CITY SEEKS FEEDBACK ON HOMELESS HOUSING PLANS
On Wednesday, the Arcata House Partnership and the Danco Group held two meetings seeking input on their plans to convert two Valley West hotels into roughly 130 units of housing for homeless residents.
One of the meetings solicited comments from homeless people, the other from housed people.
At the noon gathering in a Valley West parking lot, boxed lunches, water and chips were distributed to the dozen-odd homeless people who showed up to give suggestions to the project. A garden was one of the more popular ideas floated by the gathering, though the project is still in the application phase. The project would be paid for with Project Homekey funds provided by the state, and if approved at the Arcata City Council’s Dec. 15 meeting, Arcata’s Community Development Department will apply for the funds.
Danco and the AHP will hear by June whether the projects were approved. They hope to renovate and purchase the sites within eight to 10 months of gaining approval, according to Darlene Spoor, Arcata House Partnership’s executive director.
“It would be staffed 24 hours a day, there would be on-site case management and on-site housing stabilization support. The goal is really to provide an opportunity for Housing First,” Spoor said. “We want to really be committed to serving the entire community, we know that the homeless population of people who are homeless is just ever-increasing, and we want to be part of the solution.”
Multiple homeless residents at the meeting supported the idea of a garden, noting that working with plants could be a form of therapy for those with trauma such as living on the streets. Residents also championed the idea of areas for pets and storage.
However, the long wait for this project to potentially come to fruition was discouraging to some homeless residents.
“I love it, but where am I going tonight?” one woman in the crowd asked.
The site locations would be the Red Roof Inn, at 4975 Valley West Boulevard and the Days Inn, at 4701 Valley West Boulevard.
Later in the day, the project’s proponents fielded questions from housed residents in a Zoom meeting attended by more than fifty people. Arcata community development director David Loya fielded questions from residents about the project.
Residents wanted to know more about the rules and regulations within the project’s walls, and the justifications behind creating it in the first place.
“We’re providing an opportunity to get people off the street, and into shelter and into permanent housing. Mostly our experience is when we’ve done projects like this in the past, these projects improve the community,” Chris Dart, president of the Danco group, said. “Providing a space for folks that are already living here, to come in and be housed translates to an overall healthier, better community in the long run.”
“The goal is really to provide an opportunity for Housing First.” — Darlene Spoor