Betty Chinn hopes to see housing project get off ground
Getting a transitional housing project up and running in southern Eureka has been an arduous, yearslong process for the Betty Kwan Chinn Foundation, and Tuesday night will be yet another step in that process.
At its Tuesday meeting, the Eureka City Council will be introducing amendments to the local coastal program, which guides development in the city’s coastal zone, which would allow the foundation the ability to use the cityowned Crowley site on Hilfiker Lane as transitional housing. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. donated the trailers to the foundation in 2017, but backlash from neighbors surrounding the proposed location has stalled the project.
“I’ve been waiting for so long,” said Betty Chinn, who established the foundation that helps people who are homeless. “They go forward, then stop, and then go forward and then stop. We’ve got to do something and I can’t keep waiting and waiting.”
The seven trailers can fit up to 40 people and would allow singles, couples and families who would be paying rent, Chinn said.
Chinn emphasized the trailers would be used as housing, not a shelter. The function of the housing is to help people establish a positive rental history for a year or two, which they can then use to get back into more permanent housing, she said. Putting people up in motels doesn’t allow them to establish that rental history, Chinn said, so having a transitional housing project like the one the trailers would provide is necessary to ensure people can get back on their feet.
People have already donated money for the project, Chinn said, so it’s just a matter of getting community support behind it since the city is “really trying to make it work.”
“I really hope that they go forward,” Chinn said. “Please get it done in 2020.”
The changes being proposed at the City Council meeting are to zone the Crowley site as service commercial, which would allow it to serve as housing, and add a Q combining district designation that would add limitations on what can be done on the site, according to the agenda packet.
The specific limitations that were added were to: construct all structures in compliance with the city’s flood hazard area regulations, allow for the structures to be relocated or removed if necessary, and develop, implement and enforce a tsunami evacuation plan.
As the city and foundation have been working to get the project approved, businesses have complained about the project and stifled its forward progress.