Press release from California State Parks:

 In the interest of public safety and resource protection, College Cove in Trinidad State Beach will be closed to access and use on May 15th-22nd and May 29th-June 5th. This closure is necessary for public safety while crews work on trail restoration. The temporary closure order will apply to the parking area and trail within the unit. Other popular trails within Trinidad State Beach will remain open during this closure. 

With the exception of park employees and approved contractors, no person shall be in the above-mentioned closure area for any reason, day or night during the times listed. Authorized emergency vehicles, Department of Parks and Recreation personnel, vehicles, and equipment required to perform the restoration work are exempt from this Order.

Californians pay more at the pump than residents of any other state — an average of $5.34 a gallon for regular unleaded, compared to the national average of $3.64, according to AAA. And in some counties, the sticker shock is even worse — $6.80 in Alpine, $6.29 in Mono and $5.85 in Humboldt, for example.

Statewide, gas prices have jumped 55 cents a gallon from this time a year ago.

It’s also a little more than a year ago when Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to crack down on windfall oil profits became law. So what’s up?

On Tuesday, the Senate energy committee asked California Energy Commission officials that very question. Citing the “crippling” effect high gas prices have on low-income Californians and commuters, legislators wanted to know if the law’s increased reporting requirements on oil companies have helped the commission determine whether to recommend capping oil profits and penalizing oil companies that exceed the cap. Any recommendation isn’t expected until later this year.

“We want to have the confidence that the solutions will bring relief to Californians at the pump are real and not just aspirational,” said Sen. Steven Bradford, an Inglewood Democrat and chairperson of the committee. “Far too often, we shoot first and ask questions later.”

Though the commission is still gathering data, what it and its new watchdog division found so far was that the three times gas prices notably spiked in the last five years (in October 2019, October 2022 and September 2023), oil company profits rose. Environmental fees and state and federal taxes, however, remained relatively flat during that periods.

“Price spikes are profit spikes for the oil industry,” said Tai Milder, director of the Division of Petroleum Market Oversight.

What causes gas prices to be so volatile? One reason is the price of crude oil, which can be swung by global events such as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. These wholesales prices, in turn, impact retail prices. But while both typically rise in tandem, they do not fall together — when wholesale prices drop, pump prices are often slow to follow.

Siva Gunda, vice chairperson of the energy commission, describes the pattern as “up like a rocket but down like a feather.”

Still, Gunda said that there is no clear evidence that oil companies are engaging in price gouging, but that there is also no industry incentive to ease price spikes.

“None of the industry in our good-faith discussions disputes that profits go up a lot. So who’s to decide how high you can go during those times?” said Gunda. “That’s what we’re trying to think through. Given that this is such an important public benefit, how do we ensure that there’s a cutoff?”

At today’s hearing of the Senate energy committee, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president and chief executive officer of Western States Petroleum Association, pushed back against caps and penalties. She told CalMatters that they wouldn’t reduce prices, but have “the absolute opposite effect.” To avoid incurring penalties on profits, companies will restrict supply, which will drive up costs.

“It’s two to three times more expensive to run a refinery in California than anywhere else in the world. It comes to a point where it becomes uneconomic,” Reheis-Boyd said. In 2023, California had 14 refineries compared to 43 in 1982.

Instead, Reheis-Boyd argues that legislators should look into investing more into the oil supply chain to increase supply, such as lifting restrictions on the production of crude oil in California.

Some reasons for higher prices are built into the calendar.

Service stations in California have already switched to the more expensive summer fuel blend, formulated to reduce ozone emissions — in Southern California on Feb. 1, and in Northern California on March 1, according to the energy commission. Last year, Newsom pushed to go back to winter fuel sooner than the usual Oct. 31 to help bring down prices.

And on July 1, the state’s excise gas tax will increase by 1.9 cents to 59.6 cents a gallon to keep up with inflation. The tax on diesel fuel will rise by 1.3 cents to 45.4 cents a gallon.

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

UPDATE, May 8, 4:13 p.m.:

After more than an hour of discussion, which included the addition of some new conditions of approval by staff as well as public comments both in opposition and support, the California Coastal Commission unanimously approved the project.

In granting the Harbor District’s permit application, the commission cleared away one of the last remaining administrative hurdles for Nordic Aquafarms’ proposed fish-production factory on the Samoa Peninsula.

The coastal development permit will allow the Harbor District to upgrade its seawater intake infrastructure in Humboldt Bay, install new underground water pipelines along the bay, perform a variety of environmental mitigation activities and, eventually, withdraw up to 11.8 million gallons of water per day for tenants in the future National Marine Research and Innovation Park.

Appearing remotely, Harbor District Director of Development Rob Holmlund explained that while nearly 12 million gallons per day may sound like a lot of water, it represents just a tiny fraction — roughly 1/6,000th — of the 20 billion gallons exchanged in Humboldt Bay during each and every six-hour tidal cycle. 

In presenting the project to the commission, staff acknowledged that the water intake system will have a substantial adverse impact to marine life in the bay, sucking in tiny fish eggs, larvae and other planktonic organisms, mitigation measures can fully offset the resulting loss in productivity.

The prescribed mitigation measures include:

• the removal of nearly 1,000 derelict, creosote-treated piles and crossbeams from an old dock in Fields Landing,
• the eradication of an invasive species (particularly Spartina densiflora, aka European beachgrass) from salt marsh habitats around Humboldt Bay, and
• tidal marsh restoration on district-owned property at the foot of Bay Street, on Eureka Slough.

Commissioner Mike Wilson recounted his long journey with the Harbor District’s Redwood Marine Terminal II property, including his tenure as a chair of the Harbor District’s board of commissioners, during which it was discovered that roughly 4 million gallons of toxic pulping liquor were being stored in deteriorated storage tanks at the former pulp mill site.

Wilson said that while this project will have negative impacts, that’s true of all forms of food productions and he believes that, with the mitigation measures, the benefits will ultimately outweigh the costs.

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Original post:

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PREVIOUSLY:

• Lawsuit Challenges Humboldt County’s Environmental Impact Report for Nordic Aquafarms Project; Five Appeals Filed With Coastal Commission
• Water Quality Board Awards Wastewater Discharge Permit for Nordic Aquafarms’ Planned Peninsula Facility
• Coastal Commission OKs Wastewater Discharge Permit for Nordic Aquafarms’ Onshore Fish Farm
• Nordic Aquafarms Celebrates Coastal Commission Denial of Five Appeals to Samoa Fish Farm

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The California Coastal Commission will hold its monthly three-day meeting up in Crescent City this week, and on Wednesday commissioners are set to consider permitting some major upgrades to old seawater intake systems located in Humboldt Bay.

The permit is being sought by the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District, but expect some Norwegians to tune in to the livestream feed. That’s because the infrastructure upgrades are necessary for the operation of Nordic Aquafarms’ planned onshore fish farm, which is slated for development on the Harbor District-owned Redwood Marine Terminal II property.

That property formerly hosted the Samoa pulp mill, which used the two seawater intake systems (called “sea chests”) to support mill operations. In order to meet the needs of future tenants, including Nordic’s $650 million recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility, the Harbor District seeks permission to eventually withdraw up to 11.8 million gallons of water per day, or 8.25 8,250 gallons per minute.

The District’s proposal also calls for refurbishing the intake structures, adding mesh screens, installing water delivery pipelines on upland portions of the project site and building supporting infrastructure needed to convey seawater to other future tenants of the property. The District’s long-term plans for the site call for development of a National Marine Research and Innovation Park.

Coastal Commission staff is recommending approval of the project, but only with a dozen special conditions, including mitigation measures to protect marine life and approval from both the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board (NCRWQCB).

A staff report notes that the project would impact marine life in Humboldt Bay, which is home to a wide variety of plants and critters, including several special-status species such as longfin smelt and several types of salmon. The Harbor District’s proposed screening systems “are designed to avoid or substantially reduce impacts to these listed species,” staff says, “as the screen mesh size and the intake water velocities are expected to essentially eliminate impingement, which occurs when larger marine organisms are trapped or injured on the screens due to the velocity of the water intake.”

But the intake system would still suck in smaller organisms, including the larvae of longfin smelt, which are listed as threatened under the state Endangered Species Act. The CDFW has investigated this issue and recommends requiring the Harbor District to restore 5.89 acres of “highly productive habitat” in the Bay.

The Coastal Commission received 19 letters on the matter — some in favor of the project, some opposed. In the latter category, environmental nonprofit Humboldt Waterkeeper (formerly called Humboldt Baykeeper) raises concerns about leftover industrial contamination along the shoreline, where the Harbor District plans to construct a 4,650-foot-long pipeline trench.

Frank Egger, president of the North Coast Rivers Alliance, argues that with the billion-dollar Pacific Coast fishing industry “collapsing,” the potential for fish entrainment alone should make the project a “non-starter.” Other letters contend that Nordic’s plans and the associated environmental review have been “piecemealed” and are thus insufficient.

Several emails in support of the project highlight the value of redeveloping a brownfield site into a fish farm and aquaculture innovation center.

The Coastal Commission is scheduled to consider two other Humboldt-specific items on Wednesday. Local attorney Russell Clanton and his wife want to tear down an existing home on Stagecoach Road in Trinidad and build a larger one. And PG&E wants to inspect and repair an underground gas transmission pipeline located in the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary. Staff recommend the commission approve both, with conditions.

Meetings of the Coastal Commission can be live-streamed on cal-span.org, and anyone wishing to comment can submit a speaker request on the commission’s website.

Press release from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife:

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been detected for the first time in California’s deer and elk. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) received confirmation on May 6 samples collected from two deer, one in Madera County near Yosemite Lakes and the other in Inyo County, near Bishop. The deer in Madera County was found dead due to unknown causes and the Inyo County deer was found dead after a vehicle collision.

CWD is a fatal neurologic disease in cervid animals such as deer, elk, moose and reindeer that has been detected in free-ranging cervids from 34 states, including California, and five Canadian provinces as well as Scandinavia. It affects the brain, causing progressive damage and eventually, death. There is no effective treatment or vaccine to combat this disease.

There appears to be no known link between CWD and human disease, although a similar prion animal disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease in cattle, has been linked to fatal disease in humans through the consumption of infected beef. As a result the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend keeping the agents of all known prion diseases from entering the human food chain (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Chronic Wasting Disease).

CDFW has been monitoring California elk and deer populations for CWD through lymph node sampling and testing since 2000, testing over 6,500 deer and elk, and has been working to increase surveillance efforts, with the help of hunters, taxidermists and meat processors since 2018. 

Clinical signs of the disease include progressive weight loss, clumsy movements and lack of coordination, listlessness, drooling, excessive thirst or urination and behavioral changes. Once these symptoms develop death occurs quickly.

The disparate locations of these two detections indicates that CWD has probably been present in California for some time, since the incubation period can be months to years.

“CWD infected animals can excrete infectious prions before clinical signs appear and these prions can persist in the environment for years, making it very difficult to prevent or control the spread once it has been introduced,” says, Dr. Brandon Munk, CDFW’s wildlife veterinarian who oversees CWD surveillance and response efforts. “The public can help limit the spread of CWD by reporting any signs of illness in deer and elk populations, and hunters should strongly consider testing their harvested deer or elk.”

CDFW continues to provide surveillance, response, long-term management plans and public outreach and education through their “No Time to Waste” campaign to limit the spread. Hunters can assist in the efforts by voluntarily participating in CDFW’s statewide CWD surveillance and sampling efforts and encouraging other hunters to participate.

To report a sick deer or elk: Wildlife Mortality Reporting

To learn more and find out how to get your cervid harvest tested: Chronic Wasting Disease

Press release from the Cal Poly Humboldt administration:

The University wants to acknowledge that this has been an extremely challenging time for Cal Poly Humboldt. It has also been a very emotional time for our campus community and beyond, and we have much work in front of us to reset, rebuild, and heal. To clarify misinformation and rumors, here’s a timeline of the events beginning on April 22. We invite people to continue to ask questions and more information will be coming.

The University’s Time, Place, and Manner policy is content-neutral, approved by the University Senate, and fully supportive of First Amendment protections. In fact, this policy exists to protect freedom of speech and assembly while also protecting the rights of the entire campus community to a secure environment that is conducive to our educational purpose.

These approved policies, which have had extensive review, should be supported and enforced regardless of context. There is no First Amendment right to enter and occupy a building to stage a protest and it is a clear violation of the University’s Time, Place, and Manner policy.

• Multiple people called the University Police Department (UPD) concerned due to the actions of the people who were protesting in Siemens Hall on the first day of the protest. Several staff members asked the people who were protesting to leave the building prior to UPD arriving on the scene. The people who were protesting refused.
• UPD officers were inside the building with the people who were protesting and asked if they could facilitate a protest in the public space of the Quad, where it would have been a lawful assembly. Those requests were rebuffed by the people who were protesting.
• Tents in hallways and barricades were being assembled in front of exit doors, and vandalism of the building’s interior had already begun before UPD arrived.
• Students, faculty, and staff who were not part of the protest were evacuated with the assistance of UPD. Classes were canceled out of safety concerns because exits were already being barricaded.
• UPD ordered the people who were trespassing to leave the building. They refused to vacate the building and construction of barricades continued. UPD called for additional police presence on campus.
• Efforts to clear those barricades in the lobby were met with assault on officers. Police were attempting to enforce a lawful order, arrest those who were assaulting officers, and clear the building. Several people who were protesting and police officers were injured. Additional police officers were called from throughout the county.
• On the first night, administrators were told that if law enforcement was removed that the protesters would leave the building.
• The Provost, Vice Provost, and Dean Crane went into the building twice on Monday. The first time to check on the safety of the protesters, establish dialog, and to see if any needed medical attention. The people who were protesting offered a set of demands.
• The second time the Provost, Vice Provost and Dean Crane entered on Monday night was to announce that law enforcement was leaving the scene and that protesters could leave, as they agreed, without consequences. The people who were protesting shouted the Provost down and threw water at her.
• The UPD Chief of Police recommended that law enforcement depart. President Jackson concurred. Law enforcement left the scene. The people who were protesting then reneged on their promise to vacate the building and continued to build barricades.
• On Tuesday, the focus was on deescalation, and administrators waited for the protesters to keep their promise to leave the building. They refused. Efforts to dialog occurred throughout the day with the protesters both inside and outside the building. The people who were protesting refused to let any administrators into the building.
• After Tuesday, administrators realized the extent of the damage to the building and leaving without consequences was taken off the table. Nelson Hall East was then also occupied, doors were barricaded and protesters controlled who was allowed in or out of the building.
• Throughout the week, there were many attempts to get the protesters to agree to leave the buildings, beyond those efforts that were widely discussed. Faculty, staff, and administrators were actively talking with protesters throughout the week.
• We took the protesters’ demands seriously, and researched those demands and answered them to the best of our ability on the 26th of April.
• A total of 12 buildings were vandalized. The John Van Duzer Theatre, Music A, Art A, Founders Hall, Van Matre Hall, Harry Griffith Hall, Student Business Services, Forestry, and the Gutswurrak Student Activities Center were either broken into or attempted to be broken into. Several others were defaced. Fortunately University staff were able to retake these buildings.
• To date, the initial estimate is that there is more than $1.9M in financial impact, which includes physical damage to the campus and emergency operations. This number is not final due to the campus still assessing physical damage, costs to restore the damage, and gathering a full picture of the financial impact.
• It was difficult to dialog with the protesters to leave the building because there was no clear leadership. There were only a few students that began the protest that were on site during the arrests, which is what made ending the protest without arrest so difficult.
• More than half of those arrested were not students.
• The tagging and efforts to reoccupy buildings on campus have continued since the arrests, which is why the campus has not yet been reopened.

California’s massive effort to shelter homeless residents during the COVID-19 pandemic was a success, according to a new report that says the effort changed the state’s homeless services system for the better.

But at the same time, the researchers pointed out a troubling dearth of available data on the program. With the little information they were able to access, they found that people who left the program had at least a 40% chance of returning to homelessness.

Project Roomkey, one of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature pandemic initiatives, temporarily moved about 62,000 homeless Californians into hotel rooms in an effort to prevent them from catching COVID. The model, which provided residents with their own private room and bathroom, as well as (in some cases) healthcare and other services, was a world apart from traditional shelters where dozens of people sleep together in a room and services are limited.

The independent evaluation of the program, released Monday evening, says Roomkey succeeded in saving lives while also shifting the way the state thinks about homeless shelters.

“I believe the program was successful and I believe it has a further reach beyond just what happened during the program itself, because many communities and many providers have seen the value of this type of program and are trying to continue with it,” said Nichole Fiore, a principal associate with research firm Abt Associates who co-authored the report. The report was funded by the California Health Care Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

But the researchers acknowledged large holes in the accessible state and local data. For example, they couldn’t cross-reference death records or information about participants’ health, meaning they had no way to prove Roomkey prevented deaths or kept people healthier.

Initial responses to public records requests filed by CalMatters revealed dozens of deaths in Roomkey programs spread across the state.

In Ventura County, 32 people died in Roomkey hotel rooms, the majority “due to health conditions and COVID related,” said Jennifer Harkey, program director of the Ventura County Continuum of Care. Twelve people died in San Diego County, eight in Tulare County and seven elderly people in Riverside County, officials told CalMatters.

Still, officials say the individual hotel rooms saved many more people from the more hazardous alternatives of staying on the street or crowding into traditional group shelters.

“This has been a highly successful program by offering safety and stability to highly vulnerable unsheltered people,” Harkey told CalMatters in a statement. “This has proven that non-congregate shelter is a model we need to continue in our community.”

In addition, though many program operators tried to move people into permanent housing as COVID vaccines were released and Roomkey hotels closed, they succeeded less than a quarter of the time.

Did Project Roomkey end people’s homelessness?

Project Roomkey launched in March 2020 and was most heavily used between April 2020 and June 2021. It primarily accepted residents who were considered particularly vulnerable to COVID because they were 65 and older or had medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes or heart conditions.

It started as a hastily-deployed health program — its primary goal was to prevent people from dying of COVID-19, not to permanently end their homelessness. At the outset, both state and local officials expected it would operate for just a few months. As the pandemic dragged on and the hotels stayed open much longer than anticipated, many counties began trying to move Roomkey participants into permanent housing.

As of January, 22% of people leaving Roomkey programs throughout the state went to permanent housing, and 11% to temporary housing, according to state data compiled by the researchers. Another 40% remained homeless: 25% went into other emergency shelters and 15% went back to the street. Another 18% went to unknown destinations, meaning they didn’t tell staff where they were going, or staff didn’t track it.

The positive connotation the researchers gave those results shows just how low the bar is for homelessness programs. Housing is notoriously scarce and expensive in California, and there is a massive shortage of rental subsidies and other resources to help pay people’s rent.

“22% is actually pretty good for an exit into permanent housing,” Fiore said.

The state spent $24 billion on housing and homelessness over the past five years, but as the crisis continues to get worse, lawmakers increasingly are demanding to know where that money is going and why it isn’t getting better results. A recent state audit found huge gaps in the data collected on massive California-wide homelessness programs. And legislators in the state assembly held an oversight hearing on homelessness Monday.

Because Roomkey was so large — and started when counties had access to an unprecedented amount of federal COVID relief dollars that could be spent on housing — the sheer number of people Roomkey permanently housed was impressive, said Vivian Wan, chief executive officer of Abode Services, which ran 16 Roomkey sites in Santa Clara, Alameda and Napa counties. More than 14,000 Californians moved from Roomkey into a permanent home, according to state data obtained by CalMatters.

“More people got housed during this time than any other time that I know of,” Wan said.

Even so, she was hesitant to say 22% was a “good” result, percentage-wise. By comparison, people who left Abode’s shelters in Alameda County last year moved into permanent housing 24% of the time.

The positive connotation the researchers gave those results shows just how low the bar is for homelessness programs.

San Francisco’s largest navigation center (a shelter that provides beds and other services) reported just 8% of the people who left its program ended up in permanent housing in 2022.

Roomkey also didn’t always do a better job of ending people’s homelessness than other shelters, and housing placements varied widely county by county.

Some counties struggled even to track that data.

Officials in Fresno County, for example, said that in the frenzy of opening nine Roomkey projects originally planned to operate for just a few weeks or months, not all site operators tracked where residents went.

There was no data available for four of the county’s nine sites. Officials reported that about 120 out of the nearly 670 people served by the remaining sites — or roughly 18% — moved into permanent housing.

They tried to get participant data from the state’s homeless services system to cross-reference with Medi-Cal and death record data… but couldn’t.

Amina Flores-Becker grew up in Fresno and has watched housing become unaffordable for many middle class and low-income neighbors. One major challenge with Roomkey, the deputy county administrative officer said, was a lack of housing options for people who left hotels, leading many back to the street.

“There was definitely a mass exodus from those shelters when that went away,” Flores-Becker told CalMatters in an interview earlier this year.

One takeaway emphasized by the Abt researchers: The longer people stayed in Roomkey, the more likely they were to move on to permanent housing (at least in Tulare, Los Angeles and Ventura counties, the only counties for which the researchers obtained detailed outcome data). In Los Angeles County, more than half of those who stayed in Roomkey 18 months or longer moved into permanent housing.

The researchers also compared the demographics of Roomkey residents with residents of other shelter programs in Los Angeles County. Roomkey residents were more likely to be White and less likely to be Black .

Researchers struggled with a lack of data

The evaluation determined Roomkey met its goal of saving lives (a claim anecdotally backed by experts who say the state didn’t see the flood of homeless deaths during the pandemic that they initially feared). But the Abt researchers weren’t able to obtain data on deaths or health outcomes as proof. They tried to get participant data from the state’s homeless services system to cross-reference with Medi-Cal and death record data — but they couldn’t, due to data privacy restrictions and other bureaucratic roadblocks, Fiore said.

Many people came to Roomkey from crowded shelters where as many as 300 people might share a room — perfect conditions for COVID to spread, Wan said. Without Roomkey, Wan suspects homeless shelters might have seen COVID mortality rates similar to those of nursing homes – which, at the height of the pandemic, accounted for more than 40% of California’s COVID-related deaths.

“I can’t imagine the spread had we not been able to decompress (homeless shelters),” she said. “People sleep nose to nose in many of these sites.”

In the absence of extensive statewide data, the Abt researchers surveyed and interviewed Roomkey providers and participants throughout California. They sent an online survey to all counties that participated in the program, and conducted interviews with city, county and program staff in 15 of those communities. They also went on site visits to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tulare, Ventura and Santa Cruz counties.

The researchers asked for data on participant outcomes from the five counties where they conducted site visits, but Los Angeles, Tulare and Ventura were the only ones that complied.

That lack of access to data is a problem, Fiore said.

“It’s critical to be able to collect, analyze and evaluate that data across systems,” she said. “And right now all the data for those benefits are sitting in different systems.”

Roomkey gets positive reviews, despite problems

Most Roomkey participants surveyed reported having a “positive experience,” according to the Abt report. They said they particularly appreciated having their own bathroom.

“It really was a place for people to stabilize,” Fiore said. “Get rest. Get nourishment. Get services.”

One participant from Ventura County told the researchers that he could refrigerate his insulin, consistently take his medication and make his doctor’s appointments.

But the Roomkey hotels were not designed for long-term living, which posed challenges as the pandemic continued for multiple years, according to the evaluation. Residents couldn’t cook (not even on hotplates) and the minifridges in the rooms could store only enough food for one or two days. Roomkey staff told the researchers the motels tended to be “decrepit” and didn’t have enough rooms accessible for people with disabilities. Some residents complained of cockroaches and rodents.

Roomkey programs also struggled to provide enough services. Many residents had been living on the street for a long time and suffered from chronic health conditions such as kidney failure, cancer and seizures, as well as PTSD and other mental health issues. Some counties, such as Los Angeles, provided on-site nurses. San Francisco provided counseling and therapy.

Wan said some of her team’s Roomkey sites could have used more health services. “Frankly, because there just weren’t enough resources to go around,” she said.

“People will come indoors if they are offered autonomy, safety, privacy, if they’re able to keep their partners, their pets, their possessions.”
— Nichole Fiore, principal associate, research firm Abt Associates

Statewide, Roomkey staff also enforced strict rules to prevent the spread of COVID, such as requiring residents to mostly stay in their rooms and prohibiting guests. In some cases, the isolation exacerbated residents’ mental health issues.

“Physically I was getting better when I was at the (shelter-in-place) hotel, but mentally…I was too isolated,”one participant told the researchers. “I needed more interaction. It eventually came to a point where I was talking to the TV and arguing with myself in my room.”

Some participants left the program because of those rules.

Funding was another challenge. Cities and counties ramped up their Roomkey programs with the understanding that the federal government would foot a large chunk of the bill. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency recently said it wouldn’t reimburse them for Roomkey stays of longer than 20 days between June 11, 2021 and May 11, 2023.

That limit, which state and local officials are urging the federal government to reverse, will cost California and local governments more than $300 million, according to an estimate from the governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

But the program has made its mark on California. For example, hotels are a key part of the homelessness strategy in Los Angeles, where the new Inside Safe initiative moves people from encampments into hotels. But like Roomkey, that program has struggled to provide residents with enough health and mental health services, and to move people from the hotels into permanent housing.

Roomkey also helped dispel a myth that Fiore says is often perpetuated about homeless residents: That they don’t want to live inside. People who never accepted beds in traditional shelters were willing to try Roomkey, she said.

“People will come indoors if they are offered autonomy, safety, privacy, if they’re able to keep their partners, their pets, their possessions,” Fiore said. “When their needs are met and their needs are considered, then people will come indoors.”

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CalMatters investigative reporter Lauren Hepler contributed to this story.

For the record: Both the California Health Care Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, which funded the independent report, also are among funders of CalMatters. Our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support.

The CalMatters Ideas Festival takes place June 5-6! Find out more and get your tickets at this link.

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

Christian Leslie Nielsen was born on April 10, 1963 and passed away suddenly on March 30, 2024 due to influenza. Christian was the oldest son born to Gerald and Rosemary Nielsen of Loleta. We grew up on our family dairy and beef ranch in Loleta and Ferndale where we learned a great work ethic from our father.

Our brother went to Loleta Elementary School and graduated from Fortuna Union High School, Class of 1982. Christian then attended College of the Redwoods and graduated with a degree in drafting. Christian work for over 30 years at the Humboldt County Planning and Building Department.

Christian was an active member of the Ferndale Danish Lodge for 44 years. Our brother enjoyed being an active member of Valhalla No. 11, Brotherhood, the Scandinavian Festival, and various other groups and was very proud of his Danish heritage. He attended and loved to dance at the Scandinavian Festival every year in Ferndale. He met lots of lifelong friends at meetings and conventions he attended through the lodge. After his passing Christian was honored with the “Member of the Year” award at the California and Nevada State convention, an honor we know he would have been very humble by. Our brother was a devout Catholic and attended Sacred Heart Church as well as St Joseph’s Church in Eureka. He had a strong faith and love for God.

Christian is proceeded in death by our parents Gerald and Rosemary Nielsen. He is survived by Ken and Camie Nielsen of Loleta and Jim Nielsen of Fortuna; his nieces and nephews Lisa Nielsen, Sara and Jason Blum, Kayla Lundy, Ashly Maxwell, Gracie and Parker Bryan, Hunter Nielsen, Brady Nielsen; his great-nieces and great-nephews Albert, Walter, Waylon, Hazel, Everlee and his dog Daisy.

We will be holding a celebration of life on May 18 at 1 p.m. at the Ferndale Danish Hall, 430 Ocean Ave, Ferndale. Bring your favorite potluck dish and stories of Christian to share. In lieu of flowers please make donations to Tail Waggers Thrift Shop, 2737 F St Eureka Ca 95501.

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