the proverbial “city man” didn’t have the best interest of Humboldt – or our environment – at heart when he “came in  with a big swingin’ dick.” No argument there.

However, there’s an important distinction between the extractive industries of yore and the burgeoning offshore wind industry. For one, wind is a renewable resource that is naturally replenished and cannot be depleted. That said, there are still a lot of questions regarding the potential environmental impacts associated with floating offshore wind turbines, which are actively being explored by scientists and wind developers around the world. (You can check out LoCO’s offshore wind coverage at this link.)

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McFarland continues: “Yeah, the biggest fish farm on the whole West Coast cooking GMO salmon while the fishermen sell their boats!”

LoCO False-O-Meter rating: “As if!”

The fish farm McFarland is referring to here is the land-based fish farm that Norway-based seafood company Nordic Aquafarms plans to build on the Samoa Peninsula. When the fish farm was first dreamed up, Nordic planned to raise Atlantic salmon at the facility. However, in April 2023, the company changed its plans and opted for yellowtail kingfish instead. Nordic has also committed to avoiding all GMOs and antibiotics in its fish feed.

It seems unlikely that Nordic’s project would be the “biggest fish farm on the whole West Coast” but it was difficult to find a definite answer. According to the Outpost’s previous reporting, the facility’s five buildings would span roughly 766,000 square feet across the 30-acre site. Compare that to Kent SeaTech, which sits on 160 acres – 6,969,600 square feet – near Palm Springs. However, Kent SeaTech doesn’t list the square footage for its facilities, so we couldn’t make a direct comparison. Also, it’s not clear if McFarland’s use of “West Coast” means West Coast states or coastal communities. I know, we’re being nitpicky but this is for your own good!

And to be clear, our “As If!” rating does not apply to the bit about fishermen having to sell their boats. There is no doubt that the local fishing community has struggled in recent years due to ever-increasing environmental regulations and declining revenues associated with shorter commercial fishing seasons, which are often delayed or canceled by low abundance, price negotiations, and/or the presence of domoic acid in shellfish. 

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In his last verse, McFarland decries the state of the U.S. economy. “You and me are the GDP, buying debt in the land of the free,” he sings. “They say if you ain’t growin’ then you’re gonna die, but it’s a pyramid scheme and a hell of a lie. All around the country folks are getting priced out and mom and pop are rentin’ ‘cuz they can’t afford to buy a house!”

LoCO False-O-Meter rating: “Yeah! Checks Out!”

There are a lot of economic factors that play into the national housing market that I am not at all qualified to speak to, but I think it’s widely acknowledged that the average American cannot afford to buy a house due to exorbitant prices, rising interest rates and limited availability.

Still, I think it’s important to note that the U.S. economy is actually in pretty good shape. People are struggling economically but inflation is down and economic growth is solid, according to a recent assessment from Nerd Wallet.

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McFarland closes the song by repeating, “I don’t know what’s right or wrong but I’m gonna cry when the country’s gone.” The music video ends with aerial footage of a neighborhood decimated by fire and fades to a black screen with white text: “Find meaningful ways to make a difference.”

McFarland and friends are already working on a music video for his next song, “Klamath,” which tells the story of the decades-long, indigenous-led effort to undam the Klamath River. Want to be a part of the music video? Show up to the Arcata Playhouse at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 9, but be sure to RSVP by sending an email to the contact page at McFarland’s website – linked here.

When President-elect Donald Trump moves into the White House in January, he will become a key figure in California’s homelessness crisis, holding the federal purse strings and setting policy at the national level..

So what will this change of power mean for the state as it tries to move its nearly 186,000 homeless residents — the most in the nation — indoors?

Housing and homeless services experts in California worry the Trump administration will cut federal funding in those areas, while also doing away with policies deemed too “progressive.”

But surprisingly, based on what he’s said so far about one of the key issues regarding homelessness, Trump’s agenda isn’t much different from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s. Trump pledged to tackle the encampments that have made cities “unlivable” by working with states to ban urban camping and arrest those who don’t comply — something many cities in California started doing before Election Day, as Newsom encouraged them to clear camps.

“The homeless have no right to turn every park and sidewalk into a place for them to squat and do drugs,” Trump said in a campaign video posted online in April, 2023. The video appears to be the last time he revealed specific homelessness policy intentions.

“There is nothing compassionate about letting these individuals live in filth and squalor rather than getting them the help that they need,” Trump said.

Newsom, who in most other arenas is one of Trump’s biggest foes, has said nearly the exact same thing.

“There is no compassion in allowing people to suffer the indignity of living in a camp for years and years,” Newsom said in September before signing a package of housing bills. In July, Newsom ordered state agencies to ramp up encampment sweeps, and he threatened to withhold state funding from cities that fail to do the same.

More than two-dozen California cities and counties already have introduced or passed new ordinances cracking down on camps (or updated existing ones to make them more punitive), after the Supreme Court gave them the green light to do so in June.

Trump also said he would move unhoused people to tent cities staffed with doctors and social workers.

That plan alarmed Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow for the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

“We need to remember that involuntary carceral approaches don’t work and just delay our efforts to end homelessness,” he said.

If Trump pushes these policies at the national level, especially if he offers federal funding for sweeps and tent cities, it could spur California cities to further crack down, Visotzky said.

“The homeless have no right to turn every park and sidewalk into a place for them to squat and do drugs.”
— President-elect Donald Trump in a campaign video, 2023

As the Trump administration gets to work replacing the heads of federal agencies such as the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, there’s a good chance policies California has come to rely on will get tossed out along the way, said Sharon Rapport, director of California state policy for the Corporation for Supportive Housing. The new guard likely will scrap at least some policies viewed as the gold standard in California, such as “housing first,” which says unhoused people, even those struggling with an addiction or their mental health, should be offered housing with no strings attached, and then services to help them recover.

It’s also a good bet California would see large cuts to funding for federal housing and homelessness programs — including the voucher program that subsidizes rents for hundreds of thousands of Californians, Rapport said.

That’s worrying for organizations such as Abode, which provides housing and other services for homeless Californians in seven counties.

“Federal funding is the brunt of what we receive either directly or through other entities, so it could be really impactful if there’s a huge reduction,” said CEO Vivian Wan. “It’s just going to hurt all of our communities.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.