Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

On Feb. 25, 2023, at about 12:01 a.m., Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to a residence the 800 block of Nooning Creek Road near Whitethorn for the report of an assault.

At the residence, deputies contacted the suspect, 28-year-old Terrance Shayne Longjaw and located a 26-year-old male victim with serious injuries. The victim was transported to a local hospital, then transferred to an out-of-county hospital for treatment of his injuries.

During their investigation, deputies learned that the victim and Longjaw were acquaintances. That evening, the two were reportedly involved in some type of altercation, during which Longjaw physically assaulted the victim causing extensive injuries.

Longjaw was arrested without incident and booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on charges of assault causing great bodily injury (PC 245(a)(4)).

This case is still under investigation. Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.

Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

On Feb. 26, 2023, at about 1:19 p.m., Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to a property on the 33000 block of Highway 36 near Bridgeville for the report of an attempted murder.

Deputies arrived at the property and contacted a 43-year-old male victim. The victim told deputies that he had exited a residence on the property to retrieve firewood when he was confronted by an acquaintance, 34-year-old Clayton Lloyd Miller. According to the victim, Miller reportedly yelled at the victim, then fired a weapon towards him. The victim retreated inside the residence and was not injured as a result of this incident. Miller reportedly fled prior to deputy arrival.

Deputies were unable to locate Miller in the area and he remains outstanding at this time.

Clayton Miller is described as a white male, approximately 5 feet 11 inches tall, 190 pounds, with blonde hair and blue eyes. He is believed to be in possession of a firearm. Miller is wanted on charges of attempted murder and shooting at an inhabited dwelling. If you see Miller do not approach but call 9-1-1 immediately.

This case is still under investigation. Anyone with information about Miller’s whereabouts or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539, reference case number 202300952.

PREVIOUS CLAYTON MILLER: 

• Hydesville Man Wanted for Battery and False Imprisonment Coaxed From Attic by Deputies Utilizing ‘Non-Lethal Chemical Agent’
• Deputies Chase Wanted Suspect From Hydesville to Kneeland and Into the Woods; Suspect Found at Night When Companion Knocks on Resident’s Door, Asking for Help

UPDATE, 1 p.m.: We back, baby:

###

The return of heavy snow has once again closed a huge stretch Highway 101 in Humboldt and Mendocino counties this morning. As of this writing, the Caltrans Quickmap shows the entire highway shut down between Garberville and Ukiah.

We’ll update you as the situation changes. Stay cozy out there.

###

On a cold January night shortly after the new year, Jestine Green climbed into a commercial recycling dumpster to take shelter from a relentless winter storm. The following day, her body was found among the recycling that had been taken to the Samoa Resource Recovery Center by a Recology truck. 

In the weeks following Jestine’s tragic death, homeless rights advocates have called upon local officials to take immediate action to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. From providing more support to those in need to challenging the criminalization of homelessness, there are no easy answers.

The truth, as it often does, lies in a complicated web of systemic issues that have plagued our society for far too long. Jestine’s death was not the result of any one person’s actions or inactions, but rather a series of unfortunate incidents and factors that contributed to this terrible accident. 

A History of Mental Illness and Addiction

Jestine Green was born on August 17, 1965. Her parents, Lydia and Mel Green, raised Jestine and her two siblings, Stefanie and Syd, in the small community of Whitethorn among the forested hills of rural Southern Humboldt. 

As a child, Jestine enjoyed art and exploring nature with her mother. “[We] had fun drawing together, she was a great artist,” Lydia Green wrote in one of a series of emails with the Outpost. “We loved the ocean and playing in the tidepools together.”

Her mother described Jestine’s upbringing as “normal,” emphasizing that she and her siblings grew up in a Christian household where alcohol and drug use were not tolerated. 

“Her boyfriend introduced her to drugs when she was 15,” Green said. “Jestine did not like rules and she found it hard to live with us [because] there were no drugs or drinking at our house. … She was a victim of being beaten by her boyfriends [but] we were told [it was] her business, her life. We put her in rehab three times [but it] did not help. … Jestine lived the life she wanted and that did not include the family … but when she was clean, she was the sweet Jestine we all remembered.”

Jestine struggled with mental illness throughout her life, which her mother largely attributed to the “effects of drug use over time” and the abusive relationships Jestine endured. 

Her siblings, Syd and Stefanie, struggled with addiction and mental illness as well. Syd committed suicide about 30 years ago after spending some time at the Crestwood Behavioral Health Center for drug abuse, Green said. Stefanie is homeless and hasn’t been in touch with her family for the last three years. 

Jestine had an apartment in Eureka “for a short period of time,” Green said, but it fell through and, eventually, she wound up on the streets. “We had no way of getting ahold of Jestine unless we drove along the streets of Redway or Eureka. Sometimes we would see her walking along the road or freeway, pick her up and bring her home. … I would come home from work and she would be gone. [She would] always [leave] a note saying thank you.”

As a young woman, Jestine gave birth to five children who were fostered out to other families, her mother continued. They never really developed a relationship with Jestine, and neither did her six grandchildren. “I don’t believe she ever met any of her grandchildren,” she said.

Green didn’t have a lot to say about Jestine’s adult years, as she was estranged from their family for decades. Her responses to this reporter’s questions focused on Jestine’s addiction issues and her inability to raise her own children. She maintained that “Jestine was homeless because she wanted to live in homeless camps [because] they were her family and friends.”

Debra Thomas, a homeless rights advocate and co-founder of Affordable Homeless Housing Alternatives (AHHA), argued that anyone who claims someone wants to be homeless “clearly hasn’t spent a one night on the streets.” 

Thomas met Jestine about ten years ago while doing homeless outreach work in Southern Humboldt. She recalled Jestine’s “sweet smile” and described her as “an incredibly kind and gentle person.” Over the years, she developed a friendship with Jestine, who often referred to Thomas as her sister.

“I met her many, many years ago when she was still housed, and then I started to help her when she was unhoused,” Thomas told the Outpost during a recent phone interview. “I never knew a whole lot about her personal life with her family, but she always used my phone to call home. I know she loved her family and that she wanted to go home.”

But at a certain point, Thomas believes Jestine’s mental health issues became too much for her family to handle and they stopped taking her calls. 

“I really did watch her spiral over the years as she struggled with mental health issues and the abuse she experienced,” she said. “Living on the streets only compounded her trauma. There was a time when she actually was able to get medical help through the Mobile Medical Unit and I believe she was put on medication because, for a while, she was herself again. It was really life-changing. She was like that for a while but apparently fell off at some point.”

Thomas paused as she spoke and took a deep breath. “This is what happens when you create so many barriers for people,” she said. When cities and institutions deprive people of solutions, it creates unsurpassable barriers for people struggling to survive, she explained. “And when you create these barriers, you essentially criminalize human beings for existing.”

“Jestine was criminalized and pushed out of town by vigilantes [in Southern Humboldt] because she was homeless,” she said. “She was picked up for being drunk in public, taken to the jail in Eureka and released hours later. This happened over and over. For the first couple of years, she could make it back. I, or someone else she knew, would bring her back, but she eventually got stuck [in Eureka].”

‘I Just Wish She Would Have Come Back’

Kristin Freeman, director of the women’s shelter at the Eureka Rescue Mission, described Jestine as “a frequent flier” at the shelter. “She would come and go – sometimes for weeks at a time – but she knew she was always welcome.”

Freeman grew concerned when Jestine didn’t return to the shelter on the night of Jan. 4. 

“Jestine came in for shelter [at the Rescue Mission] for a few nights before and we kept her bed for her,” Freeman told the Outpost in a recent phone interview. “Her bed was still made up, her things were still there. … When she didn’t return the following morning, we stripped down her bed and gave it to another person.”

The greater Eureka area received over an inch of rain that night. Freeman thinks Jestine was “on the other side of town” when the storm hit and decided to seek temporary shelter to wait out the weather. Her body was found the following morning.

Freeman was devastated when she heard what happened.

“There was room for her at the shelter,” Freeman said, her voice quavering with emotion. “She knew she had a bed there, you know? I just wish she would have come back. … She was such a sweet soul. I don’t think she had an aggressive bone in her body. It didn’t matter where she was at in her life, she was always so respectful and kind. It really hurts to lose one of yours.”

An autopsy ruled Green’s death to be accidental with “no suspicion of foul play,” according to the Eureka Police Department. The toxicology report ruled out the possibility of an alcohol or drug overdose, although there were trace amounts of methamphetamine, amphetamine and THC found in her blood.

Her official cause of death was deemed “consistent with mechanical-traumatic asphyxia, due to external pressure-compression of the [chest and abdomen],” according to the autopsy report. “[She had] been situated within a dumpster and had previously taken refuge there during a storm. The dumpster contents were subsequently picked up and transferred to the recycling truck and compressed during the course of its route. The recycling vehicle emptied its contents … and [Jestine’s] body was discovered at that time.”

It was an accident. A terrible, terrible accident.

‘We Can Do Better’

A small group of community members gathered in front of the Humboldt County Courthouse on a stormy Saturday afternoon about a week after Jestine’s death to honor her life and call upon local officials to do more to care for people experiencing homelessness in our community.

“I don’t want this to ever happen again to anybody,” Thomas told the Outpost during the Jan. 9 demonstration. Her gloved fingers held a cardboard sign adorned with red hearts and the words “We Love You Jestine” surrounding her photo. “Our whole community loses when these kinds of tragedies happen and I really think we can do better. We should always be trying to improve the situation for human beings that are stuck outside, and I just think we could have done more to prevent this tragedy. People need to have a place to go.”

Of the 1,309 unhoused people identified during the 2022 Point in Time (PIT) Count, 756 individuals were identified as “chronically homeless,” meaning they’ve been unsheltered for at least a year while living with a complicating health issue or have experienced multiple bouts of homelessness totaling at least 12 months on the streets and in shelters in the past three years.

Of the 756 people identified as chronically homeless, only 20 percent – approximately 151 individuals – are consistently sheltered. Where do the remaining 605 people go?

The PIT Count did not include that data; however, of the 250 individuals surveyed as a part of the Eureka Police Department’s Homeless Survey for 2022, only 28 percent of respondents said they slept at a shelter the night prior. Around 50 percent of those surveyed slept outside in a doorway or alleyway, in a park or greenbelt, on private property or in a vehicle. 

“The City of Eureka and the county need to consider more housing alternatives,” Thomas said. “We know we don’t have enough housing. We don’t even have enough shelter beds. We need to consider the possibility of making places for people to exist outdoors because people can live outside if they have proper gear and the supplies they need. We need to have a place established – whether that’s a tiny house village of sorts or a sanctioned camping area – prior to these storms hitting so people can prepare for their safety.”

The City of Eureka has been looking into the possibility of establishing a tiny house village for some time now. Eureka City Manager Miles Slattery emphasized the city’s commitment to trying out innovative strategies.

“Jestine’s death was extremely tragic,” Slattery told the Outpost in a recent interview. “It has been really difficult for everybody involved and we’re going to do anything that we can to prevent this from happening again.”

How do we house Humboldt’s homeless?

Homelessness is not an issue that can be solved with a one-size-fits-all approach. The factors that cause homelessness are complex. Mental illness, substance abuse and physical disabilities often play a role, as does access to supportive services and treatment. 

Emi Botzler-Rodgers, Behavioral Health director for the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), emphasized the importance of “meeting people where they are” and committing “a significant amount of time to build a relationship and establish safety and trust” with an individual.

“There are frequently robust efforts by county staff to outreach to these individuals and to create space to build trust and rapport so they are willing to engage in treatment,” she wrote in an email to the Outpost. “However, despite these efforts, individuals in need of mental health treatment still have the choice to receive these services or not. This can be especially challenging for those closest to the individual suffering.”

In most instances, the county cannot force an individual into treatment. 

“One exception is if they are a danger to themselves, someone else or aren’t able to adequately provide for themselves (gravely disabled) due to mental illness,” she said. “However, this doesn’t ensure they will continue to receive ongoing treatment after the crisis is over. This can feel very frustrating to friends and families, [our] staff and the community.”

The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors launches a Laura’s Law pilot program last summer which allows for court-ordered assisted outpatient treatment. While there are no legal ramifications to an individual refusing to participate, involving the courts and a judge often makes it more likely for individuals to comply with assisted treatment.

Last year, the City of Eureka added a managing mental health clinician position to serve on the police department’s budding Alternative Response Team (ART) and bolster the City’s response to mental health crises.

ART will work in tandem with the department’s Community Safety Engagement Team (CSET) to further CSET’s mission to address substance abuse and crime within the homeless community.

“One of the greatest challenges we have with our local homeless population is, at times, they’re not always willing to accept help,” Leonard La France, commander of CSET, told the Outpost. “How do we help people who don’t want to or are unable to help themselves? That’s the question we constantly ask ourselves as we work within this system and try to fix the system.”

Similar to Botzler-Rodgers, La France believes one of the most important aspects of addressing homelessness is daily engagement and treating people with compassion. 

Eureka’s Community Safety Engagement Team (CSET). Photo contributed by Leonard La France.

“Our philosophy is human connection,” he said. “You know, we see people like Jestine every day and they’re kind of like extended family, especially to our outreach workers. Sometimes it takes three years to build that connection, but we don’t give up. Like, ‘We see you. We care about you. Let’s get this going to get you moving forward on a better life where you’re not in danger, you’re not at risk, and you’re warm.’ If we can assist these folks in getting stabilized, getting assistance and the support they need, it’s better for everybody. It’s better for the community.”

Although the Housing First model is widely regarded as the best practice for addressing homelessness, La France admitted that “it doesn’t always work for everybody.” 

“We have to help get an individual stabilized, address their personal needs, help them find employment and then start looking at the next step,” he said. “For example, we had an individual we worked with closely – we received more than one hundred calls on him per year – and our team talked to him and he said, ‘I want to go back home to my family in Missouri.’ We contacted his family to confirm he had a place to go and that his family would receive him and we were able to send him home.”

One of CSET’s non-sworn employees talks to him almost every day,  La France added. “He’s employed, with his family, and he’s doing really, really well.”

Working alongside UPLIFT Eureka, the CSET team has helped house over 150 people in the last year and a half through Uplift’s housing assistance program, according to Slattery. 

“On top of that, we continue to work with Betty Chinn on the Crowley Site,” he added, referring to a city-owned lot on Hilfiker Lane, near the Hikshari Trail and between the Humboldt Bay Fire Training Facility and the Elk River Wastewater Treatment Plant. PG&E donated a batch of trailers to the Betty Kwan Chinn Foundation over five years ago to be converted into housing. However, the trailers were destroyed in a fire last year. “[The city] has secured a $1.6 million grant to put utilities on the property and allow for [the project] to happen.”

In an effort to address immediate shelter needs, the city has helped the Eureka Rescue Mission expand shelter capacity in both the men’s and women’s shelters in recent months. The city has also changed its extreme weather shelter to an overflow shelter with 25 extra beds.

Eureka has also worked to develop a city-specific Homeless Action Plan to expand efforts to address mental health and housing needs in Eureka. The document outlines the city’s ongoing efforts to reduce homelessness in the city by expanding affordable housing, bolstering outreach efforts and expanding partnerships with organizations that provide services to people experiencing homelessness.

“We have spent millions of dollars over the past three years to implement supportive programming and services in Eureka, with help from [DHHS],” Slattery said. “It’s really unheard of what the City of Eureka has done.”

The city will host a workshop this week to broaden the conversation and explore the requirements necessary to establish an authorized encampment. The workshop will include presentations about the conditions of approval outlined in both the city and the county’s emergency shelter ordinances and the steps required to create a shelter space for community members with tent structures or tiny homes.

“The idea is to give people the information they need to create their own authorized encampments,” Slattery said. “We’re hoping people will be encouraged to come up with a game plan that can be successful … and put it in a format that can be presented to the council and ensure that some of the issues council has seen before can be mitigated. Once [the plan] is approved by the council, they can find a location.”

The authorized encampment and tiny house workshop will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 28 in council chambers at Eureka City Hall – 531 K Street. 

‘We need to have alternatives for people’

It bears repeating that there is no single solution to the homelessness crisis. While Thomas believes that the aforementioned initiatives are a step in the right direction, many advocates say more needs to be done to address the root causes of homelessness and provide long-term solutions to this complex issue.

“I just keep asking myself why Jestine jumped in that dumpster and I feel like it’s because she didn’t have an alternative,” Thomas said. “We need to have alternatives for people. … I appreciate what the City of Eureka is doing but we need the continuum of care to spread out – not just in Eureka but across the entire county. … If we can get this group of people in a safe place, our entire community will be safer.”

GARBERVILLE — Leann Greene’s rose-colored glasses are scratched, cracked, sitting askew, but still firmly planted on her face during her latest monthly open house for the Humboldt Workforce Coalition.

For three hours this Wednesday afternoon in a sunny conference room at the public library, apprehensive cannabis workers, lured by a segment on the community radio station KMUD, trickle through, seeking a potential refuge from their collapsing industry. Greene is their counselor and confidante, a relentless cheerleader promoting new career opportunities.

“So dream big. It’s your life, right?” she tells one young man looking for help connecting to job possibilities in a place where there don’t seem to be many right now.

It’s a mantra for Greene.

“You’re kind of reinventing your life here, so dream big,” she tells Daniel Rivero, who fears he could lose his job at any moment after his hours were cut back at the small warehouse where he manufactures cannabis products for $17 an hour.

A crash in the price of weed over the past two years has sent California’s cannabis market reeling — and with it, the communities that relied economically on the crop for decades, even before the “green rush” of commercial legalization.

In the Emerald Triangle — the renowned Northern California region of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties that historically served as the hub of cannabis cultivation for the state and the country — growers who can no longer sell their product for enough to turn a profit are laying off employees and shuttering their farms. The cascading financial impacts have left local residents with broken dreams and a daunting question: If not cannabis, then what?

“We just need to reassess this whole situation as a community of what we can do to evolve with it instead of trying to go against it,” Rivero said.

The 39-year-old, who has lived in Garberville for more than a decade, earned his solar installation certification a few years back, but never bothered to pursue it because the pay would have been lower than what he could make in cannabis. Now he’s trying to put other options back on the table, even as he hopes that he can just hold on until the market stabilizes.

“I’m more the school of thought you go for what your heart tells you,” said Rivero, who like so many others around here, believes that cannabis is more than a profession, it’s a culture that provides medicine for people. “So I think if I can hold out as long as I can, I would, where it’s not affecting my health or my well-being because of my financial situation.”

“Do you keep on struggling or do you go for something that’s more secure?”

That’s the increasingly urgent dilemma for residents of the Emerald Triangle, in the cannabis industry and beyond.

Weed has flourished here for more than half a century, from its seeds as a countercultural back-to-the-land movement in the 1960s to the predominant economic engine of today.

Prime weather and remote locations made it a great place to grow cannabis, while the illegal nature of the business made it highly lucrative. A whole other world — independent but insular, secluded but self-sustaining — developed in communities such as Garberville, a hippie town of about 800 people along the Eel River and Highway 101 near the southern edge of Humboldt County.

“Out here, we’re like an island,” said Anson Wait, a server who estimates that he has lost three-quarters of his income in recent months as the local restaurant industry has been wiped out.

It’s hard to quantify just how central cannabis is to local life, but one academic study more than a decade ago projected that the industry was responsible for at least a quarter of all economic activity in the county. The figure is assuredly far higher in southern Humboldt, where the majority of growers are based.

That reliance on cannabis was once a windfall to a rural expanse without many major commercial sectors, supporting main street boutiques and the sports program at the local high school. But it has also made the region particularly vulnerable to the downturn since California voters legalized recreational use and sales in 2016 with Proposition 64.

With the nascent licensed cannabis market unable to absorb a surplus of product, prices have tumbled over the past few years to a fraction of their former highs — a few hundred dollars for a pound of weed that would have sold for more than $1,000 a couple of years ago. Disappearing profits for growers means there’s simply less money moving through the community.

“It’s like a perfect storm that came through,” said Humboldt County Supervisor Michelle Bushnell, who represents Garberville and the southern county.

Bushnell owns a downtown clothing store that has lost more than half its revenue. Things got so bad last year that she reduced the hours and cut back from six to just two employees. In September, her worst sales month, she gave herself an ultimatum: one more year to pull out of the slump or close the store.

“It’s gut-wrenching. I know I have to make the choice if it comes to that,” she said.

‘It took a huge toll’

No longer able to make ends meet with cannabis, cultivators and workers are contemplating, perhaps for the first time, what else they might do.

Brandon Wheeler, 39, a third-generation farmer from Mendocino County whose grandparents moved to the area in the 1960s as homesteaders, is preparing for his first cannabis season without growing since 2002.

After starting simple with six plants in his mother’s vegetable garden when he was 18, Wheeler eventually expanded to a quarter-acre farm in Hopland and cultivated under the medical marijuana system that existed in California for two decades before recreational legalization.

But trying to become a licensed operator under Proposition 64 was an endless cycle of frustration, crashing into a local bureaucracy that made it nearly impossible to get certified. As prices dropped, leaving ever smaller profits after his farming expenses and county fees and state taxes, Wheeler spent two years debating whether he could afford to keep going.

“I’m working my ass off making $2 an hour and the state is taking $1.90,” Wheeler said. “I could make more money flipping burgers at McDonald’s, literally, and not have to deal with the bulls–t.”

Finally last summer, Wheeler took a job as a horticulturist for the city of Ukiah. The transition has not been as rough as he expected.

It pays only about $50,000 per year, less than he made from the farm at its peak, which has required some cutbacks at home. He’s also commuting now, so he gets less time with his family. But he’s freed of the financial and emotional burdens that he worried might kill him. He started taking martial arts classes with his daughter, and he’s back in better shape than he’s been in more than a decade.

“It’s like 2% the amount of stress. It took a huge toll on my physical and mental health,” Wheeler said. “In some ways the 9-to-5 is more restrictive. But at the same time, when I’m done at the end of the day, I’m done.”

‘I don’t want to see things go down the drain’

There are still plenty of obstacles for workers seeking to transition away from cannabis.

In southern Humboldt, opportunities are scarce outside of low-paying tourism and hospitality jobs. There are more prospects at the northern end of the county, where Cal Poly Humboldt is expanding and offshore wind projects are planned, though many people don’t have the means to commute more than an hour each way.

The cannabis industry also generally relies on specialized and limited skills that do not necessarily translate to other jobs.

That’s what Greene of the Humboldt Workforce Coalition is trying to address. She was hired last summer as a liaison in the southern part of the county for the organization, which manages funds for federal job training and career development programs. She refers to upheaval, naturally, as an opportunity for southern Humboldt to reinvent itself again.

With her rose-colored glasses on, Greene endeavors to bridge a workforce whose primary experience is in cannabis to other local skilled jobs that pay a living wage. She helps write cover letters and resumes, practices hiring interviews and tracks down retraining courses that the government will pay for. An on-the-job training program can cover half the wages for a new employee for the first three months while they learn the skills they need, removing some risk for an employer that might otherwise be reluctant to hire them.

“I’m invested in keeping community members in my community,” Greene said. “I don’t want to see things go down the drain. I freaking love living here.”

But she’s also up against the inertia of stereotypes. Historically, when the cannabis industry was strong, many workers picked up other jobs to hold them over through the winter, then went right back to the farms at planting or harvest time, where they could make far more money. That churn frustrated employers and contributed to a stigma that residents of southern Humboldt were unreliable.

“I think it’s going to take a few years for business owners and employers to kind of wrap their head around the fact that these are hard-working people, that they do actually have skills that are good for a lot of jobs in our area,” Greene said.

“The unfortunate side of that is a lot of our community residents can’t wait for that to change,” she added. “They need to put food on their table now. They need to keep the roof over their head now. They need work now.”

‘We have been made into fools’

That creeping desperation is real for Gabriel Ferreira and Ya Reinier, longtime cultivators in Mendocino County who have yet to figure out their future after concluding last year that growing was no longer viable.

Like many small farmers in the region, Ferreira and Reinier, who first started cultivating cannabis near Covelo in 2007, eagerly sought a license after Proposition 64, believing it could offer greater financial stability, an end to traumatic enforcement raids and the respectability that has always eluded the industry, even here. They purchased a second farm in 2017, aiming to scale up to compete in a rapidly crowding market.

But constantly changing regulatory demands, alongside competition from proliferating illegal growers who had none of the new taxes and fees and paperwork, made it virtually impossible to thrive, they said. Ferreira compared it to a slaughter — legacy farmers betrayed by a government that he believes was determined to see them fail.

If they had just been facing economic challenges, the couple could have allowed time for the market to sort itself out. And if the county had just been putting obstacles in their path, they would have fought through, as long as there was money to be made. But combined, the challenges felt impossible, a tunnel with no light at the end.

“We have been made into fools,” Reinier said. She has maxed out credit cards and cashed out a retirement account over the past three years trying to hang onto the farms and cover their living expenses.

“We’re in debt. We’re woefully in debt,” she said. “We simply had to stop.”

The couple now live in Eureka, the largest city in Humboldt County, so their 10-year-old son can be closer to school. They have been looking for work since last summer without success. Ferreira, 57, who has some previous experience in communications, contemplates developing his own company because the prospect of finding a job feels increasingly demoralizing.

“It’s spiritually a little bit difficult to go from owning your own business to then having to re-enter a market where you’re doing it at entry level,” he said.

Reinier, 53, has been frustrated to find that she can’t get a foothold anywhere, despite having a degree in anthropology from Harvard University. Few of the jobs around town pay enough to cover their bills. She recently applied to work at the local food co-op, something she did in San Francisco when she was younger, but she never even heard back.

She wonders whether her age and her resume, where 15 years of cannabis cultivation is her most recent experience, are holding her back.

“I do feel like there is the stereotype of if you’re a pot farmer, you might be a lazy, irresponsible pothead, too,” she said. “I’m just getting the door closed over and over.”

Perhaps that’s why the couple holds onto a shred of hope of returning to cannabis. Staring down a depressed market, they have yet to put their farms, which still await final permit approval from the county six years later, up for sale. Maybe, they fantasize, if the state would allow growers to sell directly to consumers, that would be the saving grace — and then reality sinks back in.

“I’m heartbroken. I’m heartbroken,” Ferreira said. “I wanted to be part of an industry. I wanted to move out of, you know, being a criminal into being a productive member of society… And mostly what I’m heartbroken about is that I don’t have my community anymore. I go back there regularly and every time I go back, it just tears it open again.”

‘Do I move? Do I stay?’

The situation has grown painful for those outside the cannabis industry as well. The main drag through Garberville, a quaint stretch of motels, cafes and a historic theater, may have more empty storefronts than open businesses.

“It’s been a struggle. It continues to be a struggle every day,” said Suzanne Van Meter, who owns Milt’s Saw Shop, which sells and services handheld power equipment used by homesteaders, farmers and tree-clearing crews.

Sales bottomed out last January, down 66% compared to the year before. Van Meter laid off two employees and cut back the hours for another. She has since reduced her stock, turned to online sales and started pursuing government contracts to stabilize the business.

“This used to be a store where people would just come in and be able to get all brand-new equipment every season,” Van Meter said. “And that’s not an option anymore. So now they’re having to figure out where the stuff is that they had the season before or the season before that or the season before that, bring it all in, try to get it repaired.”

Three blocks away, fewer than half as many people are visiting Sweet Grass Boutique as when Jolan Banyasz bought the women’s clothing and gift shop seven years ago. On some days, only one customer ever comes through the door.

Banyasz laid off three employees in the last year and now largely staffs the store herself. She considered moving her shop to more populous Eureka up north, but thought it would be too much of a hit to community morale.

“I couldn’t pull the trigger. I couldn’t pull my roots out of the area,” she said. “I wish I had the answer because I’ve been racking my brain of what to do for months, and it’s been extremely exhausting trying to figure out, do I move? Do I move? Do I stay? Do I move? Do I stay?”

Next door, sitting untouched as though waiting to open for another day of business, is a coffee shop where Wait worked as a barista until it closed in November.

He still has another restaurant job in the evenings, but those hours have also been cut and tips have dwindled along with the customers. Other opportunities have yet to materialize, so Wait gave up a $300-per-month storage unit and sold some of his possessions — a vintage bass guitar, an old laptop, a television — to scrape up additional money.

“It feels like it’s this downward spiral,” said Wait, who cannot cover all of his bills, even with help from some public assistance programs like food benefits. He hasn’t paid rent in three months and he’s pondering whether he might have to move to northern Humboldt to find work, though he doesn’t want to leave his community behind. He’s not even sure he could afford to relocate anyway.

“I don’t really have enough to sustain myself right now,” Wait said. “I’m just in gratitude that I’m living with some people that have a heart and that they understand that people go through tough times.”

He enrolled in the Humboldt Workforce Coalition program and is reflecting on what could be a satisfying next act at 47. Lately he thinks he might want to get a degree in counseling and become a therapist, perhaps incorporating the music that is his passion. In more bustling times, Wait often busked on the sidewalks of downtown Garberville, playing Beatles covers on his mandolin.

“I’m getting to a point in my life where I’m like, well, I need to maybe switch over to something that’s just a little bit more secure,” he said. Counseling is “something that people are going to need around here, obviously, because there’s a lot of people who have a lot of pain with the transitions that they’re going through.”

‘I don’t want to just scrape by’

In the final hour of the Humboldt Workforce Coalition open house, Michael Baumann arrives, apologizing that he’s late though there is still more than a half hour left in the session.

The 25-year-old was a student of Greene’s the one year that she taught high school Spanish. Now he works at a local warehouse that manufactures pre-rolls and other cannabis products, a long-desired job that he expected would be the first step on his way to eventually starting his own farm.

But Baumann was furloughed last summer and then recently had his hours reduced because there was not enough product to package. It has sent him urgently scrambling to find other ways to support his girlfriend and his three children, the youngest of whom is just three months old.

“I’m willing to do anything that I can right now, just to kind of, like, make ends meet,” Baumann tells Greene. “I’ve tried to apply everywhere in town, but no one is hiring.”

Baumann shows up enthusiastic — he stopped smoking a month and a half ago in preparation for any drug tests he may need to take in his job search — and loaded with his own research. He is leaning toward pursuing a class A license required to drive a big rig, because has three years of previous experience with package delivery.

“I have goals,” he said. “I want to be able to buy a house. I want to be able to buy a nice vehicle, a nice truck or something like that. Something for my lady. I mean, I want to be able to live comfortably. I don’t want to just scrape by.”

Like so many who have been drawn to southern Humboldt, Baumann once believed that cannabis was his path to those goals.

“I know it’s a stupid dream,” he admits to Greene, who tries to reassure him.

“No, it’s a classic around here.”

Greene tells Baumann if he’s willing to jump through eligibility hoops, she can help him with retraining. As much as he might like to return to school for a construction certification, he’s looking for a quick transition so he can get back to earning money. Hence the appeal of the commercial driver’s license, which could get him on the road in a few months.

“Keep your money in your pocket and let me spend the government’s money,” Greene says.

They look online for truck driver training courses that begin sooner than the program at the community college in Eureka, which isn’t scheduled until the summer. There’s one in Sacramento, where Baumann could stay with family, that has potential.

Greene sends him off with a list of documents that he’ll need to compile — driver’s license, social security card, proof of income and residence, EBT receipt — and advice to talk with his girlfriend about what sacrifices they’re willing to make in this transition period. And, always, a bit of a rose-colored encouragement.

“Dream big. Tell me exactly what you’re looking for.”

###

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

HAYFORK — It’s shortly before 8 a.m. and a touch above freezing at the Trinity County Fairgrounds. The food bank’s February distribution won’t begin for another half hour, but the line of cars already stretches into a third row of the parking lot.

Joseph Felice, his red Dodge pickup idling with the heat cranked up, arrived around 7 to secure a spot near the front — eighth, to be exact — and ensure that he gets his pick of this month’s harvest: frozen catfish filets, eggplant, winter squash, potatoes, cans of mixed fruit, cartons of milk. Getting here early is crucial, because by the time the final cars roll through some two hours later — 210 families served — all that’s left are a few packages of diapers and noodles.

Things are getting desperate in this remote, mountainous community in far northern California, where cannabis is king — the economy, the culture, the everything. Over the past two years, the price of weed has plummeted and people are broke.

The monthly food bank distribution moved from a church to the fairgrounds last summer to accommodate surging demand. There’s only one sit-down restaurant left in town, a Mexican joint that closes every day at 6. Some residents have fled for Oklahoma, where it’s easier for cannabis cultivators to get licensed. Others are stuck, unable to unload their properties amid an abundance of supply and a dearth of demand.

“I don’t see the same faces that I did before,” said Felice, 67, who performed maintenance work for a local grower for five years, until they called it quits at the end of last season.

Felice lost not just his income, but also free housing on the farm. The food distribution is now a crucial bridge between Social Security checks and trips to Redding, 60 miles away, where he can get cheaper groceries.

“I had plenty of money working out there,” Felice said. “But now that it’s gone, you have to do something.”

Just what that something might be for Hayfork — and the rest of the famous Emerald Triangle of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties — is unclear.

For decades before California legalized recreational cannabis in 2016, this rural region of about 245,000 people was the base of weed cultivation for the entire country. The effects of the price crash, which has been particularly acute in the past two years, can be felt throughout the three counties, both within the industry and far outside of it.

Cultivators who can barely make ends meet are laying off employees, slashing expenses or shutting down their farms. That means money isn’t flowing into local businesses, nonprofits are getting fewer generous cash donations in brown paper bags, and local governments are collecting less in sales and property taxes.

Workers who spent their whole lives in the cannabis industry are suddenly looking around for new careers that may not be there. Store clerks, gas station attendants and restaurant servers who relied on their patronage now find themselves with reduced hours, meager tips or out of a job altogether.

A sense of despair and heartbreak has taken hold in many communities. People whisper about friends who are thinking about divorce or who killed themselves because they could not handle the financial devastation. And the pain is compounded by a feeling that their suffering has been all but invisible, overlooked by most Californians and dismissed by government officials who have never made good on the promises of legalization.

“We’re constantly at war. That’s how it feels,” said Adrien Keys, president of the Trinity County Agriculture Alliance, a trade association for the local legal cannabis industry.

These communities have been here before, stuck in a boom-and-bust cycle that played out with gold mining and cattle ranching and fishing. The last time, when the timber industry collapsed in the 1990s, cannabis cultivation flourished after the legalization of medical marijuana and filled the void. Now it’s unclear whether there’s anything left to sustain the local economies.

Some imagine that growing tourism can be the salvation, or attracting new residents with remote jobs and a desire to live way off the grid, or perhaps a logging revival driven by the urgent need to thin out California’s wildfire-prone forests. Others hope that a cannabis turnaround might still be possible.

But for a small, isolated town such as Hayfork — population: 2,300; high school student body: 88; empty sawmills: two — the answers are not obvious. The fear that the community could ultimately wither away is real.

“Long-term, I’m worried about it,” said Scott Murrison, a 68-year resident of Hayfork who owns half a dozen local businesses, including the gas station and mini mart (revenues down 10-15% over the past few years), a grocery store (down by as much as a third), the laundromat (bringing in about half of what it did when it opened a decade ago), a bar (stabilized since adding food to the menu), a ranch (hanging on, because there’s still demand for locally-raised beef) and a couple of greenhouses (leased to his nephew, who is not growing cannabis this year).

Without any real opportunities for young people coming out of school, Murrison said, they will have to move away, leaving Hayfork without a future.

“A good, viable community needs those families and the young people,” he said. “A bunch of old people are just boring.”

Boom and bust

It wasn’t supposed to go this way.

Cannabis should have been the sustainable alternative to gold and timber, a renewable resource that can be replanted each year. For a long time, it was.

Despite the challenges of growing an illegal crop, including enforcement raids that still scar residents, the “war on drugs” kept product scarce and prices high. The lure of easy cash attracted people from around the world to the Emerald Triangle, an annual flow of “trimmigrants” who could walk away from the fall harvest season with thousands of dollars in their pockets, much of which was spent locally.

“Everybody was making so much money it was insane,” Murrison said. “You could be here by accident, you could make money. Either trimming or growing or hauling water or if you had equipment, leveling spots or digging holes.”

Then came Proposition 64, the ballot initiative approved by California voters in 2016 that finally legalized recreational cannabis use and commercial sales in the state, though they remain illegal under federal law. Proponents including Gov. Gavin Newsom pitched it as both a social justice measure and a boon for tax revenues.

But the “green rush” that resulted has arguably harmed the Emerald Triangle more than it helped.

New farmers, sometimes licensed and often not, streamed in, flooding the market with cannabis. A cap on the size of farms intended to give small growers a head start was abandoned in the final state regulations, opening the door to competing cultivation hubs in other regions of California with looser restrictions. And with most local jurisdictions still closed to dispensaries, the legal market has been unable to absorb the glut, resulting in plunging prices and a vicious cycle in which farmers grow even more weed to make up for it.

Cultivators who might have commanded more than $1,000 for a pound of cannabis just a couple years ago said it is now selling for a few hundred dollars, not enough to break even with their expenses, taxes and fees.

Commercial cannabis sales in California actually fell by 8% last year to $5.3 billion, according to just-released state tax data, the first decline since it became legal in 2018 and a further cramp on the industry. State tax revenue dropped from $251.3 million in the third quarter of 2022 to $221.6 million in the fourth quarter.

“You can’t keep printing a dollar,” said Trinity County Supervisor Liam Gogan, who represents Hayfork and nearby Douglas City, where he said business at his grocery store is down an estimated 20%, a decline he expects is less than many other shops in town.

Some parts of the Emerald Triangle are better positioned to weather the cannabis downturn; the coast is a tourist draw, the newly rechristened Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata is undergoing a major expansion and there are government jobs in the county seats.

But things are precarious in the vast rural expanses, which is most of Trinity County, where there are no incorporated cities. It has one of the smallest and poorest populations of any county in California — just 16,000 residents and a median household of about $42,000 a year. Outside of the Trinity Alps Wilderness in its northern reaches, there is little economy beyond weed.

“It’s what we got,” said Gogan, who dismisses the possibility of tourism or any other industry offsetting cannabis losses as delusional. “No one’s knocking the door down.”

Like many locals, he dreams that, with the exodus of cultivators and a drop in production, cannabis prices could rebound slightly. Some are noticing a modest recovery recently from the bleak depths of last year, when the most distressed farmers offloaded their product for fire-sale prices below $100 per pound, or simply destroyed crops they couldn’t sell.

There have been nascent efforts at the state Capitol to help small cannabis growers. Newsom and legislators agreed last year to eliminate a cultivation tax after farmers from the Emerald Triangle lobbied aggressively for relief. But the intervention is far from enough to ensure their future in a turbulent cannabis market.

State Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat who represents the north coast, blamed Proposition 64 for setting up family farmers for failure with a litany of “suffocating rules.” He is preparing to introduce legislation this spring that could undo some of those regulations for small growers, including an “antiquated, cockamamie licensing structure” that requires them to keep paying annual fees even if they fallow their land because of the price drop and a ban on selling cannabis directly to consumers, something that is allowed for other agricultural products.

“These are solutions that will help stabilize the market and lift up family farmers for generations to come,” McGuire said. “The state needs to have a backbone to get it done.”

Newsom, who once called himself the “poster child” for “everything that goes wrong” with Proposition 64, declined a request to discuss what’s happening in California’s historic cannabis communities. A spokesperson directed CalMatters to the Department of Cannabis Control, which did not make Director Nicole Elliott or anyone else available for an interview.

In a statement, spokesperson David Hafner said the department has “made a point of regularly monitoring and visiting the Emerald Triangle and engaging directly with licensees to understand their challenges in real time.”

Hafner said the department has advanced “several policies and programs that have directly or indirectly supported legacy growers in the Emerald Triangle,” including granting more than 1,000 fee waivers to cultivators in the region, revising regulations to more closely align with traditional farming practices and providing $40 million to bolster licensing efforts in the three counties.

“The Department stands ready to assist policymakers,” Hafner said, “in developing actions that improve the legal cannabis market.”

Though growers in the Emerald Triangle have been sharply critical of how the state has regulated cannabis, particularly its early decision to forgo a strict acreage cap, one recent development may be promising: In January, Elliott requested an opinion from the state Department of Justice about what federal legal risk California would face if it negotiated agreements with other states to allow cannabis commerce between them.

That could eventually open a pathway for growers to export their weed out of California, a market expansion that some believe is the kick-start that their operations need.

An increasing strain

The escape hatch may be closing for those seeking a way out of the industry.

When the value of cannabis dropped, so did the worth of the properties where it’s grown — even more so for the many farmers who, because of environmental lawsuits and bureaucratic negligence, have yet to receive final approval for their state-issued cultivation licenses. After years of operating on provisional licenses, they still do not technically have a legal business to sell to an interested buyer, if they could even find one.

Some are simply abandoning the properties that they have built into farms with greenhouses and irrigation systems, though evidence of this dilemma is anecdotal. The Trinity County Assessor’s Office said it could not provide data on recent property sales levels or prices.

“There’s no way I could get out of my property now what I put into it,” said Keys of the Trinity County Agriculture Alliance, who figures he would be forced to walk away entirely if he stopped growing. “I don’t know if I could sell it at all.”

For those residents who stay, the strain is only deepening.

The number of people in Trinity County enrolled in CalFresh, the state’s monthly food benefits program, in December was 31% higher than the year before and more than 71% higher than the same period in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic and inflation crisis, according to data compiled by the California Department of Social Services. That’s nearly three times the rate of increase for the entire state.

Jeffry England, executive director of the Trinity County Food Bank, said his organization is handing out two and a half times as much food as when he took over the position six years ago. He estimates that the food bank serves about 1,200 families per month, as much as a fifth of the whole county’s population. It has added three new distribution sites in the past year.

“It’s getting really bad,” England said. “There are some of them who are in line at the food bank who used to be our donors.”

Not everyone who is struggling dreams of leaving Hayfork behind.

Herlinda Vang, 54, arrived about seven years ago from the Fresno area, where she worked as a social worker at a nonprofit and grew vegetables near Clovis. Sensing the opportunity of recreational legalization, she moved months before the passage of Proposition 64 to start a cannabis farm.

Vang has come to appreciate how safe and quiet the community is compared to a big city, where she worried about her youngest children, now 14 and 11 years old. She can hear the birds when she wakes up in the morning.

“What I’m doing is also helping other people, saving other people’s life, too,” she said. “So that is something that I enjoy doing.”

But last year, Vang had difficulty getting county approvals and wasn’t able to start growing until mid-July, about six weeks later than she wanted. Her plants were small by harvest time, leaving her with less to sell at the already reduced prices.

Even as she is making less than a third per pound now compared to when she first started growing, Vang remains committed to her farm for at least another few years to see if things will turn around — especially if interstate trade opens up and expands the market.

Without many other skills or job prospects locally, she doesn’t expect she could make much more money than she does now trying to find more traditional work. She also loves that, on her farm, she sets her own rules and schedule, and is able to prioritize being a mother as well.

“I cannot give up. I have put everything I have in here,” Vang said. “I have to hang in there for a couple more years and see if I can make it work.”

That has meant sacrifices. Vang has stopped shopping online for new clothes and jewelry, sending money overseas and buying pricier groceries, such as seafood. She gave away three of her nine dogs and only takes her family out to dinner on rare occasions.

Like many of her neighbors, Vang now supplements her pantry with staples from the food bank, though like many of her neighbors, she is also doing her part to hold the community together, helping to coordinate a new distribution site in Trinity Pines, a mountain settlement of predominantly Hmong farmers. A Facebook group called Hayforkers has become a forum for people looking for assistance or giving away extra food and household items.

“I am a very tough person,” Vang said. “I’m happy that even though my income is not the same, but my family, my health remains the same and the people that I know, the community at large still love each other, still comfort each other.”

Ira Porter is also on a shoestring budget. He covers his $200 per month rent by collecting cans and bottles — there are fewer than there used to be — from people who don’t want to travel all the way to the county seat of Weaverville or Redding to turn them in.

Porter, 59, used to do maintenance and repair work on cannabis farms, fixing cars, water systems, and trimming machines. His wife was a trimmer.

“I’d be busy all year round, you know, because there’s always something to do,” Porter said through the window of his white Volkswagen sedan as he waited at the Hayfork food distribution with his pug Biggee in his lap. “I don’t know how many of these farmers left, but I’m not getting any calls this year as far as to do that.”

As the line of cars slowly worked its way through the parking lot of the Trinity County Fairgrounds, past the volunteers handing out boxes of vegetables and bags of noodles, Porter cataloged the things he loves about Hayfork: The open spaces. The fresh air. Hanging out at the creek looking for gold. Being able to leave the keys in his car at night and not having to lock the door to his house. Chopping wood for kindling in the winter.

“I moved up here to get out of L.A. because it’s a zoo down there, and there’s just too many people, and they’re all pissed off because they don’t got no elbow room,” Porter said. “Up here, it’s just beautiful. I love this place, you know? I mean, cannabis industry or not, I want to live here and die here.”

###

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

Raemel Jean Oliveira was born on November 3, 1949, in Scotia, California, and entered into her rest on January 26, 2023. She was the first of three children and had a sister named Claudia and a brother named Matthew.

Growing up, Raemel had a strong work ethic. She would get up early to chop kindling for the stove and in the afternoon, she would stack hay, feed the livestock, do yard work, and bring in vegetables from the garden. She attended FIA Christian School for her freshman and sophomore years and then went to MBA Christian School for her junior and senior years of high school.

Raemel continued her education at PUC, where she received her master’s degree in education. This started her journey to teaching grade school in Anchorage, Alaska, Colorado, and a private school near Grass Valley for many years. Eventually, she moved back to Fortuna, where she started teaching at FJA and also took up square dancing. This is where she eventually met Fred Oliveira, whom she married in 1990. Raemel was blessed with two teenage sons, Timothy and Jason Oliveira.

Raemel is survived by her son Tim, his wife Heather, her grandchildren Jeremiah, Kayla, Kimberleigh, Skyllar, and Ethan, and her great-grandchildren Dakota, Brylee, Sawyer, Morgan, Jeremiah Jr., and Ellie. She is also survived by her niece and nephews, Sheena and her four children, Eric, Randy, and Nathan.

Raemel was preceded in death by her grandson Corey and her husband Fred. Arrangements are under the direction of Gobles Fortuna Mortuary, and her memorial service will be held at Fortuna S.D.A. Church on March 4, 2023, at 3 p.m.

###

The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Raemel Jean Oliveira’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.