The seven-story apartment building planned for West Court Street on the south side of Los Angeles’s Echo Park neighborhood doesn’t make sense, not if you know anything about affordable housing in California.

All 190 of the proposed units will be reserved for people making under $100,000, which in Los Angeles makes this an “affordable housing” project.

But unlike the vast majority of affordable developments that have been proposed in California in recent memory, no taxpayer dollars are allotted to build the thing. Especially in the state’s expensive coastal cities, the term “unsubsidized 100% affordable project” is an oxymoron, but Los Angeles is now approving them by the hundreds.

That’s thanks to an executive order Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, signed in December 2022, shortly after being sworn into office. In the year and change since, the city’s planning department has received plans for more than 16,150 affordable units, according to filings gathered by the real estate data company, ATC Research, and analyzed by CalMatters. That’s more than the total number of approved affordable units in Los Angeles in 2020, 2021 and 2022 combined.

The city has also been the subject of at least two lawsuits and a multi-front political battle over whether and how to turn the mayoral decree — which is only in effect as long as Bass wants it to be and barring a court’s decision to end it — into a permanent fixture of Los Angeles housing policy.

The policy was designed to fast-track the approval process for 100% affordable projects. What it perhaps was not designed to do — but has done at a scale that few anticipated — is allow private developers, who rarely dabble in affordable housing and simply look to make as much money as humanly possible from building new homes, to take a second look at a set of state laws that give added benefits to entirely affordable projects.

Throw those two policies together and building new apartments for working class Angelenos is suddenly a booming business.

A ‘monumental shift’ in affordable housing policy

Andrew Slocum and Terry Harris, the developer pair behind the seven-story project on West Court Street, represent the type of developer suddenly wading into Los Angeles’ affordable housing market. They aren’t leading nonprofits or charities. They don’t run websites with feel-good mission statements. Both come from the proudly profit-seeking world of “luxury” housing development.

“We are mission driven in the sense that we want to provide housing,” said Slocum. But he’s pursuing this affordable project, along with two others, because it “made more financial sense.”

Harris, a former college basketball player pursuing a post-athletic career in Southern California real estate, put it more bluntly.

“I’m just trying to be as greedy as possible,” he said.

Though publicly available data on financing is sparse, an early analysis of the program by the pro-housing advocacy group Abundant Housing LA estimated that roughly three-fourths of affordable units proposed through the policy are doing so without any public money. In some cases, developers, including Harris, are opting to scrap proposed “luxury” apartment projects entirely, re-submitting those plans as 100% affordable.

It’s hard to overstate just how weird all of this is.

“I don’t think anybody saw this coming,” said Scott Epstein, policy director at Abundant Housing LA and one of the authors of that analysis. “When it comes to 100% privately invested projects…I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything close to the magnitude that that has been unleashed.”

“I’m just trying to be as greedy as possible.”
— Terry Harris, developer

Between the extraordinary cost of building new apartment buildings in coastal California and the money that a developer can recoup through legally capped rents, traditional affordable housing projects almost inevitably run a sizable financing gap. That gap is almost always filled by public subsidy. A large project might require half a dozen loans, grants and tax bill write-offs from local, state and federal housing agencies. Most of these sources of public finance come with strings attached, which can saddle projects with yet higher costs and further delays.

Los Angeles’ new breed of affordable housing circumvents all of that — at least on paper. None of these units have actually been built yet. But talk to supportive policy advocates and industry players in Los Angeles and you quickly run out of new synonyms for “unprecedented.”

“This is clearly a monumental shift in how affordable housing is developed in the state,” said Mahdi Manji, policy director at Inner City Law Center, a legal service provider and affordable housing advocacy group in Los Angeles’ Skid Row. “We just haven’t seen this before.”

Building affordable housing in two steps

Privately funded developers hoping to crack Los Angeles’ affordable housing market tend to follow a familiar pattern.

First, they evoke Bass’ order — “Executive Directive 1” — to guarantee and speed up the process.

The order sets a shot-clock of 60 days for the city’s planning department to approve or reject a submitted project. As long as that project meets a basic set of criteria, it must be approved. That means no city council hearings, no neighborhood outreach meetings and no environmental impact studies required.

It also means less time getting a project green-lit.

“To go from acquiring a lot to putting a shovel in the ground in less than a year is kind of unheard of,” said Steven Scheibe, a small-scale developer working on his first entirely affordable project through Executive Directive 1.

Less time spent paying off debt, making payroll and ensuring skittish investors that the project is a sure thing saves projects on the front end.

Then comes the next step. Most so-called “ED1 projects” also make use of a hodgepodge of statewide “density bonus” laws that allow developers of 100% affordable housing projects to pack far more units and floors onto a given lot than would otherwise be allowed under local zoning rules. These laws also let affordable developers pick and choose from a wide range of goodies and freebies that cut costs further and allow for yet denser development. That means no parking spots, limited open space, smaller rooms and fewer trees.

All those added units mean developers can set the rents lower and still pay themselves back for the cost of construction and then some.

Together the executive directive and the density bonus form a necessary “one-two punch” to make these projects work, said Charly Ligety, a director of research and development at Housing On Merit, a nonprofit that invests in affordable housing projects. “It’s, one, ‘Oh, I can put 80 units on a single family plot…’ and then, two, ‘…and I can get it approved quickly.”

“To go from acquiring a lot to putting a shovel in the ground in less than a year is kind of unheard of.”
— Steven Scheibe, developer

And while Bass’ order and the state’s density bonus laws are pulling privately funded developers into the suddenly profitable world of affordable housing development, other economic forces are pushing them out of the high-end luxury market: High interest rates have made waiting around on municipal approvals that may never come an especially costly proposition. Los Angeles’ recently enacted tax on multimillion-dollar real estate transactions, the so-called mansion tax, has also slowed the fancy apartment building business, said Ligety.

As a result, he said, “market rate developers are discovering affordable housing for the first time.”

How affordable is affordable housing?

Just because something is “affordable” in Los Angeles doesn’t mean it’s cheap.

To qualify as a 100% affordable housing project under the city of Los Angeles’ streamlined treatment, a studio can go for roughly $1,800. Compare that to a traditional publicly subsidized project which could charge as little at $650 for the same unit.

And you can bet this studio doesn’t have a parking spot.

Developers flocking to the city’s new program are essentially “making a bet,” said Gary Benjamin, a land-use consultant who advises developers on how to navigate the city’s planning and permitting bureaucracies. The bet is that housing costs are so astronomically out of reach in Los Angeles that even someone making north of $70,000 per year would jump at the chance to rent “a more bare bones product without all the bells and whistles” for what could amount to a modest rent reduction.

That bet is still very much in play. It will be months before the first of the apartments approved under Executive Directive 1 are tenant-ready.

“This is just a whole new product specifically catering to the middle-lower end of the market. That just wasn’t a thing that people were doing before,” said Benjamin.

In the meantime, the rush of planned development has promised the demolition of existing buildings across the city. In many cases, those are commercial buildings or unoccupied single family homes and both city and state law require developers to pay displaced tenants’ relocation costs and to offer them a right to return to the new building. Even so, the planning blitz has at least some low-income Angelenos worried that they will be evicted to make way for “affordable” units that they themselves might not be able to easily afford.

All those added units mean developers can set the rents lower and still pay themselves back for the cost of construction and then some.

In many parts of the country — and even once upon a time in Los Angeles — the mere fact that a developer could successfully build an apartment building within the price range of someone earning just under the area’s typical income would not be cause for celebration — and wouldn’t need an emergency declaration to bring about.

“It shouldn’t be odd” that a developer might choose to build an $1,800 per month studio without taxpayer support, said Manji with the Inner City Law Center. “It’s only odd because we’ve made it odd.”

Though his organization principally advocates for unhoused Angelenos, Manji said he supports the policy, even if units being proposed are “not housing for homeless folks.”

Allowing private developers to serve lower- to middle-income renters frees up scant financial subsidies and rental vouchers for people who most desperately need the help, he said. That’s especially important this year when the governor is proposing cuts in state affordable housing funding.

Affordable housing incentives

Los Angeles’ city council is currently mulling a permanent ordinance that would codify the mayor’s signature affordable housing policy and put it on a firmer legal footing. The council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee is expected to take it up in the coming weeks.

Timing may be of the essence.

Bass’ order is the target of two lawsuits from Fix The City, a local nonprofit that has regularly contested the city’s land use decisions going on two decades. In both suits, the group disputes the legal validity of a sweeping 13-month-long housing policy passed by mayoral edict.

“To give emergency powers reserved for earthquakes and horrible storms and true catastrophic emergencies to apply that to housing to override community plans and zoning for an indefinite period of time — it’s just not good government and it decimates due process,” said Michael Everoff, one of the group’s co-founders.

Translating the mayor’s order into permanent city law and ending the emergency declaration could weaken Fix The City’s legal challenge, at least as it applies to future projects, though Everoff disputed that point. But whether a majority on the city’s council will agree to do so — and how much of the mayor’s original policy they will opt to rewrite, soften or jettison in the process — is an open question.

Still up for debate: Just how many incentives and waivers the city is willing to grant 100% affordable developers as they make use of the state’s density bonus program. So far that decision has been left to the planning department’s discretion. That unlimited economizing and supersizing has resulted in projects that are “substantially out of scale” with their surrounding neighborhoods, according to a planning department assessment. The most recent version of the ordinance caps the number of developer freebies at five.

Slocum, the developer of the proposed Echo Park apartment building, said most of his projects would “no longer work” if subject to such a cap. He said he needs eleven or twelve.

‘A declaration of war on single family neighborhoods’

But the biggest debate over the breadth of the city policy may have already come and gone. Though the first version of the executive order seemed to apply to all housing sites in the city, Bass later came back with an amended order to exempt all of the city’s single family neighborhoods. That clarification cut out more than 70% of the city’s residentially zoned land and the lion’s share of its well-to-do neighborhoods, but not before a handful of projects were approved.

The city has since tried to revoke the approvals of some of those projects. Their fate is now the subject of yet another series of lawsuits, these brought by the pro-housing development legal group YIMBY Law, who argue that the city has to let those developments go ahead. In its first suit on behalf of a proposed 7-story project in the west San Fernando Valley, the group denounced the city for having “buckled to political pressure from ‘Not In My Back Yard’ constituents.”

Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, whose district includes the southwest San Fernando Valley and who opposed approving these under-the-wire affordable projects in single family areas said there’s virtually no chance that the council will decide to re-expand the policy to every part of the city. Doing so might have a limited effect anyway: The number of single family parcels that can be turbo-developed under the state’s density bonus law is limited.

“While that may be something for the future, right now we’re piloting (Executive Directive 1) the way it is,” he said. “And as it is, it’s a major step forward. To go that extra step…would be a declaration of war with our single family neighborhoods.”

That war may be coming to Los Angeles before long. Just as cities across the San Francisco Bay Area were required by state law to redraw their zoning maps to accommodate a massive increase in allowable housing development, the City of Los Angeles has until mid-October to plan for 250,000 new homes.

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

Describing California’s homelessness crisis as “inhumane” and “unhealthy,” on Tuesday Senate GOP leader Brian Jones of San Diego and Democratic Sen. Catherine Blakespear of Encinitas announced a bipartisan bill to ban homeless encampments near “sensitive community areas” statewide.

Modeled after San Diego’s “Unsafe Camping Ordinance,” Senate Bill 1011 prohibits encampments within 500 feet of schools, open spaces and major transit stops. It also bans camping on sidewalks if shelter space is available; requires cities or counties to give an unhoused person 72-hour notice before clearing an encampment; and mandates “enforcement personnel” to provide information about homeless shelters in the area.

• Jones: “California has spent $22 billion in the past six years on homelessness and what do we have to show for it? Nearly a 40% increase in homeless population…. Clearly California’s current approach to homelessness is failing and California’s are tired of it.”

The most recent count found more than 181,000 unhoused Californians last year, 28% of the national total.

Adding that it was “not our goal to criminalize homelessness,” Jones said that the state’s homelessness issue was a nonpartisan issue. He touted the bill’s 18 other co-authors of both parties, including Blakespear, who said that San Diego’s camping ordinance has moved about 60% of people off its downtown streets since going into effect in July.

Though both legislators emphasized clearing encampments “compassionately,” advocates for unhoused people argue that displacing homeless people from their dwellings is traumatizing and dangerous to their health. And despite the state’s current $750 million, multi-year initiative to clear homeless encampments, it remains uncertain whether a significant number of the displaced homeless individuals will find permanent housing.

If the bill is passed, it’s also unclear how it will shake out with a highly-anticipated U.S. Supreme Court ruling. In January, the high court agreed to hear a case that has the potential to either grant California cities and counties more authority to clear homeless encampments and penalize those who sleep on streets — or continue to restrict them from enforcing camping bans.There is also bipartisan support for giving local governments more power. Gov. Gavin Newsom, in particular, has railed against court rulings that have tied local officials’ hands.

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

O’Rourk A. Swinney was a loving brother, husband, stepfather and grandfather known as “Popsie” to his family. He was born in Twin Falls, Idaho in 1951 to cattle ranchers Mark Swinney and Louise Thorpe Swinney. He was married to Linda Filippini in 1991, who he would remain married to until her passing just four months prior to him. He lived a rich and full life with a love for hunting treasures at flea markets and estate sales. He is survived by his only brother Ryan Swinney and Ryan’s wife Audrey, his stepdaughter Sarah Garrity-Schiek and her husband Paul Schiek, and his granddaughter Rose, as well as his sister- and brother-in-law, Esther and Neil Gilchrist.

O’Rourk was a fraternal member of DeMolay (Family of Masons), Key Club, 4-H, Cub Scouts, and the YMCA. Additionally, he was honored with a lifetime appointment to the California Scholastic Federation (CSF) as well as lettering in varsity tennis and wrestling. He was a certified scuba diver and enjoyed annual hunting trips to Idaho with his father. In 1969 he would attend UCLA. There, he would discover a love for rowing. In the early 1970s he transferred to UC Berkeley and again in the mid-70s to Humboldt State University, where he would receive his California Teaching Credential in Industrial Arts. Noting that HSU didn’t have a crew team, he founded the rowing programs for both men and women.

In 1977 he would purchase what is now known as the “Crew House” in Arcata. Named for housing much of the HSU Crew team, it has since been renovated and is still used as housing for local HSU students today.

His love for art and architecture led him to collecting and becoming a self-taught historian, spending hours at museums and scouring flea markets, once famously purchasing an original Granville Redmond painting and later selling it through Christie’s auction house for substantially more than the $25 purchase price.

His love of travel took him to places such as Bali, Indonesia, New Zealand, Italy, Switzerland, and other parts of Europe.

His spirit animal, the blue hippopotamus, was said to have visited him in a dream during open heart surgery. He later would mark this encounter with a blue hippo tattoo over his heart and was always happy to show anyone who inquired about it. Later in life he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease which would lead him to join the Humboldt Parkinson’s Support Group as well as Rock Steady Boxing. Both organizations were near to his heart and led him to many new beloved friendships.

Exemplifying his commitment to his community, O’Rourk was a regular on the local PBS (KEET-TV) station’s annual membership drives. He possessed a unique ability to see the good in people and their potential, something that he nurtured in his chosen community of Arcata and its residents.

O’Rourk will always be remembered as a lifelong friend, a kind, generous, and caring man that never forgot where he came from and always strived to improve the lives of the people and the community around him.

His deep love of life, friends and family, and his granddaughter will be remembered by his passionate way of finding wonder in it all.

The family would like to extend a thank you to the amazing team of caregivers who provided immeasurable amounts of love and compassion through the past years to both O’Rourk and his wife Linda, as well as a very special acknowledgement to both Kathy Seror and Dave Hall for their friendship and guidance through this trying time.

A memorial will be held at D Street Neighborhood Center located at 1301 D St, in Arcata on Sunday, March 10 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. All are welcome.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of O’Rourk A. Swinney’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here.

Arcata Police Department press release: 

On Tuesday, February 6, 2024, at 5:20 a.m., the Arcata Police Department responded to a burglary in progress at a residence in the 600 block of G Street.  A male suspect had broken down the front door of the occupied home, forcing all occupants to flee. The suspect was behaving erratically, was breaking windows, and barricaded himself in an empty bedroom after responding officers made entry into the home.

With assistance from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office crisis negotiators and Eureka Police Department mental health clinician, we were able to bring the incident to a peaceful resolution at 11:12 a.m., when the suspect surrendered to APD officers inside the home.

38-year-old San Jose resident Blair Anderson Wortham was booked and lodged at the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on the following felony charges:

• PC 459-Burglary
• PC 422-Criminal Threats
• PC 594-Vandalism

The Arcata Police Department extends their appreciation to the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office, the Eureka Police Department and Cal Poly Humboldt Police for their assistance with this incident.    

Arcata Police Department press release:

On Friday February 2, 2024, the Arcata Police Department responded to Mad River Community Hospital for a complaint of an anti-Semitic poster in a bathroom. The message consisted of “Butcher Zionist Pigs” and depicted a hooded executioner holding an axe next to a pig wearing a tuxedo.

APD is investigating this incident as a hate crime as the messaging calls for violence against national origin, which is a legally protected status. It placed people in our community in fear and was seemingly intended to be threatening in nature.

APD is looking into the potential for surveillance footage from within the hospital to try to identify and hold the perpetrator or perpetrators accountable. 

The Arcata Police Department takes this and all hate incidents very seriously as they can have a significant impact on our community. We are requesting anyone with information to contact the Arcata Police Department’s Investigations Unit at 707-822-2424, or our Anonymous Tip-Line at 707-825-2588.

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In case you’re among the lucky/wise locals who don’t spend much time on Facebook, here’s what you’re missing locally: Virtually everyone, it seems, is talking about Sushi Spot.

The popular local restaurant, which offers sashimi, sushi and other Japanese cuisine in Arcata, McKinleyville and Eureka, recently announced that it will no longer accept gratuities – aka tips – at any of its locations, starting this week.

Instead, as the restaurant explained on its website and on printed handbills placed at each table, a service fee, or “employee equity charge,” will be automatically added to all orders at a fixed rate: 18 percent for dine-in customers, 10 percent for take-out. 

Reached by the Outpost on Monday, owner Eric Stark said that he and his managers have been considering this change for a long time. The goal of this new system is to improve pay equity among employees, eliminating the gap between servers and chefs while making the business more sustainable in the long run.

“We’ve been thinking about doing this since COVID,” Stark said. During the months-long shutdown of the pandemic, when restaurants were only offering food to go, Sushi Spot pooled its tips and distributed them among the staff equally – though, of course, servers weren’t waiting tables. Once restaurants reopened for table service, though, Sushi Spot went back to the old system, in which customers typically tip waitstaff but not sushi chefs or other kitchen workers – at least, not directly. 

To Stark and many of his employees, this just felt wrong. “We have a lot of really experienced chefs, and there needs to be fair treatment,” he said. “We view those [positions], server and chef, as equally qualified, but because of tips they can’t make the same.” 

Sushi Spot is by no means the first restaurant to implement such a system. In fact, the online Chef’s Store, which markets to restaurants across the country, wrote about “the no-tipping movement” back in 2022, and the San Francisco Chronicle recently covered the growing popularity of “gratuity-free models” in the Bay Area, where newly opened establishments have adopted the practice alongside some long-established eateries and Michelin-starred fine-dining restaurants.

However, as Chef’s Store cautions, not everyone in the public likes or understands this system: “Tipping culture in the U.S. is second nature, so some consumers might find the switch confusing,” the publication says. “Plus, patrons are accustomed to tipping based on merit, so requiring them to pay a predetermined percentage might feel uncomfortable.”

As it turns out, many Humboldt County residents feel more than just confusion and discomfort. On Sunday afternoon, someone posted a photo of Sushi Spot’s “equity charge” announcement to an opinionated Facebook forum called Humboldt County on Alert, and the response has been robust.

In the first 24 hours the post racked up more than 1,000 comments, most of them negative, with the majority falling somewhere between indignant and outraged. 

“Have fun going out of business,” one user remarked.

“Yeah you lost my business … ,” another agreed, adding, “It’s in our culture to tip.”

One comment garnered more than 250 likes with this interpretation: “Lemme translate: ‘We don’t want to have to pay our employees a livable wage so we’re just going to make the customer do it.’”

Stark said the social media response caught him a bit off guard. “We knew there’d be people who are not happy, but we didn’t think it would be like that,” he said.

In an effort to quell the uprising, Sushi Spot posted a follow-up statement to the Humboldt County on Alert page yesterday, offering a more thorough explanation of the reasoning behind the change. In speaking with the Outpost on Monday, Stark said a lot of factors played into the decision.

For one thing, he said, inflation, distribution woes and rising labor costs are making an already challenging industry even more precarious. Restaurants here in Humboldt County have been going out of business left and right, and nationally, few businesses have been hit as hard by the economic headwinds as sushi restaurants. 

“It’s been a whole mess,” Stark said. The Bay Area trucking company that Sushi Spot used for distribution for the past 20 years recently went out of business. Meanwhile, record-breaking inflation in Japan has drastically raised costs for many items the restaurant imports. (One Sushi Spot employee said red tuna from Japan that cost $11 per pound before the pandemic now runs $21 per pound.) And California’s minimum wage increases mean that even the entry-level servers get paid $5 more per hour than they did just five years ago.

Why not just pay the kitchen staff higher wages, as many Facebook commenters have suggested? Stark said it’s not that simple. While tips are generally viewed as a reward for exceptional service, the fact is that nearly every customer who dines at Sushi Spot leaves a gratuity, and Stark said a tip to the server alone fails to account for the chain of labor that makes good service possible – a chain that includes chefs, prep cooks, hosts, dishwashers, bussers and bartenders.

“Without everyone working as a team, the tips for great service would not be possible,” he said. “In a sushi restaurant it is even more important to account for everyone in the chain of service because it takes more labor and staff to operate than other types of restaurants.”

David Bush is a lead server at the McKinleyville Sushi Spot who was recently promoted to a management position. He admitted to having mixed feelings about the new system, especially since it will inevitably mean less money in his pocket.

“This is a big pay cut for the servers,” he said. “It’s a bit stressful for us. We understand the public doesn’t want to pay an 18 percent price increase, and to be the ones breaking that [news] and get pay cut as well has been hard to swallow.”

Bush said that about one in every 10 customers who called or came in to the restaurant yesterday and learned about the new “equity charge” decided not to eat there. 

“So it’s been quite a big hit already,” he said.

But he does see pros to the new system. While Sushi Spot employees have historically tipped out the kitchen staff, giving them a 40 percent cut of their take on any given night, Bush said back-of-the-house workers still got a raw deal. While the server would pocket 60 percent of any given tip, the rest of that money would be divvied up among several people working in the back, including multiple chefs, prep cooks, dishwashers, etc. On a busy night, a server might take home $250 or $300 in tips while kitchen workers pocketed just $40 or $50 apiece.

Under the new system, he explained, employees will split the 18 percent gratuity (or 10 percent for take-out orders) based on a tiered formula, with new employees getting half as much as their Level 2 colleagues, who, in turn, get half as much as workers in Level 3, a tier reserved for the most experienced sushi chefs and longest-employed servers.

Bush said this system rewards loyalty from sushi chefs in particular, which is important when you consider that it can take a decade or more to become truly proficient at the art.

“We want to keep them in Humboldt County, because otherwise they might move to San Francisco or go to fast food since they pay a $20 minimum wage at this point,” Bush said.

He anticipated that as much as 20 percent of Sushi Spot’s waitstaff would quit once the new system was implemented, but so far he said only three servers have left. He’s not sure what to expect over the coming weeks.

“We just started this system,” he said, adding that the public rollout could probably have been handled better.

“I guess we kind of regret how we worded [the announcement],” Bush said. “What this really is, when we get rid of semantics, is an 18 percent increase in price to the customer,” albeit with the elimination of tipping. “I think a lot of servers make a 20 percent tip on average, so this is a bit of a decrease. But we decided to call it an ‘employee equity’ charge so the community knows that 100 percent goes to paying staff. It doesn’t go to the owner.”

Bush said that when customers balk at being charged a “mandatory tip,” he tries to reframe the fee as a means of paying staff a higher wage. 

Fellow Sushi Spot employee Jaime Osorio, who rolls sushi at both the Arcata and McKinleyville Sushi Spot locations and waits tables when needed, said this model is not unheard of.

“It’s something that’s happening across the country, though it’s somewhat new in Humboldt County,” he said. Like Bush, he thinks the new method will improve loyalty and job satisfaction – not to mention pay – for people working in the kitchens.

”There are nights where we get absolutely murdered in the back,” he said, referring to the busiest evenings. “At end of the shift you think, ‘Yeah, we made it as a team,’ but then you see the server hand out tips,” with kitchen workers who’ve been there for 20 years getting a small fraction of the $300-$400 that servers collect.

He believes those employees should be treated as equals, and he thinks people who work in the service industry work hard because they value their job and enjoy serving people, not to convince customers to tip them.

Stark said he think working for tips can actually be demeaning, taking away from what he called the “dignity of service.”

“We want our staff to feel good about serving our community without expecting a tip afterwards,” he told the Outpost. “That is why we feel it is better to include the charge and account for the whole team rather than accept tips that go mostly to one person.”

He added that customers who tip won’t wind up paying any more than they did before – in fact, those who tip 20 percent or more will wind up paying less. And since all service charges are taxable income, Sushi Spot will pay more in payroll taxes toward Social Security, Medicare and disability.

Stark said he hopes Sushi Spot can set a good example of changes in the restaurant industry that are long overdue.

Bush agrees.

“I still think this is a great place to work,” he said, “so I hope customers will still come to Sushi Spot to support a company that wants to go away from America’s tipping culture a bit.”

Business at Sushi Spot’s three locations over the next month or so should reveal whether or not this experiment in employee equity will work here in Humboldt County.

Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

On 2/6/2024, at about 1:59 am, Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the 1300 block of Fernwood Drive in McKinleyville for the report of an attempted residential burglary.

Ronald Payton

Deputies arrived on scene and contacted the homeowner. Deputies were informed a male subject attempted to break into the residence by kicking in the front door. The suspect left in a vehicle prior to the deputies’ arrival. Deputies were provided a description of the male suspect and the vehicle he was driving. Deputies searched the area and located the suspect vehicle driving near Murray Road and US Hwy 101. The vehicle fled from deputies when they attempted an enforcement stop. The suspect vehicle turned southbound on Hwy 101 and accelerated away at a high rate of speed. Deputies pursued the vehicle and observed it drive off the roadway near Hwy 101 and School Road. The vehicle became stuck in a muddy area and the driver was taken into custody without further incident. The driver of the vehicle was identified as 29-year-old Ronald Payton. Payton was identified as the suspect who attempted to break into the residence and was also determined to be driving under the influence of alcohol.

Payton was booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility and charged with attempted burglary (PC 664/459), felony evading (CVC 2800.2(A)), and DUI (CVC 23152(A)).

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.