Charles Anthony Didier (Chuck) was born on December 8, 1956, in Sidney, Nebraska. He died on November 25, 2023, in Eureka.

Chuck grew up in Portland, Oregon, and attended school there. In the 1980s, he moved with his family, their amazing dog, Bruno, and his Harley, to Humboldt County. There, Chuck and his wife, Laura, owned and operated Arcata Moving & Storage. Then, in the 1990s, Chuck and his wife, Ronda, opened an antique store in the historic “Eagle House.” Ronda named it “Sanford’s Antiques and Collectibles” after her pet name for Chuck — “Sanford.” Later, they relocated it to the world-famous “Stump House” on Broadway. Chuck and his friends had restored this landmark and it remained “Sanfords” until it was dismantled and stored for museum display.

Chuck was a lover of cool cars ànd had many. He was well-known for his hot rods. He loved rock and roll music, collecting marbles, his parrots and riding his Harley.

Chuck was preceded in death by his father, George; his mother, Elena; his sister, Mary; his second wife, Ronda; and, his great-nephew, Cody. He leaves behind his brother, Robert and wife, Rosie; his sister, Tricia and husband Mark; his brother, Mike; his stepchildren, Anthony and wife Jennifer, and Sara and wife Emily; his first wife, Laura; his third partner, Linda; his nephews and nieces; his close friend, Mike; and his many friends.

Chuck was a strong man, a man of high values and standards with a wicked sense of humor. He loved people and helped so many. He lived a lot of life. Intelligent, talented, and entertaining, he never slowed down and he ruled his world. Chuck is well-loved and will be greatly missed. We will meet him at the crossroads.

Susan Kramer Lerner, 71, of Burnt Ranch and teacher in Humboldt County, suffered a stroke and left this world suddenly on November 17, 2023. Whether on a gold mining claim or in the classroom, Sue was known to be a fighter, fun-loving, generous and a fierce friend.

Sue was born on June 7, 1952, in Beaver, Pennsylvania. In high school she was a gymnast, a majorette and a cheerleader. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Special Education at the California University of Pennsylvania.

In the mid-1970s, she headed west, landing in Blue Lake before moving to Trinity County, on the edge of Humboldt County where she lived in Denny, and also 11 miles up the trail in Eagle Creek. Sue met her husband, Tim Lerner, at Simon LeGree’s in Hawkins Bar. He won the pool tournament and Sue’s heart. She then moved to Burnt Ranch with Tim and his young daughter Autumn Lerner in 1983. They built a rich family life together and Sue and Tim were together for 30 years until his death in 2013.

Sue was known by many names — Susie, Twosie, Two-Gun Sue, and Pistol-Packing Sue. But to generations of local students, she was simply “Ms. Lerner.” She taught school in Denny and was the last teacher at the Denny schoolhouse, taking four-year-old Autumn with her. She later taught Special Ed. at Hoopa Elementary, investing herself in her students and their families. In the early 1990s, Sue began to explore the “World Wide Web”, pioneering by bringing the internet into her Burnt Ranch home in the early days. Passionate about local Native culture, she applied her technology skills to document the Chimariko language with the last living speakers. She then taught at Hoopa High School, where she became a beloved early computer science teacher, earning an online master’s degree in educational technology from George Washington University. Meanwhile, she was active at Burnt Ranch School — as a parent and then a member of the Burnt Ranch School Board. Never one to remain idle, after retiring from teaching, Sue’s final career was in real estate, which she began in 2005 with Humboldt Land Co in Willow Creek. But she never did fully leave the classroom. She was seen substitute teaching recently in Hoopa and Burnt Ranch.

Sue was predeceased by her parents, John and Dorothy Kramer, and by her husband Tim Lerner. She leaves behind her partner Paul Reynolds, her sisters Kathleen Tray and Jennifer Kramer, her stepdaughter Autumn Lerner and her husband David Llama, her nieces Stephanie Tray (and husband Luke Henry), and Heather (and husband Christopher) Opalinsky, and great nieces and nephew Samantha, Charlotte and Shiloh.

Sue was loved by many and was a part of her community in numerous ways. If you were blessed to know Sue, you know she was tenacious and could tackle most anything. She was proud to call Humboldt-Trinity home for nearly 50 years — she loved the land and our community.

Sue lived a full and vibrant life and will be remembered as a loving partner, mother, sister, aunt, teacher, and friend. A celebration of Susan K. Lerner’s life will take place on Dec. 9 at 1 p.m. at the Burnt Ranch Elementary School with a community potluck.

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Lorraine Margrette Keisner
July 20, 1945 — Nov. 21, 2023

Lorraine Margrette Keisner, age 78, passed away on November 21, 2023, in Fortuna. Born on July 20, 1945, in Oakland to Josephine Velasquez and Antonio Velasquez, she was the youngest of 16 children. Lorraine was a beloved wife, mother, grandmother and friend, known for her exceptional cooking skills and her dedication to helping others.

Lorraine’s culinary journey began as a cook for Taholah School in Washington in 1974, where she lovingly prepared meals for the students. Her passion for cooking led her to Glen Paul Center in Eureka, Loleta School in Loleta, and finally, Bear River Community Center, where she cooked until 2012, then worked for the elders driving them to their appointments. She kept track of when and who they needed to see. She loved helping. She retired in 2018.

Lorraine’s cooking brought joy and nourishment to countless individuals throughout her career, some of her most famous culinary works being doll cakes, boob cakes, Halloween spider cakes, as well as many other brilliantly beautiful cakes and humorous joke cakes. She was also recognized and was interviewed when she cooked for Loleta School for making healthy homemade foods. Their lunch count went up, and even parents started lunching there. She was an incredible cook.

Beyond the kitchen, Lorraine was a woman of many talents and interests. She had a passion for animals, so much so that when her children were teens, they had to alert her before going into the kitchen in the morning on account of the family of skunks she fed in there. She actively participated in charity events to raise funds for various causes. Such walking for the March of Dimes, charity events for the disabled, and Relay for Life, an annual event dedicated to supporting cancer victims. In her 70s, she even took up boxing, fearlessly embracing new challenges. Lorraine’s adventurous spirit and dedication to helping others made her a strong female figure to her family, always instilling the values of hard work, kindness and above all humor (although her oldest son Robert believes he has the best humor, he is still wrong, LOL). Her favorite farewell was “stay sober and pee on you later.”

Lorraine will be deeply missed by her husband, Glenn Keisner, and her children, Robert Hipol, Theresa Staley, Manuel Hipol, and Glenn Keisner Jr. She also leaves behind a legacy of love in her grandchildren, Tia, Warren, Andrew, Tyler, Jessica, Ari, Ashley, Kendall, Glenn Jr, Chloe, and great-grandchildren Kaylie, Megan and Emmett as well as her brother Tony.    Lorraine was preceded in death by her parents, Josephine Velasquez and Antonio Velasquez, and her siblings, Josephine, Evelyn, Mary, Hilda, Claire, Jimmy, Albert, Walter, David, and Bobby and her great-granddaughter Penelope.

A celebration of Lorraine’s life will be held on December 9, 2023, at the Tish Non Village Community Center, Bear River, 266 Keisner Road, at 12 noon. This gathering will honor Lorraine’s long and beautiful memory, celebrating her as a mother, grandmother, friend, and a wonderful person in all aspects of life. The event will be potluck style, so attendees are encouraged to bring food if possible. Above all else, bring your love and cherished memories to share with others. Lorraine’s family hopes to see you there.

Lorraine Margrette Keisner will forever be remembered for her culinary talents, her love for animals, and her dedication to helping others. Her kindness, strength, and unwavering support will continue to inspire those who were fortunate enough to know her. May she rest in eternal peace.

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Press release from the City of Eureka:

Item H.1, the Cease Fire Resolution scheduled for tomorrow’s Council meeting, has been pulled from the agenda and will not be discussed or acted upon at the December 5th Council meeting.

Mayor Kim Bergel stated, “As the Mayor of Eureka, I share the concern and grief over the military operations in Gaza. I also represent all residents of the City of Eureka and I am committed to working with everyone impacted by conflict in the Middle East. The Cease Fire Resolution proposed for adoption at tomorrow’s meeting would not have ended the violence in Gaza and Israel, but it would perpetuate more divisiveness and hatred in our community. I continue to hold all peoples affected by the violence both here and abroad in my thoughts and prayers. May we practice peace and respectful dialogue in all of our interactions each and every day.”

Press release from Humboldt Last Week:

Humboldt Last Week, a podcast quickly showcasing our area’s most interesting news stories, has donated $500 to the local nonprofit Food For People.

“Food for People is exceptionally grateful to Humboldt Last Week for their support,” said Food For People Executive Director Carly Robbins. “More and more people are experiencing hunger and food insecurity locally as the costs of food and other life essentials are on the rise. It’s with the help of community members like Myles and Humboldt Last Week that we’re able to meet this increasing need by providing vital hunger relief programs across the county.”

“Food For People lives within the heart of our community,” said Humboldt Last Week host Myles Cochrane. “Their compassion is truly essential. Despite facing challenges in merch sales intended to bolster this donation, I was committed to supporting their invaluable efforts.”

You can read more about Food For People and donate via their website.

Humboldt Last Week is available where you get podcasts. The Humboldt Last Week website also hosts a TLDR news feed and an alternative rock radio station. The programming, with the intent of informing a kind community, is made possible with the support of local partnerships.

In March 2021, the Los Angeles film industry was just beginning to roar back to life after a prolonged COVID-induced slump, but Michael Addis, a freelance filmmaker, was still deep in the hole. For more than a year he’d been racking up IOUs to his landlord and the tab stood at $43,792.

So Addis turned to an emergency state program designed to help people like him pay down rental debt accumulated during the pandemic.

Later, in the summer of 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom himself had touted the program, Housing Is Key, as the largest of its kind in the nation. “We’re laser-focused on getting this assistance out the door as quickly as possible,” he said at the time.

Addis heard back 20 months after he applied.

On June 5, 2023 — his 61st birthday — he received an email, which he shared with CalMatters, notifying him that a payment had been approved in full.

But by then it was too late. Addis had already downsized, moving out of his apartment a few blocks from the Marina Del Rey harbor to a smaller spot in the San Fernando Valley. He had also borrowed money from members of his family to pay his old landlord back, hoping that he’d be able to write off the new debt with the relief funds from the state. But once the company that owns his apartment complex, Equity Residential, received a check from the state, they sent it back, citing program guidelines that deemed Addis no longer eligible for assistance.

“It’s just painful to think that the money that was allocated to solve my problem was sent back and I’m still in debt and now I have to downsize again,” he said, explaining that he’s about to move to Simi Valley, even further from his teenage son, who lives with Addis’ ex-wife. “I’m not in any way leaning on the state but I had a bad year — a bad couple years — and there was a program to help. And they helped me in the worst possible way.”

Addis’ long wait for California’s emergency rental relief program isn’t unusual. Though the application window closed in March 2022, more than 70,000 households still have applications pending on the eve of 2024.

California lawmakers created Housing Is Key with billions of dollars in federal relief money, initially guaranteeing everyone who applied in time and was approved would get paid. The ultimate goal of the program was to stem a flood of evictions, as state and local emergency eviction bans came to an end.

For many Californians, it’s been a vital lifeline. The program has sent more than $4.7 billion to nearly 370,000 lower-income households, according to data from the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development.

But a sizable, unlucky minority of applicants — tenants and landlords alike — have had to wait…and wait and wait.

“Tens of thousands of people are at risk of being evicted or made homeless, not because they were ineligible, but because the state ran out of money.”
— Anya Svanoe, spokesperson, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment

In the meantime, many have borrowed money from friends and relatives, pleaded and haggled with impatient creditors, missed monthly payments and turned to online support groups for tips on how to sidestep the program’s red tape.

Still others have been evicted, though the state doesn’t maintain records on how many.

Tenant rights advocates and anti-poverty groups accuse the state of perpetuating a cruel bait-and-switch on some of the state’s neediest. The state’s housing department blames some of those same advocates for the delay, pointing to a lawsuit that slowed down the application review process.

For those still waiting, the hold-up has taken on a new degree of urgency. Housing Is Key might soon be out of cash. Though California’s Housing and Community Development department, which oversees the program, recently “identified additional funding,” it’s unclear whether that will be enough to pay out every last valid claim.

How much is left?

The state’s housing department declined to estimate when the program will run out of money or how many people are likely to get help before that happens. That figure depends on two unknowns: How many of the as-yet unprocessed applications will ultimately be approved and, of those, how much rental debt each applicant is owed.

“Given this inherent uncertainty, we remain focused on assisting as many eligible households as possible with the funding we have available,” said Pablo Espinoza, the department’s deputy communications director.

But the available figures offer a few hints.

As of early November, there were at least 33,658 initial applications still pending, according to data published by the housing department. Another 39,401 applicants were initially denied, but awaiting an appeal review. That’s a total of 73,059 applications.

Though CalMatters reported in early October that the department projected the program would soon be out of money, program administrators were able to dig up some more. According to Espinoza, because the program is in its “final wind-down” phase, money initially set aside to pay administrative overhead or leftover from locally-run programs is now available to help renters. That’s left a new projected balance of roughly $171 million.

But that’s “not nearly enough,” said Anya Svanoe, a spokesperson for Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, one of a handful of organizations that sued the department last year over its administration of the rent relief program. “Tens of thousands of people are at risk of being evicted or made homeless, not because they were ineligible, but because the state ran out of money.”

Svanoe points to the average pay out, published on the program’s online data dashboard: $12,018.

Assuming that same average payment, the program’s current funding would only be able to cover a little more than 14,000 people. That would leave the remaining 58,830 applicants, or 80% of the total pool, out of luck.

Such a high denial rate wouldn’t be consistent with the history of the program. Housing Is Key administrators only denied 29% of completed applications through mid-2022, according to data provided by the department and shared with a coalition of legal aid groups as part of a court settlement reached earlier this year.

The denial rate seems to be ticking up as the program draws to a close. In early October, a mere 17% of the remaining applicants had been denied. A month later, the figure was up to 38%.

That high denial rate could reflect the fact that applications that have been pending this long are disproportionately complicated and more likely to be rejected.

Asked in October about the possibility that many qualified applicants would not ultimately receive help due to a lack of funds, Espinoza said the program funding was “not infinite” and was never intended to serve all eligible applicants, though he acknowledged that the department and other Newsom administration officials had falsely said otherwise in the past.

That realization has started to dawn on some long-waiting applicants. Cassandra Smith, a graphic designer and single mother who lives in Westmorland south of the Salton Sea, said she applied in February 2021.

“I’m trying to find a way to freelance or do whatever I can do to get the money to just pay it myself because I really don’t think they’re going to have enough money to pay people,” she said. “I can’t sit and depend on it and wait because it’s been two years.”

Unintended consequences?

Anti-poverty organizations have been pressuring the state to speed up the approval process.

“These people have been literally waiting for years for a program that is supposed to be an emergency rental program,” said Madeline Howard, a staff attorney at the Western Center on Law & Poverty.

The Western Center and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment were two of the groups that sued the housing department in June 2022 over what they called an “opaque” application review process that harmed lower income renters and people of color.

A month later, a superior court judge in Alameda County ordered the department to stop denying applications until the court had time to give the program’s review process a once-over. That pause lasted until January 2023, at which point the department was once again allowed to start sending out denials, so long as it explained why each request for assistance was being rejected.

The state ultimately settled the case, agreeing to audit its past denials and to make the application process more user-friendly.

The housing department now lays some of the blame for the sluggish administration of the program on that court ruling, which prevented it from issuing full or partial denials.

By early 2023, the program had “approved just about all of the applications we could identify as approvable” and “ had let go most of the program staff,” Espinoza said. Getting the program up and running after the legal hold was lifted added more time. An amended contract from March 2023 between the state and the Mississippi-based accounting firm Horne LLP that administers the program tacked an additional year to the agreement.

Jackie Zaneri, an attorney with Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, dismissed the suggestion that the lawsuit is to blame for the program’s tardiness. Nothing in the legal order halting denials prevented the program from processing applications internally and paying out partial awards.

“They chose not to do that,” she said.

The worst kind of help

For renters who do ultimately get help so long after they applied, it may come too late.

Angela Okimoto, a 66-year-old former caregiver in Covina, has been waiting on her application since August 2021. In the meantime, she said she was evicted from the garage she was renting. Now she said she has no permanent home.

The rental debt listed in her application, which she shared with CalMatters, adds up to $15,270. But even if she wins her appeal, that check would go to her former landlord. That might improve her credit history, but it wouldn’t secure her a new place to live.

“These people have been literally waiting for years for a program that is supposed to be an emergency rental program,”
— Madeline Howard, staff attorney, Western Center on Law & Poverty

Okimoto said she checks the online portal and calls the hotline nearly every day anyway.

“All they tell me is, ‘Yeah, they’re working on it…just be patient.’” she said. “I say, ‘I’m as patient as can be. It’s been two years. You can’t get any more patient than that.’”

Landlords are also among those waiting.

Cindy, who lives near Yuba City north of Sacramento and who asked that her surname not be published so as not to jeopardize her pending payment, said she bought her three-bedroom home in early 2020 and took on two tenants to help her with the mortgage. In late 2021, one of her tenants was unable to pay his rent, so she encouraged him to apply to Housing Is Key.

Without his payments, she said she used credit cards to pay her mortgage. “That money is going to come so I’ll just use this to pay this bill,” she said she told herself.

Her payment for $13,600 wasn’t approved for nearly two years. She said she’s still waiting on the check in the mail.

Had she known at the outset how long the approval process would take, “I would have probably made different arrangements — I don’t know, maybe borrowed money from my parents,” she said. “When I moved in, I had great credit,” she said. As in the case with Addis, the Simi Valley renter, Housing Is Key has a policy of not reimbursing so-called shadow debt, loans taken out to pay down rental debt. Cindy now says she has $20,000 in credit card debt.

Last month, she said she unexpectedly lost her job of eight years.

Turning to strangers for help

Leslie Pollock, a private chef in Santa Monica, wonders how she’ll ever be able to move out of her apartment.

Living in a rent-controlled unit in Santa Monica, Pollock said she initially applied for help while recuperating from cancer treatment after the pandemic shuttered her business. Even so, she considers herself one of the lucky ones. She’s working again, cancer-free and only owes three-and-a-half month’s rent. No one has threatened her with eviction yet.

But she still feels stuck. Her landlord is reluctant to do upkeep with the debt outstanding, she said, and she worries about being able to rent anywhere else with so much red ink on her record. Most frustrating of all, she said her application was approved a year ago, but the check was sent to the wrong address. She said she regularly calls the hotline to try to explain the situation, but can never get someone with decision-making power on the phone.

“I say, ‘Can I email?’ and they say ‘No, we don’t have capacity to get email,’” Pollock recalled. “They would just say ‘We can’t tell you anything,’ ‘We can’t tell you when that was approved,’ ‘We can’t tell you when that check was cut,’ ‘We can’t tell you…’”

Many of the applicants fed up with the program’s hotline or web portal have wound up in a Facebook group created by Bella Allen.

The owner of a property management company in Long Beach, Allen set up the private group in 2021 to help a friend who was trying to navigate the new state program.

Two years later the Facebook group’s membership has swelled to more than 3,000. Posts include triumphant screenshots of approval letters and despondent post-denial missives. There are requests for help translating the program’s bureaucratese, as well as rants about the state’s housing department or, more frequently, about Horne, the company hired by the state to administer the program. There’s an occasional meme and no shortage of theories that verge on conspiratorial.

As the months have dragged on, the tenor of the posts have grown more desperate and irate. Allen said she has reached out to lawmakers, lawyers, journalists and legal aid groups, all to no avail. She said she spends hours after work and late into the night moderating the group and fielding questions as best she can. But she acknowledged that she isn’t an expert and has no inside knowledge of how the program works.

“I don’t know what to tell these people,” she said. “And I’m gutted.”

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

California’s $53 million investment in teaching its youngest and lowest-performing students to read has shown dramatic — and relatively fast — results, researchers at Stanford have found.

In a study released Sunday night, researchers at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education found that the percent of third-graders in the program who met or nearly met the state reading standards rose 6 percentage points, compared to students at similar schools.

“This study shows we can eradicate illiteracy at warp speed,” said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney behind the lawsuit that spurred the state’s Early Literacy Support Block Grant program. “I wasn’t surprised at the results. But I was impressed with the speed, especially during a pandemic.”

The program came about in 2020 as part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed by Morrison Foerster and Public Counsel, a nonprofit public interest firm based in Los Angeles. Far too many students in California, especially those who are Black, Latino and low-income, were not learning to read, with disastrous results, the lawsuit said. Students who can’t read well by fourth grade are significantly more likely to drop out of school and engage in risky behavior as adolescents, research has shown.

The lawsuit settlement called for California to spend $50 million on literacy programs at the state’s 75 worst-performing elementary schools. At most of these schools, fewer than 10% of students – in some cases, less than 3% – met the state’s reading standard prior to the pandemic, compared to about half of students statewide. Most of the money went toward training teachers, hiring classroom aides and purchasing books. But districts had some leeway to tailor funding to their own unique needs.

Most districts adopted phonics-based curricula inspired by the so-called “science of reading,” an approach to literacy focused on language comprehension and phonics, or matching sounds to letters. Until recently, most schools in California used a “balanced literacy” approach, which includes phonics but also encourages students to recognize whole words by sight.

“Reading wars” over various approaches to teaching literacy have raged for years, but this study is among the first to show distinct before-and-after results, comparing similar schools over time, boosting the idea that the science of reading is a more effective technique.

“The takeaway is that targeted, well-designed science of reading interventions can make a big difference,” said Sarah Novicoff, a doctoral student who worked on the study. “It demonstrated that efforts like this are worth pursuing.”

Becky Sullivan, English language arts director at the Sacramento County Office of Education and coordinator of the block grant for all the targeted schools, said she knew within months that the program was working, based on initial testing that showed 95% of students were making progress.

“I’m really proud of all the schools and teachers who put in the hard work. It shows,” Sullivan said. “We’ve impacted the lives of 15,000 students, from the north end of the state to the south.”

‘Literacy is a moral imperative’

Joshua Elementary in Lancaster, in northern Los Angeles County, was among the schools singled out in the grant. Five years ago, Joshua was one of the lowest-performing schools in the state, if not the country, with fewer than 3% of third graders meeting or exceeding the state’s Smarter Balanced reading standards. Using grant funds, the district tossed out part of its previous literacy curriculum and adopted a new one focused on the science of reading. Teachers were trained, children got new reading materials, and tests were given regularly.

Last year, the number of third-graders meeting the standard nearly doubled, and district officials expect the numbers to keep climbing.

“Our data is still low, but we are seeing vast improvements,” said Krista Thomsen, the district’s director of curriculum, instruction and assessment. “What we are seeing now is teacher buy-in, because they’re seeing success teaching kids how to read. … The entire staff understands that literacy is a moral imperative.”

“Students were running up to me saying, ‘Mr. Humphrey, want to hear me read?’ The glimmer in their eyes, the smiles on their faces. I thought, that’s why we’re doing this.”
— Robert Humphrey, former principal at Bel Air Elementary in Bay Point

Bel Air Elementary in Bay Point, in Contra Costa County, used its grant money — $1 million over three years — to hire reading specialists to work with students in small groups. The school also brought in a new phonics-based curriculum, closely tracked student progress and trained teachers.

The results were almost instant, said Robert Humphrey, Bel Air principal at the time.

“Students were running up to me saying, ‘Mr. Humphrey, want to hear me read?’ The glimmer in their eyes, the smiles on their faces. I thought, that’s why we’re doing this,” Humphrey said. “It’s been an absolutely amazing turnaround.”

He also noticed a decline in behavior problems and an overall improvement in morale, among teachers as well as students. “Walking around campus, you could feel the difference,” he said.

He is worried, however, about what happens when the grant money runs out next year. He’s looking at ways to continue funding the reading specialists.

More grant money is available through the California Department of Education’s new Literacy Coaches and Reading Specialists program, which will bring $500 million to about 800 schools statewide. The program, authorized by Assembly bill 181, was started in 2022 and is available to any elementary school that has an enrollment that’s more than 95% low-income, English learner or foster youth.

Still, that leaves thousands of schools without funding to train teachers and buy materials to implement the science of reading. Rosenbaum said that the results from the Stanford study are too promising to let the initiative fade away for lack of funding.

“It should be expanded throughout the country, at every school,” he said. “And if it’s not, we’ll just file more lawsuits.”

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