Hugging the Humboldt County coast some 280 miles north of San Francisco and 150 miles west of Redding, Eureka is strapped for places to live. The county has more homeless people per capita than anywhere else in the state, with a disproportionate share living on the street — a problem that’s especially conspicuous in downtown Eureka. Like every California city and county, Eureka is also on the hook under state law to scrounge up space for new housing. The downtown economy could use a little goosing too.
The parking lot-to-affordable-housing plan was supposed to tackle all those problems at once. More housing. More foot traffic downtown. A satisfied California Housing and Community Development Department. Yes, the planned developments would leave the area with more people, more cars and fewer spaces to park, but that, city officials have said, is a worthwhile trade-off.
And this goes to the heart of the conflict:
The parking lot wars on California’s Lost Coast are part of a statewide trend of voters taking their gripes with state housing mandates to the ballot. Over the last half decade, state lawmakers have passed dozens of new laws requiring local elected officials to plan for more housing, whether they want to or not.
When these conflicts wind up in court — and they often do — courts have generally sided with state agencies.
But in Eureka, the political stars are aligned a bit differently. This is not a wealthy suburb in which elected officials are vowing to resist what they see as overreaching state bureaucrats. Eureka city officials are on the same page as the state housing department in wanting to see more dense housing downtown, parking be damned. It’s the voters, this November, who will have the opportunity to slam on the brakes.
Additional posts about Eureka and Humboldt County are here.
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