HUMBOLDT TODAY: The “North Coast Woman of the Year” has been named; an image on social media causes a disturbance at McKinleyville High School; plus, it’s time to risk hypothermia for charity again. Those stories and more on today’s newscast with John Kennedy O’Connor.

FURTHER READING: 

• Eureka Names Fresh Freeze Drive-In as Business of the Year, Local Drag Queen Ultra Payne as Artist of the Year for 2022
• McKinleyville High Students Cause Alarm With Photo of Themselves Holding a Gun That Turned Out to Be a Toy
• Yurok Tribal Judge Abby Abinanti Named Sen. McGuire’s ‘North Coast Woman of the Year’
• State May Scale Down Its New Home Loan Program Designed to Assist First-Time Homebuyers

HUMBOLDT TODAY can be viewed on LoCO’s homepage each night starting at 6 p.m.

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If you love Humboldt, then you know the only thing more fun than living here is getting to experience this truly unique county through someone else’s eyes. That is why the Outpost jumped at the opportunity to document some of California Arts Council executive director Jon Moscone’s visit to our humble home earlier this week. 

This was Moscone’s first visit behind the Redwood Curtain, he told the Outpost during a stroll on Monday, and he was excited at the chance to get to better know one of the rural regions that California Arts Council (CAC) serves. Moscone lives in San Francisco and was appointed to the CAC in 2021 2022, after serving as chief producer at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He has a long history with the Bay Area and a rich background in theater and the arts. 

But even though he’s seen much art in his life, we still managed to enchant Moscone with some of the wonderful weirdness and community projects that exist within the arts and culture of rural Humboldt County. 

“The Kinetic Lab was so funky and wild,” Moscone said toward the end of his two-day visit. He added that projects like the Da Gou Rou Louwi’ Cultural Center, the Arcata Arts Institute and the Jardin Santuario really stuck out to him as having positive impacts for their communities. “To see the process and the work that’s happening – that really is what inspires me the most.” 

The primary draw for Moscone’s Humboldt visit was the fact that Eureka holds one of California’s 14 cultural districts, which were designated by the CAC in 2017 for their cultural diversity and unique artistic identities. So of course Eureka’s cultural district (which includes much of the Downtown and Old Town neighborhoods) was included in Moscone’s visit, but he also had a chance to see many other local cultural and artistic gems, with Leslie Castellano –  Eureka city councilmember and executive director of the Ink People – acting as his guide. 

After spending part of Monday morning enjoying a steel pan drum performance in beautiful Trinidad, Moscone and Castellano met up with the Outpost and Centro Del Pueblo staff at the Jardin Santuario in Arcata. As the sun unexpectedly shined down, Brenda Perez, executive director of Centro Del Pueblo, gave Moscone a tour of the gardens and shared some of the background and future plans on the community garden project. 

A crew of volunteers, including folks from the Presbyterian Church that sit in front of the garden, were busy building a new garden shed, using almost entirely salvaged wood, and the master gardener Adan Cervantes was planting a patch of Nopal cacti. 

Moscone was touched by the amount of community involvement that goes into the garden, but he was also shocked to hear about the repeated acts of vandalism on the garden’s sign. 

“What they’ve had to struggle through with some of the desecration of their space, and to be resilient from that and to keep going, and using the earth and growing as part of an artistic process of community building – that was probably at the center of my heart for the whole time [of my visit],” Moscone said at the end of his Humboldt trip. 

Moscone gazes at kinetic creations

After the Jardin Sanctuario, Moscone was taken to the Creamery District, where Jacqueline Dandeneau, executive director of the Arcata Playhouse and Playhouse Arts, took him on a tour of the various work spaces and artistic oddities. Neroli Devaney, station manager of Humboldt Hot Air, gave Moscone a tour of the station and Shoshana and Linnea Mandell took him through the dance studios at Redwood Raks. Of course, no visit to the Creamery Building would be complete without a tour of the beautiful chaos of old bike sculptures at the Kinetic Lab. 

Later on Monday afternoon, Moscone got to tour Eureka’s cultural arts district, check out spaces like the historic Eureka Theatre, the gallery at the Redwood Arts Association and the North Coast Repertory Theatre, where local drag performer Tucker Noir was teaching a performance workshop with some students. Asking some questions about local drag, Moscone was saddened to learn about how local drag shows had been canceled due to threats. 

Another part of the tour that left a big impression on Moscone was a visit to Eureka’s old Chinatown neighborhood, where Vicki Ozaki of the Humboldt Asians and Pacific Islanders in Solidarity (HAPI) provided the history behind  the Chinatown mural “Fowl” painted by artists Dave Kim and Cate Be. Like many others, Moscone knew nothing about the history of Eureka’s Chinatown or the expulsion of Chinese people in the 1800s and the fact that they were not legally allowed to return until the 1950s. 

After visiting the Chinatown mural, Moscone learned about another horrific segment of Eureka’s past, stopping at “The Sun Set Twice on the People That Day” – a mural painted by several local Native artists — and based on a poem written by the late Brian Tripp. The poem and mural focus on the story of the 1860 massacre of the Wiyot people on their sacred island, Tuluwat (also known as Indian Island) in Humboldt Bay. On Tuesday Moscone also had a meeting with Marnie Atkins at the Da Gou Rou Louwi’ Cultural Center in Old Town. 

Moscone and Atkins at the Da Gou Rou Louwi’ center in Eureka in front of a piece by Rick Bartow

Monday’s jam-packed itinerary ended with a mixer at the Ink Lab in Old Town, where Moscone met many people who work in the arts and cultural realms in Humboldt County. Moscone spoke to the crowd about his experiences from the day and the importance of helping support the arts. 

“I have experienced first hand what it is means to bring together disparate community out of struggle, out of some sense of despair, but with a deep sense of hope and optimism for the future,” Moscone told the crowd. “I will do what I can over my years under Governor Newsom to support you and the work that you do to uplift yourselves and your communities to make real impact and real change. I am so honored to be here.” 

In a later interview with the Outpost, Moscone said that he was impressed by the amount of work going into local art projects and programs here, but that he felt that Humboldt County really needs a lot more infrastructure in place to help support and connect these programs. He hopes that the $700,000 awarded by the CAC to the cultural district will help with that, but understands that there is also much more funding that will be needed in the future. 

“We have to focus our funding on impact,” Moscone said. “And if we can do that, we can make some changes that I hope will benefit our rural communities…What I don’t like is building things on the backs of artists or cultural workers. We need to find all the ways we can integrate artists into other agencies’ work –  like the parks and Caltrans – the opportunities that exist for more artists to get paid to do that.” 

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CORRECTIONS: this Article has been changed from its original version to correct place names and to give local artist Cate Be credit for her assistance with the mural “Fowl.” 

Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office needs the public’s help to locate missing person Luis Carlos Silva, age 50, of McKinleyville. Silva is missing under unknown circumstances.

Silva was reported missing by a family member after not being in contact with them for an unusual length of time. He was last seen on March 2, 2023.  

Silva is described as a Hispanic male, 5 feet 4 inches tall, approximately 200 pounds, with long brown/gray hair, a beard and hazel eyes. He may be in possession of a gold 2008 Toyota Corolla, California License Plate: 6BHN411.

Anyone with information regarding Silva’s possible whereabouts should call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251.

Eureka Mayor Kim Bergel unveiled her picks for Business of the Year and Artist of the Year during last night’s Eureka City Council meeting. Out of the dozen businesses and artists selected for monthly recognition by the City of Eureka throughout 2022, Bergel hand-picked her absolute favorites … (drum roll): Fresh Freeze Drive-In and local drag queen Ultra Payne!

Bergel | Screenshot

Bergel took a moment to recognize each of the winners during Tuesday’s council meeting. She fondly recalled “many great memories” visiting Fresh Freeze as a child and, as an adult, visiting the iconic Henderson Center drive-in with her own children. 

“Fresh Freeze has been a huge part of my life,” she said. “When my parents dated one thousand years ago, they dated at Fresh Freeze. And when I was a little girl, I would go to Fresh Freeze after church every Sunday for those delicious corndogs. As a grown-up, I have two kids myself and we would ride our bikes to Fresh Freeze during the summer for ice cream and the best milkshakes in town.”

Fresh Freeze owner Paula Adams-Hamilton accepted a plaque and bouquet from Bergel and thanked the City of Eureka for the recognition. “This has been so fun for us – for me and the team at Fresh Freeze,” she said. “Preserving Fresh Freeze and keeping it around for many generations to come is my goal and I couldn’t do that without the support of the community.”

Local drag queen Ultra Payne (A.K.A. Sky Celeste) was named Artist of the Year for 2022. Bergel thanked Ultra Payne for her contributions to Eureka’s arts community and for being a part of “such a multifaceted art[form].”

“When I think about drag, I think about the beauty in the makeup and … all the time it takes and the dedication to be so beautiful. I look at the attire [and] everything that you wear and how beautiful it is … . You’re like an art piece … but you also have this great presence about you, and you can perform. … It’s just fabulous. I’m just so appreciative to have you here with us today.”

Ultra Payne, dressed in a half black tuxedo and half off-the-shoulder ivory gown with her hair piled high in a black-and-white-streaked updo, graciously accepted the award and thanked the city for recognizing a drag queen as Artist of the Year.

“Eureka and Humboldt at large is just such a welcoming and inclusive place, even with everything in the world going on right now, especially regarding drag,” she said. “It’s very, very nice to know that I am a part of a community that is so accepting and welcoming of people who are so different than the “norm.” I am just very, very happy to be able to be a part of the bigger picture and to spread my art to so many different people.”

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A pair of McKinleyville High School students sparked alarm on campus today with a black-and-white photo, posted to social media, in which they’re standing on campus holding what turned out to be a water gun. 

Shortly after 12:30 p.m., McKinleyville High School Principal Nicholas Collart issued the following email to staff, parents and others in the school community:

Dear Mack High Community,
During 5th period today at school our administrative team received a black and white picture which seemed to show two students holding a gun on campus.

We immediately located the students, confiscated the object and recognized that the gun was fake, a water gun, and not a threat, the fake gun is in our possession and we are responding to the students in the picture. 

As we believe the picture may be circulating on social media we immediately asked our staff to read a short message to relay this information to our students and staff.  We felt that it was also important to reach out to you all immediately as well.

Our students and staff’s safety is our first priority, we appreciate you reading this email and if you have any questions please contact me at 707 839-6405 or at ncollart@nohum.k12.ca.us 

Roger Macdonald, superintendent of the Northern Humboldt Union High School District, also sought to allay any fears with a email saying the gun was a plastic toy.

“Administration is dealing with discipline and extra supervision is out at lunch to make sure everyone understands the situation,” Macdonald said in his email.

Reached by phone, Collart reiterated that there was no threat on campus, despite the appearance of the photo.

“Those things can be scary … ,” he said. “If the picture had been in color it probably would have been a lot simpler.” 

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PREVIOUSLY:

• Doing Justice: An Interview With Abby Abinanti, Chief Judge of the Yurok Tribe (Part 1)
• Life and the Law: An Interview With Abby Abinanti, Chief Judge of the Yurok Tribe (Part 2)
• On the Yurok Tribe: An Interview With Abby Abinanti, Chief Judge of the Yurok Tribe (Part 3)

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Press release from the office of Sen. Mike McGuire:

Judge Abby Abinanti, a dynamic and effective leader for equal access to the justice system and expanded resources and programs for Native American residents across California, has been selected by Senate Majority Leader Mike McGuire as the 2023 North Coast Woman of the Year.

Abinanti, known as “Judge Abby,” joined Senator McGuire for a ceremony this week on the Senate floor in recognition of the 42 “California Women Making Herstory” honorees.

Abinanti is trailblazer. She was the first tribal woman to pass the state bar and become a judge in California. Judge Abby has served as a Yurok Tribal Court Judge since 1997 and she has proudly held the title as Chief Tribal Court Judge since 2007.

A member of the Yurok Tribe, Abinanti is an alumnae of Cal Poly Humboldt and holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of New Mexico School of Law. Abinanti served as a Commissioner for the San Francisco Superior Court for over 17 years, assigned to the Unified Family Court and Dependency, a position she held in conjunction with her Superior Court assignment until 2015.

During her successful tenure as Chief Tribal Court Judge, Abinanti has been laser-focused in the Murdered & Missing Indigenous People (MMIP) crisis, which has disproportionately impacted women in the Yurok Tribe. She has led the way to significantly expand services and programs available to combat the MMIP crisis along with creating Yurok culturally-centered court services including Child Support Court, Wellness/Diversion/

“Judge Abby’s commitment to fighting for families, women, and tribal justice is second to none,” said Senator McGuire. “She built the Yurok Tribal Court, which is nationally recognized and respected as one of the best in America, from the ground up. Known for her innovative and holistic approaches to criminal justice and her relentless pursuit to combat the MMIP crisis, Judge Abby has helped countless individuals and families access justice and rebuild their lives. She’s an inspiration to all Californians.”

During her career, Judge Abby has taught in law schools including UC Berkeley and Stanford University. In 2020, Abinanti was recognized with the Lawrence R. Baca Lifetime Achievement Award by the Indian Law Section of the Federal Bar Association for dedicating her career to integrating Native values in the justice system.

“I’m deeply humbled to Senator McGuire for this special recognition and for highlighting the amazing work of the Yurok Tribe and our Council,” said Abinanti. “It’s an honor to share the Senate floor with this group of change-making women. I also know there is much more work ahead of us to ensure that our court systems reflect the values we hold important, including individual and community-based responsibility for those who err. As to the MMIP crisis, it is gift to know that Senator McGuire will not rest until we secure justice for all victims and their families and hold offenders accountable.”

The Senate Floor Ceremony can be viewed live at www.senate.ca.gov. Senator McGuire will celebrate with Judge Abby at a lunch on the North Coast in the coming months.

In this economy, who has enough money for a down payment on a house?

Despite a projected $25 billion budget deficit, the state of California does. At least for now.

The California Housing Finance Agency is poised to launch a scaled-down version of its new shared equity home loan program on March 27. With the Dream for All program, the state plans to provide $300 million worth of down payments for an estimated 2,300 first-time homebuyers.

The complicated program involves the state paying some or all of the upfront costs for buying a home — the down payment, for instance — in exchange for a share in the home’s value when it is sold, refinanced or transferred.

If the home appreciates in value, those gains to the state would then be used to fund the next borrowers — a little for the seller; a little for the next aspiring buyer.

Everybody wins — as long as prices go up.

The trouble is that home prices have been declining in the state for months, even as higher mortgage interest rates have made monthly mortgage payments more expensive.

A potential economic downturn looms as well, as the Federal Reserve weighs raising borrowing costs even further as soon as today.

And California’s tech industry is taking a beating and laying off workers, contributing to a decline in personal incomes. Income taxes are the state’s biggest revenue source.

Given the uncertainty, Gov. Gavin Newsom in January proposed a significantly smaller version of the 10-year, $10 billion program originally envisioned by Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, a Democrat from San Diego. In his January budget, Newsom proposed spending an initial $300 million on the program, a cut from the $500 million compromise signed last year.

Optimism and expectations

The size and scope of the Dream for All program will likely be a subject of negotiations between Newsom and the overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature this year. The governor is expected to offer a revised state spending plan and a new financial forecast in May. Lawmakers must pass a balanced budget by June 15 in order to get paid.

The proposed cut “will not impact the Administration’s commitment or timeline for implementing the program,” Newsom’s Department of Finance said in January.

In a Feb. 13 email to CalMatters, Christopher Woods, budget director for Atkins, said her office will seek more funding for the program.

“The Governor ‘proposing’ to pull back some funds has very little to do with what will actually happen,” Woods wrote to CalMatters, in response to earlier coverage of the program. “No one should expect the program to be cut, and we should all fully expect additional funds – perhaps as much as $1 billion – to be allocated in the 2023-24 Budget Act.”

“With interest rates rising, the program is needed more than ever … and there are several innovative ways to fund the program,” Woods wrote.

Woods declined to answer follow-up questions for this story.

Atkins, who championed the equity sharing program last year, has said the Dream for All program is a priority. She said in a recent statement she isn’t giving up on getting more money for it.

“Our state is about to launch a program that will help change people’s lives for the better, and make the dream of homeownership a reality,” she said. “While existing funding for the California Dream for All is a great first step, we are working to allocate additional funding in the upcoming state budget — with the ultimate goal of providing $1 billion per year — to help even more families set the foundation for building generational wealth.”

Falling equity

The uncertainty in the economy and housing market has been a subject of discussion at CalHFA for months, as officials and political appointees seek to launch a program meant to take advantage of rising home prices at the very moment home equity is falling.

State officials said buyers positioned to hold onto a property for the long-term are those best suited for the program when home prices are falling.

In a presentation to its board of directors in January, CalHFA officials also said the agency is planning for a program with a potentially “very short life cycle.”

“Having lived the dream of buying a house in Los Angeles in 1989, when the market peaked, and then selling it at a loss almost a decade later, I can appreciate that the market doesn’t always go up,” Jim Cervantes, CalHFA’s chair, said during that Jan. 19 meeting.

“Disclosures, whatever we can do to mitigate — or rather, have prospective buyers understand what they’re getting into — would be extremely valuable, because no one’s a good market timer.”

California home prices, already rising for years, saw big gains during the pandemic, as mortgage interest rates hit historic lows and families sought more space for their remote work set-ups to practice social distancing.

The median price of a previously-owned, single-family home in California, as tracked by the California Association of Realtors, increased 47% from March 2020 to May 2022, when it peaked at $900,170.

That same month the Federal Reserve, in order to tackle inflation, began its most aggressive interest rate hikes in years driving up mortgage costs for consumers.

Since May 2022, the state’s median home price has fallen 16.5% to hit $751,330 in January.

Market change

Despite the decline in home prices, monthly mortgage costs continue to make the state’s housing market more unaffordable than at nearly any point in the last 15 years, particularly for lower- and middle-class families. Only 17% of families in California could afford a median-priced single family home at the end of last year, according to the Realtors group.

Given the rapid market changes, Tiena Johnson Hall, CalHFA’s executive director, called the governor’s reductions in Dream for All funding prudent at CalHFA’s January meeting. “There’s still a lot of room for (home) values to continue to decrease, and that is what we expect to see,” she said.

In February, the state’s nonpartisan legislative analyst projected a revised $25 billion deficit in next year’s state budget. Since then, job growth nationally and in California has remained strong, except for layoffs in the tech sector.

The full details of the Dream for All program — for instance, which lenders will offer the shared equity loans to borrowers — are not yet available from CalHFA.

And loans will not be immediately available to consumers when the program launches this month. Lenders will need a month to six weeks to roll out the loans and begin marketing them to consumers, said Ellen Martin, a CalHFA official tasked with designing the program.

“We do know that there’s a lot of excitement out there,” Martin told CalMatters in a recent interview.

How it will work

Some details have been revealed in CalHFA board meetings, public hearings and a report to the state Legislature. Here are some of the program’s key components.

• The loans will not be available for all Californians. Only those who earn 150% or less of the median income of others in their county qualify. Those income limits vary by county, with $300,000 being the cut-off in pricey Santa Clara and San Francisco counties, but $159,000 for many inland counties such as Fresno and Merced.
• The loans will cover as much as 20% of a home purchase. Whenever a home is sold, transferred or refinanced, a borrower will owe the state the original amount the state invested, plus a percentage of the home’s increase in value. If the original loan was 20 percent of a home’s value, the seller would owe the state the original loan plus 20 percent of its increased value, though that amount would be capped at 250% of the original loan amount.
• A social equity feature of the program will be included for those who earn as much as 80% of the area median income. They will get to keep more of their equity when they sell, refinance or transfer their properties than others with higher incomes. Also about 10% of the initial state funds, or $30 million, will be reserved for those lower-income borrowers.
• The loans can be used to fund down payments and closing costs, including interest rate buydowns.
• Given the complexity of the program, borrowers will be required to complete a homebuyer education course.

Advocates’ concerns

The complexity of the program has some consumer advocates worried.

Lisa Sitkin, a senior staff attorney with the National Housing Law Project, said it would be wise for the agency to ensure borrowers receive periodic notices about the loan’s atypical details.

“As time goes by, people tend to forget and treat it as a normal loan, and I think it is useful for people planning to be reminded,” said Sitkin, a member of a working group advising CalHFA on the program.

A proposal to sell the loans as mortgage-backed securities also has her worried. California officials are exploring the idea of pooling the shared equity loans into securities and selling them to investors, to help provide additional money for other borrowers.

Many Wall Street financial institutions bundled often poor-quality mortgage loans into securities during real estate’s boom years and sold them to major investors. But during the years of downturn, getting help to homeowners was complicated by the difficulties identifying who exactly owned these loans.

“If they are sold into private, securitized trusts there is a lack of transparency about who owns your debt, and a lack of information about options if there are problems,” Sitkins said. “I really want to be sure that there are guardrails and protections for the borrowers.”

Consumers are cautious

As CalHFA officials were designing the program last year, they held several listening sessions online, taking comments from the public. Jake Lawrence, a 41-year-old cannabis entrepreneur in Willits who also runs a nonprofit, said he liked what he heard.

“I’m very interested. The problem we face is that there’s such a flux in what’s going on,” Lawrence said. “We’re in the middle of a housing market bust, so we’re gonna watch prices tumble for a minute.”

What’s more, one of the county’s biggest industries, the marijuana trade, has been hit hard by declines in cannabis prices. “It’s beyond suffering,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence also wondered how the state will calculate equity if he makes improvements to a home.

Despite his questions, he is considering the idea.

“It doesn’t hurt my feelings to share equity with someone who invests in me,” he said of the state. “And anybody that understands any kind of financial literacy should understand an investor should be able to have their expected ROI (return on investment). For me, I have zero issue with the idea.”

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