anonymous asks G. Mario Fernandez, John Fullerton…

2 ^

Housing

For decades Humboldt’s Rural Housing Needs Assessment for Moderate and Above priced homes has been exceeded. Do you support a balanced inventory serving all economic classes of local residents and what will you do to toward that effort?

— anonymous

Responses

John Fullerton

Homelessness isn’t just a problem in Eureka but everywhere.  Contributing to that problem is the lack of low income housing and housing in general.    The point in Time Count of last January showed 498 homeless in Eureka. 

I support the recent efforts by the city to build more low income housing but I do not support some of the locations they chose to build it.   The businesses in the Old Town & Downtown areas need adequate parking for their customers and employees.    So I will push to have those parking lots saved by building those particular apartments elsewhere.

Shortage of housing has pushed the costs of all housing too high and that affects all of us,  renters & home buyers alike.   While I was on the Eureka Planning Commission I voted to encourage more housing by better zoning and encouraging more mother in law units to be built. 

G. Mario Fernandez

Yes, I support the creation of additional workforce and family housing in our city. The Regional Housing Needs Allocation plan by HCAOG assess Eureka’s needs at 952 housing units of which over 35% are very-low income/low income (link). Eureka is responding well to this need by moving forward utilizing its surplus public lands to build housing units. The plans for Old Town and the EaRTH center are precisely in line with the general plan and what our community and leaders asked to be developed back in 2018. It also focuses on the importance of reducing emissions by placing these units near a soon-to-be developed transit hub along with shuttle service. As I’ve stated before, this is the type of mixed-use development that will sustain our community as these residents will live, work, and shop nearby creating some of the best economic impact we can measure. Not every project needs to be the same; however, as a council member, I would advocate for “affordable for sale” units for our working class families and individuals in some of these surplus public property projects. The idea is that homeownership is a cornerstone of the American Dream and when we invest in the residents of our community we build stability and generate collective wealth (link).