We may often think that homelessness is a phenomenon most associated with large urban centers in California. But for anyone who visits the small towns in California’s “Emerald Triangle” region (so called because it’s the major marijuana growing region of the state), they are apt to get quite a shock. They may even be afraid to get out of their car.
Garberville and Redway in particular are overrun with homeless vagrants and “trimmigrants” (the local name for vagrants who seek seasonal employment in the marijuana industry, but then can easily end up homeless when the work ends)
A TripAdvisor user who stayed in a hotel in Garberville said that in his view, this town was “The Center of the Universe for Homelessness.”
Another Tripadvisor user found a Garberville hotel parking lot and frontroom both full of drunks and homeless, and witnessed open drug deals.
A longtime Garberville resident recounted an incident in which she literally had to run from her car for safety, when a wild-eyed man ran towards her,
She was just outside the open passenger door when a wild-eyed man ran down the hill with his arms outstretched “like he was flying” from the Veteran’s Park. She says, he was screaming, “Are you going to kill me?” He ran right to the driver’s side of her pickup.
At first, she thought he was going to steal her vehicle. But then as he glared through the window at her, she says she began to be physically afraid. “I felt like he could kill me right now and he wouldn’t even know…It scared the living crap out of me.”
One Garberville businessman, in a newspaper op-ed, asks outright if the town is going to hell, saying that “the effects of the transient population have reached a critical point.”
Garberville business owners described incidents of harassment, health and safety threats and confrontational behavior during the public comment session of the August 27 supervisors meeting.
Blake Lehman, owner of Lehman Real Estate Appraising on Redwood Drive, told supervisors that “I’m sick of watching my community turn into a cesspool — the transient population in Garberville and Redway is completely out of hand.”
As in other areas, homeless camps pose dangers such as fires, which in this case, damaged a nearby structure. An area popular for homeless camps has had drug problems and one unsolved homicide, as reported here. Assaults have occurred at the camps, as described here. Another assault is described here.
The tensions between residents and homeless vagrants is described in this article.
One area resident explores the problem here, and her blog received many comments.
As in other cities, when one camp is cleared out, as described in this article, the vagrants often simply move to another camping spot, so the problem doesn’t go away.
The problem seems to be occuring in other small towns both in California and Oregon:
Supervisor Rex Bohn said struggling with the impacts and behavior of homeless people seems to be a widespread trend. He read from news reports on how mentally-ill and drug-addicted homeless people are increasingly causing problems in Redding, Ukiah and Grants Pass, Oregon.
Some Garberville residents, as described in this article, are so fed up with the problems caused by transients, they are taking matters into their own hands, as with this resident who began patrolling town streets with his large dog;
“I noticed their increasing numbers at the beginning of the summer,” said Eric Arcos, 41, an independent water treatment contractor who lives in Southern Humboldt. “I just didn’t want to turn a blind eye anymore.”
Arcos and his 22-year-old nephew, along with their dog, a Belgian Malinois (looks like a german shepherd), started patrolling the north end of Garberville from midnight to around 3 a.m. a couple nights a week. Now, it’s a habit.
Arcos began his volunteer patrols because he felt that law enforcement couldn’t, or perhaps wouldn’t, act on crimes he saw happening right in front of him.
But he’s not alone. Arcos is part of a growing contingent of citizens getting active in Southern Humboldt to combat what they see as a lack of police presence in a growing problem.
In fact, so fed up are the locals that on Friday, a group of citizen activists erected a fence around the privately owned but publicly used ‘Town Square’ in Garberville.
Others too are feeling the need to “take back our town”, as described in this article.
Much of the problem for these towns may be owing to the fact that these areas are in the Emerald Triangle, and attract what is known as “trimmigrants”, young people who come to help with the annual marijuana trimming work in the pot farms. Many of them don’t leave when the work is over, but end up in the streets, causing problems.
Some articles about “trimmigrants”
Trimmigrants headed to the Emerald Triangle for harvest season
https://localnomads.com/trimmigrants-our-adventure-in-marijuana-land/
https://www.northcoastjournal.com/humboldt/how-to-not-fuck-up-humboldt/Content?oid=4958922
https://theemeraldmagazine.com/2015/11/trimmigration/
https://matadornetwork.com/life/spent-season-trimming-weed-humbolt-county-like/
In secretive marijuana industry, whispers of abuse and trafficking
https://www.oscrape.com/blog/A-marijuana-grower-found-guilty-of-rape-has-divided-pot-country-84434
Things may change with the legalization of pot:
Welcome to Cannabis Country: How the Green Rush Will Reshape the North Coast Economy
However, the problem with transients continues, as this article states, and this has led to some very bitter debates in the community.
UPDATE JULY 9 2018
There are other problems caused by the homeless in rural areas of California…this article explores the problem that some farmers in the Central Valley are discovering, when they find “nests” created by homeless on their farms. This actually can become a food safety issue, as there is danger of contamination to produce grown to be sold in stores.
The Homeless Quandary 
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