By Samuel Strait, Reporter at Large – September 19, 2021 At a recent Board Of Supervisor's meeting, Tiny Homes became the latest "brain child" of True North's Dana Port Gill as a certain cure for the County's homeless population. Her proposal currently being 40 tiny houses and a community center to be developed on the property at 800 Williams Drive, former home of Del Norte County's Juvenile Hall. While the project may have appeal due to its out of sight out of mind location and the insistence "housing first" is the best option for curbing our growing homeless problem, Pastor Gill's presentation clearly has a number of "holes" to be filled prior to any serious consideration. Perhaps DHHS's Legacy project might just be allowed to develop before any plunge further into problematic homeless housing projects as a wise investment of time. Aging has already revealed a number of potential problems at the Legacy site, problems to learn by. While it was not the intent of the Board to plunge recklessly into rubber stamping the proposal to utilize the site on Williams Drive, they did direct staff to expend time and money in conjunction with True North to explore the site, as well as other potential sites before considering other major pitfalls to temporarily sheltering homeless folks in glorified "garden sheds" on public property. The discussion by the Board during the meeting also exposed several important considerations that True North clearly has not addressed. The State under Governor Newsom has budgeted billions of dollars in temporary housing utilizing old motels and apartment houses with very little reduction in homelessness at excruciatingly prohibitive cost. Remember all you folks that voted "No" during the recall election that this is only one of the many empty examples of money spent for no effective results. The concept that is being pushed is "housing first" before you take care of all the other problems that homeless people bring with them. This assumes of course, that once you have them in temporary housing, progress can be made with their "problems" and permanent housing then becomes available for them to transition into following a successful sheltering. Supposing the Board did ignore the astronomical costs associated with such a project, zoning, regulation, building code, maintenance, utilities, and staffing, the first question that should be asked, "Is it reasonable to suppose permanent housing for residents to transition to is an acceptable reality"? Del Norte County is not exactly awash with affordable rental housing currently, nor is it likely that patrons of the "tiny house village" will be on the hot list of acceptable mortgage offers to buy a house. Is it reasonable for the County, once True North has ensnared them in this concept, to spend thousands of dollars per homeless occupant for the ability to house a few homeless in temporary housing without the possibility of moving more than a few to permanent housing? Clearly that is all that has happened with "Room Key and Home Key" where homelessness has actually increased in many areas of the State. Guess that's what you get when you vote "no" on removing ineffective leadership. Beyond lack of permanent housing and cost, the idea that self regulated housing "villages" in populations that make serious, life changing "bad" decisions as a good mechanism for governance seems to be an oxymoron with the potential for disaster. Tiny Housing in glorified "garden sheds" seems to have the appeal to many cities, all testifying to the "excellent results" that these projects bring to the table, yet few who continence such a life style clearly have not experienced it. While it may seem romantic and most certainly would be a step up in terms of living arrangements for many of the homeless, it remains only one tiny part of the whole process. There is no evidence that True North or the Arcata Group, Arcata House Partnership, has checked all the boxes. There is currently the expectation of receiving "Grant Money" to initiate the project, then what? True North has an appetite for "talking about problems", then leaves the actual solutions to others. Clearly that was already in the works before True North approached the Board with this proposal. Perhaps it is time for True North to actually be true to their aspirations and put their money and solutions up front. That's right they don't have any, they depend on other people's money and solutions.