In the minds of most Californians, accessory dwelling units — ADUs, short — bring to mind words like “small,” “subtle” and “cute.”

None of which describe the side-by-side ADU duplexes on E Street.

Perched at the edge of San Diego’s desirable Golden Hill neighborhood, there’s nothing dainty or diminutive about these three-story structures. “Backyard cottage” is another term used to describe accessory dwelling units, but these are out front, practically hiding the five-unit multiplex to which they are technically “accessory.”

Like dozens of small and not-so-small apartment buildings across San Diego, the structures on E Street are ADUs in only one way: They were permitted under the city’s ADU Bonus Program.

The city’s one-of-a-kind ordinance offers landlords a one-for-one deal. If they agree to construct an ADU and keep the rent low enough for San Diegans making under a certain income, they’re automatically permitted to build a second “bonus” unit, which they can rent at whatever price they like.

In parts of the city far from public transit, the 2021 city program offers a one-off: Alongside the main house and the two ADUs already permitted under state law, the city allows for a maximum of five units on one property.

But in bus-and train-adjacent “transit priority” areas — a designation that covers much of San Diego’s urban core — a landlord can alternate affordable and bonus units again and again and again. Technically, there are limits. City zoning set a maximum height on buildings, and a more complicated regulatory formula caps how much built floorspace can dominate a parcel.

But you can squeeze in an awful lot of ADUs within those parameters. Hence, the project on E Street: A single family lot with nine apartment units on it, four of them ADUs, two of them affordable. And that’s not an especially extravagant use of the program.

“It’s really ADUs only in name.”
— Dave Pearson, Partner, PALO

A typical ADU bonus project application includes between 4 and 7 additional units, according to data provided by San Diego’s Development Services Department. Projects with a dozen or more units are not unheard of. The largest proposed project to date, planned for the city’s gentrifying majority Black and Latino Encanto neighborhood, is 148 units.

Dave Pearson, whose design shop, PALO, designed the E Street duplexes, said his largest permitted project, located behind an existing 76-unit apartment building, comes with 36 “ADUs.”

There’s a word for 36 units stacked in row on top of one another. Even Pearson can’t help but grin and use scare quotes when he uses the term “ADU.” The city’s “crafty little maneuver” allows developers to “effectively build an apartment building out of ADUs.”

“It’s really ADUs only in name,” he said.

David Pearson, co-founder PALO, in Imperial Beach on Nov. 2, 2023. PALO, an architecture company, helps homeowners in San Diego build different types of housing. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

Depending on your perspective, San Diego’s “crafty little maneuver” is either an ingeniously clever use of state law to provide a much needed boost to the local housing supply or a sneak effort to foist an intolerable degree of construction and density upon unsuspecting residents while only providing a token degree of affordability.

The program is just beginning to take off. A total of 159 projects with 1,200 units have been submitted to the city, as of October. Less than half of the projects have actually been permitted. Far fewer have broken ground. Even so, supporters, detractors, researchers and policymakers are sitting up and taking note.

“San Diego may have stumbled on to the quickest solution to producing a lot of ‘missing middle’ housing,” said Andrew Wofford, a graduate student researcher at the UC Berkeley Center for Community Innovation who has been evaluating the program for the state’s housing department.

“Missing middle” describes an approachable (and, one hopes, more affordable) scale of development that occupies a middle ground between uber-dense highrises and sprawling single-family homes. Adding an ADU behind an existing home represents the mildest housing of this type. The novelty of San Diego’s program is in redefining “ADU” from a specific building type to a broad privileged regulatory chute into which developers are now encouraged to throw small apartment buildings.

First: A sign in opposition to the construction of ADUs or granny flats in the Talmadge neighborhood of San Diego on Nov. 5, 2023. Last: A sign in opposition to the construction of ADUs or granny flats in the Talmadge neighborhood of San Diego on Nov. 5, 2023. Photos by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

Meanwhile, local critics of the program have already begun to mobilize. Signs inveighing against “granny towers” and “backyard apartments” are common lawn ornaments in many of the city’s residential neighborhoods. The local backlash has already spilled over to other areas of local housing policy and now threatens Mayor Todd Gloria’s broader “Yes In My Backyard” vision.

Even some supporters are surprised by the program’s ambition. Denise Pinkston said her experience with local housing politics would have led her to rule out anything quite so far-reaching. A San Francisco real estate attorney and the go-to ADU whisperer for state lawmakers hoping to hop aboard the “backyard revolution,” Pinkston is also board chair of the Casita Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for ADU-friendly policy.

But looking at the results so far in San Diego, she paraphrases Shakespeare: “What’s in a name?”

“Actually, it doesn’t really matter what you call it,” said Pinkston. “What you get is more housing.”

San Diego: ‘Above and beyond’

California legislators have spent the last half-decade passing bill after bill to encourage homeowners to build backyard cottages.

Now, anywhere in California, city permit review is limited to 60 days. Development fees and construction-cramping setback requirements are capped. Public hearings and design reviews are banned. In many cases, so are the impositions of costly parking, landscaping and storage requirements.

As a result, California has experienced an ADU boom. While other, more ambitious and controversial pro-housing policies have flamed out in the state Capitol or made it through the legislative gauntlet only to produce less impressive results in the real world, ADUs now make roughly one-in-six of all new units permitted.

Some cities have found ways to quietly obstruct those efforts. Others have rolled along with them. None have gone quite so far as San Diego with its bonus program.

Leaning in on development-friendly housing policy is on brand for San Diego. The city has a history of serving as a laboratory of YIMBYism for California.

Earlier this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill ramping up the added density afforded to apartment projects in exchange for additional affordable units. It was modeled on a San Diego ordinance. When state lawmakers passed a law banning local parking requirements for many new housing projects, they were following San Diego’s lead. And as California rolled out its various laws greasing the skids for ADUs, San Diego passed its own rules that greased them further.

“In a lot of cities, the only reforms they’re doing on housing are those that are triggered by the state,” said Colin Parent, a state Assembly candidate and CEO of Circulate San Diego, a nonprofit that advocates for public transit and dense housing. “San Diego has done a bunch of things that go above and beyond what the state reforms require.”

The ADU bonus program is the latest example.

The University Heights neighborhood of San Diego, where there are several ADU units, on Nov. 5, 2023. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

In 2019, state lawmakers passed a bill requiring local governments to “incentivize and promote” the building of more affordable ADUs. City planners in San Diego took this directive to heart in a way that no other city did.

To fans of the program, San Diego offers a policy lesson that goes far beyond backyard cottages. Cities don’t “have to reinvent the wheel to build more housing,” said Muhammad Alameldin, a researcher at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation, who wrote an overview on San Diego’s ADU program earlier this year. The promise of nearly unlimited density is an irresistible perk for many developers. Cities that want more of a particular type of housing — or more housing in general — can tack on an uncapped density bonus and watch the permit applications flood in, he said.

“They found the formula.”

But there are reasons to believe that this particular formula might not work quite so well in other parts of the state. Even by the standards of auto-oriented Southern California cities, San Diego’s lots are on the big side, making it easier for developers to pack more onto the average parcel while staying beneath other zoning limits.

Local economics play a role, too. In San Diego, the median apartment rent (roughly $2,700 a month, according to Zillow) is less than $400 over the maximum allowable rent for a state-designated affordable apartment in San Diego County. That’s good news for landlords, who don’t have to take quite so large a hit when they set aside certain units for lower-income renters. In places where that gap is larger, the incentive to participate is smaller.

Jake Wegmann, a professor of urban planning at University of Texas at Austin, said he thinks the same “slam dunk economics” of the program in San Diego would likely apply in “other very high rent regions, like the Bay Area,” though perhaps not so much in lower cost metro areas, such as Sacramento or Fresno.

Even within San Diego, there are only so many parcels where it makes sense to pack in a cluster of multiplexes: Some lots are just weirdly shaped or lack access to water and power, for example. “We should be cautious in assuming it’s going to run rampant over the whole city like kudzu,” said Wegmann.

Waiting for copycats

Jared Basler, an ADU developer and the Casita Coalition’s policy director, said “there are a lot of people who are already looking into how to take it up to the state level” — though none of the state legislators interviewed for this story would confirm as much.

But even a program booster like Basler isn’t quite so sure going statewide with the idea would be a good thing: “When we take these really successful local programs statewide, they do get watered down.”

A “watered down” version of the program might include higher affordability requirements or some of the stringent labor standards that have been tacked onto other high-profile housing bills. Those added requirements would raise costs and result in fewer overall units. That’s a trade-off proponents aren’t willing to make.

Jared Basler, director of policy and strategic initiatives at Casita Coalition, at Liberty Station in San Diego on Nov. 4, 2023. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

Other places — and even the state as a whole — are welcome to take a look at the program, said Gary Geiler, assistant director of Development Services Department. But they should proceed with caution.

“Other jurisdictions might have a different geography and topography and built environment,” he said. Instead of opting for the “unlimited option,” allowing for as many affordable-bonus pairs as can fit on the lot, a single bonus allowance “could always be the starting point,” he said.

Pushing that “unlimited” option also carries a broader political risk.

One of the reasons ADUs have been such a political success in California is that backyard cottages are, generally speaking, human-scale. Grandma’s backyard bungalow will not cast unsightly shadows on nearby parks or jam the nearby side streets with cars. Unlike large apartment complexes that might be railed against as the work of faceless, greedy developers, ADUs are generally paid for by, and stand to financially benefit, a neighbor.

Turning ADU policy into a backdoor apartment program threatens to bring those faceless developers back into the debate, upending a tried and true strategy, said Parent of Circulate San Diego.

“Most people who own a house — the vast majority of them — are never going to build an apartment building,” he said. Under the San Diego program, “there are some projects that are really, really big, because there are an unlimited number of allowable units,” he said.

“That word ‘unlimited’ is going to be challenging for some people.”

Backlash begins

From the roundabout at Adams and 49th, in San Diego’s historic Talmadge neighborhood, the two ADU duplexes peek over the single-story house out front like a pair of peeping Toms. To Geoffrey Hueter, they’re about as welcome here.

These are the first ADUs built under the San Diego bonus program and the reason that Hueter got into housing activism. They’re the reason he rallied his friends and co-founded Neighbors for a Better San Diego. They’re the reason that just a few houses down, a front yard sports a sign calling for “No Backyard Apartment Buildings.”

Hueter is the soft-spoken, bespectacled face of the political backlash that housing advocates like Parent worry about. With a retired software engineer’s mind for detail, Hueter will respond to a simple question (“What do you think of the city’s bonus ADU program?”) with a seeking verbal essay on the history of Southern California automobile culture, the rate of local land turnover, social housing in Vienna, and optimal property tax rates for small businesses.

But eventually he will reply: “It’s bad policy.”

A single-family home with an ADU complex in the backyard area in the Talmadge neighborhood of San Diego on Nov. 5, 2023. The ADUs were the first constructed under San Diego’s density bonus program. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

Before developers got their hands on the 49th Street site, it was a single home. Now there are six: Four new one-bedroom units, plus a new studio carved off from the main house’s garage. When it wrapped up in the late summer of 2022, Mayor Gloria showcased the project as an example of “gentle density” even as some neighbors started to complain. Their chief sources of angst were a decline in privacy and the prospect of noisy college kids renting out the units.

Standing a few houses down from the 49th street project, Hueter acknowledged that the buildings aren’t especially imposing or out of character. “It’s not horrible horrible,” he said, though he still worries about the lack of parking and the sheer number of trash cans required to service the new tenants.

More than the details, it’s what he sees as the duplicity of the program that encroaches on “lawlessness” that bothers him most. “Don’t call them ‘accessory’ if they’re dominant,” he said. “If you say something is ‘gentle density,’ it should be gentle.”

In a weekly newsletter published just after his visit to the site last year, Gloria also noted that the project was “a huge improvement aesthetically from what it was before.”

For Hueter, who has helped fundraise to beautify Talmadge and who is married to the president of neighborhood historical society, that was an unforgivable insult.

“Don’t tell people they live in a s–t neighborhood,” he said. “Be smarter about who you pick a fight with. This is a very politically active neighborhood.”

“Actually, it doesn’t really matter what you call it. What you get is more housing.”
— Denise Pinkston, co-chair, Casita Coalition

The mayor’s administration has learned that the hard way. Earlier this year, Gloria introduced a collection of housing proposals, which he branded “Housing Package 2.0.” One of the proposals would have adopted a 2021 state law that allows small apartment projects of as many as 10 units to skip environmental review if they’re close to transit — so long as a city opts in.

That proposal was swatted down by the city’s planning commission after hundreds of residents, many under the banner of Neighbors for a Better San Diego, led a months-long protest movement against it.

“A lot of the reason [that law] got beaten here is because there was a lot of experience from the bonus ADU law,” said Hueter. “People were already sensitized to what was going on.”

Earlier this month, the city council rejected the mayor’s entire housing package. Gloria has said he plans to reintroduce a revised version next year, but Neighbors for a Better San Diego were happy to consider it a feather in their cap.

Technically affordable vs. truly affordable

Hueter stressed that the group isn’t anti-ADU. The group’s membership leans propertied and graying, so more than a few have backyard units of their own.

Like most local groups pushing back on new housing laws, the members of Neighbors for a Better San Diego have an easier time rallying around what they oppose than what they would like to see instead. At public hearings and protests, historic preservation, a lack of parking, the unseemly prospect of developer profits, an influx of rental apartments — or a more naked condemnation of lower-income renters, themselves — all motivate opposition to new city housing policy.

Maybe the most popular argument of all against the city’s ADU program is the claim that the resulting units aren’t “truly” affordable.

A single-family home with ADUs behind it in the College Area neighborhood of San Diego on Nov. 5, 2023. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

In College Area, the residential neighborhood anchored around San Diego State University, a newly built ADU may rent for a little more than $3,000. The “affordable” units are cheaper, but not much. In order to qualify for the program, rent can’t exceed 30% of the monthly paycheck of someone earning 110% of the county’s median income. That works out to $2,249 per month for a studio.

And unlike traditional affordable housing, which has to be set aside at those lower rates for 55 years, the bonus ADU program only requires a 15-year commitment. If a landlord lowers the rent further to someone earning 80% of the typical area income, the commitment is only 10 years.

That second option remains a hypothetical. So far, each of the 159 projects submitted to the city has targeted the highest “affordable” income level.

“We have a lot of neighborhood opposition groups that will go on Zillow, and find the most outrageously expensive ADU and then use it to oppose any kind of ADU incentive program.”
— Heidi Vonblum, Director, San Diego city planning

Asked about the bonus program as an affordable housing solution, city planning director Heidi Vonblum confessed that the question made her nervous.

“We have a lot of neighborhood opposition groups that will go on Zillow, and find the most outrageously expensive ADU and then use it to oppose any kind of ADU incentive program,” she said in a Zoom interview.

But even if the program isn’t serving the most desperate, making it easier to build modest duplexes provides an escape valve for young professionals, essential workers and other middle class San Diegans who would otherwise be competing for the region’s scarce rentals, she said.

“Maybe an ADU that comes online might have really high rents, but then that frees up housing within the housing ecosystem for people to live in,” Vonblum said. “That’s really hard to explain to, you know, an average community member, because everybody wants us to solve everything with some silver bullet right now.”

Pitching the program

On a Saturday morning in early November, Mayor Gloria dropped by a conference center in San Diego’s master-planned Liberty Station neighborhood to meet up with the builders, housing financiers, politicians and academics gathered at the Casita Coalition’s annual convention.

If any of the efforts by Hueter and his fellow activists have shaken his confidence, the mayor doesn’t show it. He recalls his visit to that first ADU bonus project on 49th Street. “It’s no surprise that new developments typically get a lot of notice and a lot of signage,” he said. “But the people I met that live there are service members and college students. And where are they gonna go?”

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria speaks to attendees of Casita Coalition’s event, Build the Middle: A National Housing Convening, in San Diego on Nov. 4, 2023. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

On paper, the conference is a celebration of the ADU-ification of the California housing market and an industry meeting-of-the-minds. But much of the programming serves as an unofficial advertisement for the host city’s out-there ADU program.

After Gloria departs, the conference attendees line up outside for a morning bus tour of the city’s built up backyards. The tour passes by the 49th Street site, but does not stop in Talmadge. In College Area, outside a seven-unit project, bus riders are advised to keep their voices down, lest an already irate neighbor grow more irate. The ADU tourists disembark at each site to pad around the stacked in-law units on display, cooing with giddy disbelief and inquiring about square footage.

First: Attendees tour an ADU complex during a Casita Coalition’s event, Build the Middle: A National Housing Convening, in San Diego on Nov. 4, 2023. Last: Attendees tour an ADU complex during a Casita Coalition’s event, Build the Middle: A National Housing Convening, in San Diego on Nov. 4, 2023. Photos by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

Getting off the bus back at the convention center, Analise Ortiz, a Democratic Arizona state representative marvels at what San Diego has done. Phoenix legalized backyard “casitas” this fall, though without the other developer-friendly goodies that San Diego offers. Recent efforts to permit ADUs statewide and to otherwise make it easier to build dense housing have failed in the Arizona Legislature. The debate there is a familiar one, said Ortiz: Concerns about affordability, neighborhood character and parking dominated.

“I think this shows that a lot of those concerns are exaggerated…We’re going to try again next year and I think putting a visualization of what it can look like will hopefully help move some of our colleagues along,” she said. “We’re hoping we can have the same thing in Arizona.”

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

Richard (Dick) Wall passed away peacefully at his home on Thursday, November 16, 2023, after complications from gallbladder surgery. He started life in Clovis, New Mexico, spent a short time in Lubbock, Texas, and at the age of 5, his father moved the family to Southern California, where Dick would live until 1971. He graduated from Santa Ana High School in 1955 and began working in the family steel fabricating business preparing bids for various projects, including the Matterhorn ride in Disneyland. He received his AA in business from Saddleback JC in 1969.

In 1971, he moved his family to Miranda, where Dick sold real estate, operated the Redwood Palace Pizza Parlor and worked for FVN Corp selling postcards and souvenirs. While in Miranda, he discovered gardening. He loved growing vegetables and became quite an experienced canner. The family also had beef cows, pigs and chickens. Dick thoroughly enjoyed life in the country. Family was important to him and he devoted many hours going to different school events, 4-H functions and various football, volleyball and basketball games. His community service included the South Fork Booster Club and the Weott Lions Club.

One year, for Father’s Day, he received a tennis racket. He began playing on Sundays at the high school where Linda also played. They renewed their friendship and were married in 1998 and moved to Fortuna. Over the next 25 years, they enjoyed country western dancing, camping, cruising, playing cards with friends and family, annual trips to the Southern Oregon Kite Festival and, of course, playing tennis.

When he turned 80 it became more difficult to do some of the things he enjoyed. But he still loved puttering in the yard and received many compliments from neighbors who enjoyed his begonias and beautifully manicured front yard. He discovered that the Fortuna Senior Center had a pinochle group and really enjoyed playing pinochle and making new friends.

Richard is survived by his wife, Linda; brother, Gary; son, Michael; daughters Jennifer (Tom) and Nicolee; son, Chris (Kelley); grandchildren Heidi (Matt), Cora (Neal), Julie, Winnie, Kenny, Sadie, Tyler and Amy and numerous nieces and great grandchildren. He was preceded in death by parents, Shelie and Syble Wall.

We’d like to thank the doctors, nurses and other caregivers at Redwood Memorial and St Joseph’s hospitals for the incredible care and concern that they showed to Dick as well as a very special thanks to Hospice of Humboldt who facilitated bringing Dick home.

A private family memorial will be held at a later date to honor Richard’s life and legacy. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Hospice of Humboldt, the Fortuna Senior Center or a favorite charity.

Dick will be deeply missed by his family and friends. May his memory be a source of comfort to those who mourn his loss.

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Dorothy Yvonne Gates was released from the disease of dementia and passed peacefully away on November 11, 2023. She was born in Red Bay, Alabama in 1941. Her family moved to California’s San Joaquin Valley when she was 10. She was the youngest of six. She grew up in a hard-working family of agricultural workers who chopped cotton, picked fruit, and drove tractors.

In 1959, she married Bobby Kurtz and they had two children, Vicki and Daryl. In 1969, they moved to Willow Creek and took over the Standard Oil plant, delivering gas and diesel to a booming mill community. Yvonne worked at Bob’s Shopping Center, cleaned and cared for local homes, and started her own business as a seamstress. She was an artist in diverse mediums and took pleasure in painting and creating things for her family. She was a proficient bowler, card player and an avid golfer who achieved a hole in one over the Bigfoot Golf Course infamous #9 lake. She married Bernie Gates and learned to hunt and drive fast cars. They brought each other lots of joy as they hiked and drove mountain roads together. A few years after losing him to cancer, she began to spend time with her best friend, Gene Gates. They were married and began an adventurous life together seeing places they both had always dreamed of. They drove to Alaska and camped along the way. They drove across the country to Alabama where she spent some time with cousins that she hadn’t seen since she was a kid. They were camp hosts at Boca Campground in the Tahoe National Forest and docents at the Yankee Fork Dredge and Custer Ghost Town in Idaho. They worked at the Michael David Winery in Lodi driving the hay wagon and setting up the haunted maze for the annual pumpkin patch extravaganza. They made many friends along the way and joined them as snowbirds in Quartzsite, Arizona.

Yvonne was vibrant and full of positive energy, always full of laughter and the joy of living; she met everyone with a smile. She leaves behind her beloved husband Gene; daughter Vicki; niece Melissa Kurtz (Brooklynn, Jaiden, and Lincoln); nephews Christopher Kurtz (Lindsay and Ryan) and Devon Kurtz (Sylvia); daughter-in-law Shellee Kurtz; many nieces, and nephews; as well as her Gates stepchildren, nieces, and nephews, all of whom she also loved.

There are no services planned at this time.

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From Senator Mike McGuire’s office:

Sacramento—Across California, small-family licensed cannabis farmers are struggling to make ends meet amidst historic market instability. Many can’t even afford to put plants in the ground, only to harvest a product that won’t make a profit. 

Yet, growers are required to pay full freight for their state cultivation license—up to tens of thousands of dollars annually—even if they don’t plant that year. This harsh economic reality, paying for a license they may not even use, doesn’t make any sense and it’s helping drive instability into the market.

That’s why Senate President Designee Mike McGuire advanced SB 833, the Cannabis Licensing Reform Act, this year.

The process for an inactive or downgraded cultivation license already exists at local levels but currently there is no statewide equivalent that allows cannabis farmers to pause or reduce their crop size without paying the full annual fees. The state cultivation license for a 10,000 square feet to one acre farm is $40,000 to $50,000 annually.

McGuire’s legislation will allow cannabis farmers to either pause their license fee, but maintain an inactive license, or reduce their license [fee] based on crop size, saving the farmer money.

Under current state regulations, cannabis farmers have to pay full freight even if they don’t grow for the year or reduce their crop size. This new law will now provide family cannabis farmers flexibility and the ability to pay less when they grow less.

“SB 833 is all about common sense. Just like with other agricultural crops, cannabis farmers shouldn’t go under from one bad season, whether it’s from a tough market, drought, or even a wildfire. Right now, cannabis farmers must pay their state license fees regardless—or forfeit them all together. This is nuts and that’s why we advanced this legislation. Farmers need flexibility in this erratic market and if they grow less, they should pay less. It’s that simple,” Senator McGuire said. 

SB 833 was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom and will go into effect January 1, 2024.

Press release from Humboldt Bay Fire:

On Sunday November 26th 2023 @ 1400 hours Humboldt Bay Fire was dispatched to a Water Rescue in Humboldt Bay near the Wharfinger Building located at 1 Marina Way.

Humboldt Bay Fire responded with 1 Chief Officer, 3 Engines and 1 Truck. While responding HBF units were advised a subject was reported in the waters of Humboldt Bay between the Wharfinger Building and Samoa. HBF requested the United States Coast Guard also respond to assist.

HBF Truck 8181 arrived at the Wharfinger Building and confirmed a subject was in the water approximately 300 yards off shore drifting south in Humboldt Bay with the outgoing tide. The swimmer from Truck 8181 immediately deployed into the water with a rescue board towards the victim. Other HBF units staged at locations along Humboldt Bay south of the Wharfinger Building including the Schnieder Dock, Del Norte Pier and Bulk Fuel Plant. The swimmer from T8181 contacted the victim who was conscious, hypothermic and in distress. A second swimmer from HBF Engine 8115 deployed into the water from the Del Norte Pier and assisted the swimmer from Truck 8181 with bringing the victim back to shore. A USCG Boat arrived and the 2 HBF swimmers and the victim were assisted onto the USCG Boat and taken to the Eureka Public Marina.

The victim was removed from the USCG Boat to the dock and treated by HBF Paramedics and City Ambulance. The victim was suffering from hypothermia and transported to St. Joseph Hospital by City Ambulance.

As California’s fund to fix crumbling schools dwindles to nothing, lawmakers are negotiating behind the scenes to craft a ballot measure that would be the state’s largest school construction bond in decades.

But some beleaguered school superintendents say the money will not be nearly enough to fix all the dry rot, leaky roofs and broken air conditioners in the state’s thousands of school buildings. And it won’t change a system that they say favors wealthy, urban, left-leaning areas that can easily pass local bond measures to make needed repairs.

“The big question is, why can’t our kids have school buildings that are safe and as nice as other kids’ schools, just a few miles away?” said Helio Brasil, superintendent of Keyes Union School District, a rural TK-8 district in a low-income area south of Modesto. “This school is in such bad shape it can feel like a jail. … I’m speaking up about this because I feel the system needs to be fixed. I don’t want the next generation of students to have to experience this.”

Two bills are currently under consideration in the Legislature, both of which would bring in billions to repair school facilities. Assembly Bill 247 would raise $14 billion for K-12 schools and community colleges, while Senate Bill 28, at $15.5 billion, includes the University of California and California State University, as well.

Legislators are likely to pick only one bill to send to Gov. Gavin Newsom for approval. AB 247 might have the advantage because it doesn’t include the state’s four-year university systems, both of which have means to raise their own revenue. So far it’s garnered little opposition, while SB 28 is opposed by two contractors’ associations because the bill prioritizes projects that use union labor.

The California Taxpayers Association is neutral on AB 247 but opposes SB 28 because it would increase the amount of money school districts could borrow, leading to higher property taxes. AB 247 doesn’t change the borrowing limit.

“It should also be remembered that the school districts get to write the ballot questions, and they always use wording that encourages a ‘yes’ vote and buries the part about the tax increase,” said association spokesman David Kline.

Addressing ‘the new reality’

Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, chair of the Assembly education committee and a co-author of AB 247, said he’s confident the governor will approve a school bond for the November 2024 ballot, despite competition from a handful of other pricey bond proposals addressing housing, the fentanyl crisis and flood protection.

“The big question is, why can’t our kids have school buildings that are safe and as nice as other kids’ schools, just a few miles away?”
— Helio Brasil, superintendent of Keyes Union School District

For Muratsuchi, a Democrat from Torrance, fixing broken schools should be a top priority for California, especially as wildfires and extreme weather intensify.

“Our classrooms are aging, but we also need to address our new reality,” he said. “Classrooms of the 21st century should not only address students’ technical needs, but the reality of climate change.”

First: Water damage inside a classroom at Pacific Elementary School in Santa Cruz on Nov. 14, 2023. Photo by Clara Mokri for CalMatters Second: A rusted roof at Pacific Elementary School in Santa Cruz on Nov. 14, 2023. Photo by Clara Mokri for CalMatters Third: A building used as a storage facility boarded up and no longer in use at the Keyes Elementary School in Keyes on Nov. 15, 2023. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local Fourth: Construction sites in the hallways of the Keyes Elementary School in Keyes on Nov. 15, 2023. Multiple projects keep going on at the campus due to a lack of funds to continue. Photos by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

Unlike most other states, California does not have a permanent funding stream for repairing school facilities. Money comes from state and local bonds, which generate finite amounts of money, usually through property taxes. Although California has lavished money on schools in the past few years, most of that money is earmarked for efforts to help students recover from the pandemic. It can’t be spent on construction.

Typically, larger, urban and more affluent districts, which also tend to be more liberal, have an easier time raising funds. Not only are voters more likely to approve new taxes – the usual way that districts repay bonds – but property values are higher, thereby bringing in more money. In addition, districts can qualify for matching funds from the state, so “the more you have, the more you get,” said Julien Lafortune, a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California.

In 2022, for example, the Mill Valley School District in Marin County was able to raise $194 million through a bond that taxed local property owners just 2.6 cents per $100 of a property’s assessed value – in a city where the average home price hovers around $2 million.

Meanwhile, the same year in rural San Lucas, south of King City in Monterey County, the school district tried passing a bond that would have taxed property owners more than twice that rate, but because the average home price is below $300,000 the bond would have raised only $3.6 million. Regardless, voters said no.

“The system is inequitable. More (school facilities) money goes to higher-income students than lower-income students,” Lafortune said. “There’s an understanding in California that we shouldn’t have these big inequities when it comes to books, supplies, resources. There’s all these efforts to correct inequities. And yet that’s not something that exists for school facilities.”

The state has a hardship fund for school districts that can’t cover their share of the matching funds. But the process to get hardship money is complicated, time-consuming and can be overly burdensome for rural superintendents who may also be teaching classes, driving the bus and serving lunch.

In a recent report, the Public Policy Institute of California recommends that California survey the condition of the state’s thousands of school buildings and adopt a system that ensures the neediest districts get more money.

Although both bills in the Legislature include tweaks to make funding more equitable, they don’t go far enough, said Jeff Vincent, co-founder of the Center for Cities and Schools at UC Berkeley. Nearly 40% of California’s school districts can’t raise enough through local bonds — those that manage to pass them — to cover necessary repair costs. Any statewide bond should include significant aid for rural, small and low-income districts.

“Districts in areas with lower property values are really struggling,” Vincent said. “This means that children in more disadvantaged communities tend to have schools in a greater state of disrepair. … It’s not just a matter of aesthetics. It’s an issue of environmental health and safety.”

Better facilities, higher achievement

The stakes are high: students whose schools are in good condition perform 5% to 17% higher on standardized tests, are less likely to be suspended, and are more likely to attend school regularly, according to the California Department of Education. The reason, according to researchers, is that students focus better and have more pride in their school when buildings are comfortable and safe, with good air ventilation and temperature control.

“This school is in such bad shape it can feel like a jail. … I’m speaking up about this because I feel the system needs to be fixed.”
— Helio Brasil, superintendent of Keyes Union School District

Eric Gross, superintendent at Pacific Elementary School District in Santa Cruz County, has noticed that firsthand. For at least two decades, the roof has leaked so badly that staff have had to put trash cans in classrooms and hallways to collect rainwater during storms. Two engineers have recommended that a classroom be condemned, but the state took years before it finally approved the project earlier this month.

A bucket catches water due to a leak in a sixth-grade classroom at Pacific Elementary School in Santa Cruz on Nov. 14, 2023. According to Superintendent Eric Gross, the ceiling leaks even on foggy mornings. Photo by Clara Mokri for CalMatters

“The other day a teacher came to me and said, ‘The siding in my room is rotting.’ I said yeah, I know. She said, ‘OK, just wanted to make sure you knew.’ … Our staff is great but there’s a level of demoralization. It’s frustrating but everyone just accepts it,” Gross said.

He’s come to rely on parent volunteers to perform basic maintenance at the 150-student school in the town of Davenport. Parents replace broken door handles, prune blackberry bushes, fix broken windows and build benches.

“On the first day of school I tell the families, there are no passengers on this ship. Everyone rows,” he said.

Small districts like his desperately need more assistance from the state, he said. Not just more money, but help managing large projects. Gross is too busy running the school to hire consultants, negotiate with contractors, submit the reams of required paperwork or oversee major projects.

“I can teach your kids to read, but I am not a construction manager,” he said. “The state needs to step in to help superintendents like me, because we don’t have the time or expertise to do this on our own.”

Dry rot and gophers

Keyes Union School District, where Brasil has been superintendent for seven years, is a patchwork of deferred maintenance and jerry-rigging. Any money for repairs is long gone: The last time local voters passed a school construction bond was in 2005, and the state fund is depleted, as well. The elementary school gym, for example, doubles as a cafeteria, which means staff haul dozens of folding tables in and out daily. The middle school gym was never finished, so it lacks seating and locker rooms; students change in small, stuffy portables across the playground. Some of the roofs are 40 years old. A decade ago, an electrical malfunction sparked a pre-dawn fire in the Head Start building, engulfing it in flames.

First: The gym that also acts as a cafeteria for students at the Keyes Elementary School in Keyes on Nov. 15, 2023. Second: The dug-up sports field at Barbara Spratling Middle School in Keyes on Nov. 15, 2023. The field was dug up after an invasion of gopher destroyed the grass resulting in the school funding a project to fix it. Photos by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

But for the past two years, Keyes’ most pressing issue has been gophers. Lured by the adjacent almond orchards, gophers invaded the middle school soccer field — one of only two fields in the town and shared with the community. The field was so pocked with divots and holes that anyone running across it risked an ankle injury or worse. The only way to make it usable again was to dig it up, regrade it and install new sod.

Brasil didn’t have many financing options. The state rejected the district’s request for repair money, so it had to borrow $700,000 to complete the project.

“I wanted kids to have a nice, safe place to play, to run, to blow off steam after the pandemic. I would have rather spent that money on tutoring or after-school programs, but to me, this felt like the most important thing,” Brasil said.

Dr. Helio Brasil stands in the hallway next to the construction tape for the project on new classrooms at the Keyes Elementary School in Keyes on Nov. 15, 2023. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

Jeff Roberts, superintendent of Plumas Lake Elementary School District in Yuba County, has a different problem. His school buildings are in good shape, but the district is growing so fast he needs to build an entire new school — or risk cutting programs and increasing class sizes.

In the early 2000s, the district had only 100 students. But due to a housing boom in the region, he anticipates 2,200 students by 2030. The amount of money needed to build a new school is daunting: a new school will cost $70 million to $100 million. The district can only raise $18 million through a local bond. Developers’ fees will bring in an additional $20 million, but that still leaves the district with only half the money it needs. Roberts is relying on the state to pass a new school construction bond so he can apply for the remainder of the funds.

“I went into education for teaching and learning. Now, what I spend most of my time on is worrying about housing students,” Roberts said. “If we can’t figure this out, we’re going to have to cut things like P.E., art, music to make room for students. It’s extremely frustrating because we know that’s not what’s best for students’ education.”

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

Pamela Ann Sistrom, 82, was born on July 23, 1941 in Los Angeles to Joe and Katie Sistrom, and died on November 19, 2023 in Eureka. She is survived by her daughter, Dianna Bond, her son-in-law, Xavion Bond, her granddaughter-to-be, Xadie Isley Bond, best friend Henry Buchanan and her many family friends who will miss her dearly. She joins her former husband, Eric Heimstadt, and brother, Anthony Sistrom.

Pam spent her twenties singing in jazz clubs and remained devoted to jazz throughout her life. She knew the lines to every standard and sang along to Miles and Coltrane while she washed the dishes. She would tune herself by singing “Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise,” singing SO-ftly, SO-ftly SO-ftly. Her cars were always full of jazz cassettes. A talented artist, Pam attended art college in San Francisco after high school. Her family can find her in her linework and recordings. We are grateful for the many sketches, paintings and music she has left us to remember her by.

Pam loved to act, improvising with her friends and to anyone who would give her the time. With friends like Henry Buchanan and Janet Waddell they could invent whole scenes together. She loved to do impressions – she had a knack for capturing people, especially when they annoyed her. 

Pam was proud of her journey in recovery. She wore her NA ring on her wedding finger and had many friends in the local recovery community who will miss her dearly. She will be receiving her Infinity chip at her memorial. 

Pam met her husband, Eric Heimstadt, while she was a nursing student in Los Angeles. They spent decades building a life together, and had intensities to match one another. Their daughter Dianna was born in 1986. Although separated, Eric remained the love of her life long after his passing. Pam retired at the age of 78 after over forty years of nursing. She was an excellent nurse, with a kind and loving bedside manner that often kept her after hours. She loved her cats – especially Bigelow, crime dramas, going for car rides along the Humboldt coastline, shopping, cooking, and looking her best, always.

The family is so grateful to Seaview Rehabilitation and Wellness Center, where she used to work and where they took care of her like family. She had the best view in the house.

A memorial will be held at 12 noon on Sunday, January 7 at the Jefferson Community Center, 1000 B Street in Eureka. All are welcome to attend, bring a dish, and remember Pam.