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Press release from the City of Eureka:

Linc Housing has secured another $15 million for 90 new affordable homes at three city-owned properties in Eureka (known as the “Eureka Scattered Site Project”).

The California Department of Housing and Community Development just announced Linc Housing’s Eureka Scattered Site Project as one of 18 projects across the state to receive federal funds for new affordable rental homes through the National Housing Trust Fund Program (NHTF). Linc Housing will apply for tax credits this July, which will be the final funding component needed to move the development forward.

The Eureka Scattered Site Project will include new affordable housing communities on city-owned properties at 8th and G Streets, 6th and M Streets, and Myrtle and Sunny Avenues.

The project has previously been awarded $30.1 million from the State’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program in 2023, as well as an Infill Infrastructure Grant of $750,000 in 2021, and has secured project-based housing vouchers from the Eureka Housing Authority.

If awarded tax credits, Linc Housing anticipates applying for building permits in early 2025 and completing construction the following year.

The city and Linc Housing have been working together on the project since the Eureka City Council approved Linc Housing’s proposal in October 2020, after a Request for Proposals process was completed. The aim of the development is to build affordable housing on city-owned parking lots as required by Eureka’s 2019-2027 Housing Element to meet State housing requirements and address the housing crisis.

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Press release from the Humboldt County Drug Task Force:

Lucero.

On June 8, 2024, Humboldt County Drug Task Force (HCDTF) Agents with assistance from the Fortuna Police Department (FoPD), served a search warrant on Jasmine Kahoalii Lucero (46 years old from Eureka). HCDTF Agents observed Lucero travel from Humboldt County to Sacramento, California. Upon Lucero’s return to Humboldt County, Agents conducted a traffic stop on her vehicle. FoPD Officer Stevens and his K9 partner Cain conducted an open-air sniff on the vehicle. K9 Cain alerted to the vehicle indicating drugs were present.

Inside the vehicle, Agents located Jasmine Kahoalii Lucero, over a pound of methamphetamine, a digital scale, and drug paraphernalia.

Jasmine Kahoalii Lucero was transported to the Humboldt County Correctional Facility where she was booked on the following charges:

• HS11378- Possession of a Controlled Substance
• HS11379(A)- Transportation of a Controlled Substances for Sales
• HS11379(B)- Transportation of a Controlled Substance through Non-Contiguous Counties

UPDATE: 11 a.m.: The mama bear has been removed. Police and firefighters have left the scene. They’re looking for permission to relocate the bears to a state park. More photos of her removal below.

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UPDATE, 10:30 a.m.: The EPD’s Montaga now tells us that they believe only one cub was up in the tree with the mother bear.

That cub has been removed, as documented in the video below. They’re trying to get the mother out now.

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UPDATE, 10:05 a.m.: The EPD’s Laura Montagna has some of the backstory. 

She says that the bears — again, a mother bear and two cubs — were crossing Broadway from west to east when one of the knucklehead cubs turned around in the middle of the highway, scrambled back to Pierson’s and climbed the tree. The others then followed.

The cubs are now laying down on top of the tranquilized mother bear, up there in the tree. Rescuers are trying to grab the cubs. The Outpost’s Ryan Burns reports that a “sad, crying sound” can be heard coming from the tree, but that it’s unclear whether it is coming from the mother or the cubs.

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UPDATE, 9:55 a.m. A ladder truck has been deployed. They’re chainsawing branches to try to get better access.

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ORIGINAL POST:

See that big kerfuffle on the highway in front of Pierson’s?

The reason for that is this: A family of bears have taken up residence in the big tree there. Click the video above to witness them.

Eureka Police Department spokesperson Laura Montagna tells the Outpost‘s Andrew Goff, on scene, that it appears to be a mama bear and two cubs.

As of this writing, the mama bear has been tranquilized, but is still in the tree. Could be a difficult extrication.

Avoid Broadway if possible. We will update. 

As many as 300,000 Californians have until June 30 to take advantage of a one-time offer to qualify for faster student loan forgiveness, lower monthly payments or outright forgiveness for federal loans borrowed before 2010.The U.S. Department of Education’s June 30 deadline is a big deal because borrowers who submit their applications would become eligible to receive credit for past years of repayment that previously didn’t qualify for student loan forgiveness.The department’s one-time “adjustment” will largely help borrowers who took out federal student loans before 2010 called Federal Family Education Loans — as well as borrowers with two other types of loans.Why is the department doing this? To “remedy years of administrative failures that effectively denied the promise of loan forgiveness to certain borrowers,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona in a 2022 press release. The deadline for this remedy has been extended several times, but student loan advocates believe June 30 will be the final opportunity for this one-time benefit.

Nationally, about half of borrowers 60 and older have been repaying their student loans for more than 15 years, a key reason why debt among this population has skyrocketed.By May, more than 1 million Americans have already gotten $51 billion in debt relief through this adjustment program, according to the department.The student loan landscape is notoriously complicated. A National Public Radio reporter whose investigation exposed how borrowers placed in the wrong repayment category lost the ability to gain credit toward loan forgiveness, quipped that if none of this makes sense, “You’re not alone.”

To meet the June 30 deadline, borrowers must submit applications to consolidate their loans into so-called direct consolidation loans. Only loans in the direct program are eligible for loan forgiveness after 10 or 20 years of payments, depending on a borrower’s employment situation. Direct loans also qualify for lower monthly payments.Some borrowers may see no reason to consolidate, but for many others, meeting the June 30 deadline will be a life-changer.

To apply, a borrower needs to create an account with the Federal Student Aid office and then complete the consolidation application, which itself takes about 30 minutes.

California state agency tries to help

Most Californians with loans that aren’t in the direct program should apply to consolidate, said Celina Damian, the state’s first Student Loan Servicing Ombudsperson.

This week California is also debuting a network of 14 nonprofit organizations that collectively received $7 million in state grants to help California borrowers navigate the maze of student loan policies, hurdles and deadlines.The Student Loan Empowerment Network will offer California borrowers in-person or phone consultations to handle their student loan quandaries, including issues surrounding private student loans that are governed by a different set of rules.“It was created really to just have somewhere for borrowers to go and provide more help than I can provide,” Damian said. Until last week, she was the only person in state government doing this work.Between March 20 and May 1, Damian communicated by phone or email with 1,400 borrowers after her office sent an email to Californians who’d likely benefit from loan consolidation.Some borrowers didn’t realize they possessed federal loans that were eligible for any loan forgiveness, Damian said. The borrowers instead thought they were repaying private loans. Others thought her agency’s outreach was initially a scam. “So they would reach out and say, ‘Is this real? I thought there was no option for me,” she recounted.Damian stressed that a growing number of California borrowers are senior citizens who may struggle to complete the federal online application. “The oldest one I spoke to was about 83, 84”, she said. “These are loans they took out in the ‘90s.”Several times borrowers nearly gave up trying to apply, so she told them to complete the paper version of the application and email her photos of their paperwork. She then collated their photos into a PDF document and submitted the paperwork to the U.S. Department of Education on their behalf.

How did we get here?

Federal Family Education Loans were common loans issued by private lenders but guaranteed by the federal government. In 2010, these loans were discontinued and the federal government began issuing student loans directly.

The old loans qualify for federal loan forgiveness programs with less generous repayment plans and require more years of repayment.These loans are also ineligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a loan program for government and nonprofit workers that forgives federal undergraduate and graduate student loan debt after 10 years of payments. The only way to qualify for that loan forgiveness is by repaying direct loans — which borrowers with Federal Family Education Loans can do if they consolidate by June 30. Once their consolidation goes through, borrowers will need to apply for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, but they will have inherited past credit already through the steps they took to consolidate.Borrowers need to only apply for consolidation by the June 30 deadline. The department’s actual review process will take at least 60 days.

Borrowers who are found to have made at least 20 years of payments for undergraduate loans or 25 years for graduate loans will see their loans fully forgiven — a tax-free perk through 2025.

Things to consider for student loan forgiveness

A key benefit of consolidation: Borrowers can choose to be placed on the SAVE repayment plan, which bases monthly payments on current income and offers loan forgiveness for any income level after 20 or 25 years.The SAVE plan also doesn’t charge interest as long borrowers make regular payments.Not all periods of repayment will count toward one’s loan credit under the federal government’s one-time program. Any time spent in default won’t count.

Loans in periods of deferment will count, but only before 2013. If loans were deferred because a borrower re-entered college, such as to complete a bachelor’s or earn a master’s degree, that time won’t count toward the borrower’s credit.If borrowers have older loans and Parent PLUS loans that they took out on behalf of their children, they should weigh their options, Damian said. Parent PLUS loans are eligible for only one type of loan forgiveness plan that’s less generous, and consolidating those loans with other loans will block the borrower from the newer repayment plans.

Consolidation may not be for everyone. Borrowers with high incomes, a low loan balance and a discounted interest rate from their lender may not necessarily benefit from this, said Betsy Mayotte, president and founder of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, a nonprofit group. “But for just about everybody else, there isn’t going to be a downside.”

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

When the late Hans Rosling and his co-authors (son and daughter-in-law) published Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World — and Why Things are Better than You Think in 2018, it was the book many people were waiting to see. Bill Gates promised to give all university graduates a copy; Kirkus Reviews claimed it was, “An insistently hopeful, fact-based booster shot for a doomsaying, world-weary population;” Nature, not usually given to hyperbole, called it “Magnificent…it throws down a gauntlet to doom-and-gloomers.” Not to be outdone, the supposedly apolitical Nobel Prize Foundation said it would “light up Stockholm every spring…in memory of Hans Rosling.”

Who was this guy who brought comfort to so many, and what did he say that turned otherwise skeptical observers of global trends into optimists? Hans Rosling (1948-2017) was a professor of international health at the Swedish Karolinska Institute, one of Time Magazine’s 2012 “World’s Most Influential People,” and international TED speaker. As a physician, over a 20-year period (before his TED star rose) he studied epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa. It wasn’t so much what he said as what he graphed. His forte was plotting world trends, most of which (and all of which, in his book Factfulness) show the decline of bad stuff and the rise of good stuff. Whether it’s population or crime or poverty or pollution or income gaps or hunger or nuclear weapons, things are getting better. We’ve been fooled by all those pessimistic forecasts, and we should be celebrating, rather than worrying.

Factfulness (“This is a book about the world and how it really is”) starts with a pop quiz. Readers are asked to choose from one of three options: In the last 20 years, the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has (a) almost doubled; (b) remained more or less the same; (c) almost halved. The answer is (c) — worldwide, we’re doing much better than 20 years earlier (as of 2018). This should come as a shock, if you’re one of the 95 percent Americans who answered (a) or (b).

So far, so good. Rosling made a good case—in his talks and his book—that, by many measures, things are improving. But (big but) he cherry-picked his data, and in doing so, lost much of his credibility. The most obvious sign of his over-optimism is that there’s not a single graph in the book showing bad things getting worse! No global warming, no sea level rise or acidity curves, nothing about microplastics found in virtually everything these days (including human arteries and sperm), it’s silent on the obesity crisis (the World Obesity Atlas estimated that 51 percent of the global population will be obese by 2035). While pointing to increasing numbers of such “flagship species” as rhinos and tigers, the book fails to mention that we’re in the midst of “the sixth mass extinction:” We’re currently causing species extinction at somewhere between 100 and 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates.

Apart from omitting what doesn’t support his “things are getting better” case, Rosling bends his data when it suits him. For instance, around the time the book was published, the average income in the U.S. was $67/day, while it was $11/day in Mexico. (It’s improved somewhat since.) To minimize the gap, the authors use a logarithmic income scale; in one stroke, what had been a sixfold difference is barely noticeable!

Then there’s population. According to Rosling and his co-authors, using U.N. figures, the global population will stabilize by 2100 at between 10 and 13 billion people, relying on the notion that, with the reduction in poverty, people will have fewer children. More children currently survive infancy and childhood with medical advances. “Now that parents have reason to expect that all their children will survive, a major reason for having big families is gone,” according to Factfulness, and “More survivors lead to fewer people.” Tell that to those living in the “public health miracle” republic of Egypt, which has experienced a phenomenal reduction in child mortality over the last six decades (30 percent in 1960, 2 percent today). Despite this, the Egyptian population is currently exploding, from 70 million in 2000 to 114 million today. Apparently, it’s harder to change religious resistance to contraception than it is to prevent childhood diseases through vaccination and other public health measures.

It’s easy to find fault with Factfulness, and my impression is that the authors believe that, overall, things really are getting better. And, to their credit, every graph and statistic has a reference cited, all their data is backed up. Me, I can still look around, count my blessings, and feel outrageous gratitude for the sheer improbability of simply being alive. But, you know how it goes: If you’re not worried, you’re not paying attention. IMHO, Factfulness is guilty of not paying enough attention to what may actually do us in.

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Humboldt kicked off the Redwood Pride Summer Festival this morning with a vibrant parade through Old Town Eureka. A group of about 150 people, adorned in all the colors of the rainbow, marched along Waterfront Drive from the Adorni Center to Madaket Plaza, waving LGBTQ+ flags, blowing bubbles and cheering.

“It’s been a great month so far,” Laine Cohen, an organizer with Redwood Pride, told the Outpost just before the parade began. “The mood is good today. Everybody’s looking chipper. We’re hoping the fog will burn off and it will be a great festival.”

And would you look at that! Sunny skies in Eureka.

The Redwood Pride Festival will continue throughout the day with festivities at the Jefferson Community Center this afternoon and performances at Synapsis later this evening. A complete list of events can be found here.

Keep scrolling for more photos of the Redwood Pride Parade. 

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The Wiyot Tribe has entered into a special partnership with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to help manage Headwaters Forest Reserve, part of the Tribe’s ancestral territory. Headwaters Forest needs some help. The majority of the forest is in rough shape from a history of industrial logging, resulting in poor forest health and impaired watersheds. Together, the Wiyot Tribe and the BLM are working to restore the forest through ecological forestry and watershed restoration. The partnership between the two governments allows the Wiyot Tribe to utilize its traditional ecological knowledge in the furtherance of good land stewardship of its ancestral territory for the benefit of the general public. We at the EcoNews think this is really cool.

Marisa McGrew and Zach Erickson of the Wiyot Tribe join Marissa Vossmer and Zane Ruddy of the BLM to discuss their work to restore Headwaters Forest Reserve.