AHHA Fall 2025 Newsletter

Hello Dear AHHA Community!

It’s been quite a while since we’ve been in touch! Time has been moving quickly - the rains have arrived and we welcome the seasons changing. Like many others, we’ve been hard at work trying to meet increased needs in our community. Everything we do is made possible by our dedicated volunteers and we couldn’t do this work without them!

Our mobile shower Care-A-Van has been doing amazing outreach services for five years now. We have provided over 16,000 guests with Information and Referral services, hygiene products A to Z for self-care, prepared lunches, non-perishable food to go, fresh produce, coffee and water, fresh clothes head to toe -all weather-all gender-all sizes, animal care products and outdoor living support. Over 7,000 showers have been provided for our guests! We have facilitated access to a community of care made up of many providers and community partners. We also could not have done this without our generous donors and funders. We are grateful to be an integral part of Humboldt County’s community of care. Thank you!

This fall we are honored to have two new members join the AHHA Board - we welcome Amy Wicklund and Amy Scott with open arms! They are both active community members, passionate about housing and social justice. We’re really happy to have new people and new energy infusing AHHA at this really challenging time.

We want to acknowledge all our previous board members with immense gratitude – we wouldn’t be here without them! We would also like to encourage anyone who is interested in the mission and vision of AHHA – supporting our unhoused community through direct service and in helping to create affordable homeless housing & shelter alternatives – to reach out to us and see how you can be part of our working group as well. It’s been refreshing to see a new resurgence in the messaging of affordability. This is the heart of our mission here at AHHA, and what we strive for every day. If you’re inspired to participate in growing this vision, we’d love to hear from you – here’s a link to our board information and our  application. When you complete and submit an application on-line it will come directly to us.

Our next Housing Forum is happening this weekend! If you haven’t yet rsvp-ed, what are you waiting for? Please do so by emailing ahha.humco@gmail.com! We’re incredibly excited to bring people together again this weekend on November 15th to hear what projects are happening and to encourage cross-organization conversation and collaboration about community-centered affordable alternative housing & sheltering models. We will have presentations, lunch, and then facilitated round table discussions about housing & shelter here in Humboldt County with the intent to take action.

If you know of anyone who is either involved or interested in compassionate, supportive affordable housing & shelter solutions, please pass on the information about this forum! We all know we are in need of safe places for people with no place else to go; this forum will center the creation of ideas, dreams, and strategies to bring forth solutions and how we can come together as a community to address our growing need together. Please RSVP.

AHHA’s Housing Forum is a prelude to Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, November 16-22 (www.hhweek.org). H&HAW is a nationally organized movement to engage local communities around events and activities to bring awareness to the issues of hunger and homelessness and to encourage a resolve to end hunger and homelessness locally as well as at the state and national levels. AHHA asks everyone to get involved, use your voices and your resources to move our communities forward on these seriously needed housing and sheltering alternatives/initiatives. The week is set at this time each year, utilizing the backdrop of our seasons of abundance, to contrast between those who have very little to no resources and those who may have an abundance. We thank our local political bodies for acknowledging the importance of this week by proclamation.

A giant community partner in the ongoing struggles against hunger and homelessness is Humboldt County’s food bank, Food for People. While many of our community’s families are facing the extreme challenge of dwindling food resources, Food for People has been consistently stepping up and offering additional access and food supplies for Humboldt community members in need. Uplift Eureka Community Resource Center created a food resource list here! based on FFP scheduling and identification of other resources making the info easily accessible. Please share with anyone who might be experiencing food insecurity.

It’s that time of year again! We’ve officially kicked off our end of year donor drive. There are many ways to help! Direct financial support is essential to continue our services. We are a community-driven and community-centered initiative and AHHA relies on your support. AHHA is the people in the communities of Humboldt who provide as well as use our services. We have so much gratitude for your support. We always need volunteers and clothing, specifically men’s pants and shoes! We’d like to put a special request out there for anyone who might be a private landowner, or know of a private landowner, who would be interested in entering into a trial program with AHHA and our partners! We know this is the time of year when many organizations are seeking funding resources – as you decide where to give what you can, we hope you’ll keep AHHA in mind. Click here to donate!

Vote for AHHA!!

Speaking of funding – if you’re seeing this newsletter and are also a North Coast Co-Op member, please vote for AHHA to be one of their Seeds for Change Round Up program participants in 2026! It’s a great fundraising AND educational opportunity for AHHA, and we’d appreciate your support! Voting is exclusively online, and ends Nov 16th. Vote here! Only one vote per membership will be counted and each one matters! Thank you!

Once again, we’d like to emphasize that this work would not be possible without our volunteers. And here’s another shout out to all our past and present Interns who have helped AHHA accomplish so much! This semester we are especially grateful for our Cal Poly Humboldt Interns: Joseph Bistrow and Callie Hacker. If you’ve appreciated our social media presence and graphics – send a message letting Callie know what a great job she’s doing! And we hope that you can make it to the housing forum this weekend to hear about what Joey has been working on for our collaborations! Thank you all!

Our final note is a fun one! Our fearless leader, Nezzie Wade, has been interviewed on the celebrated local podcast 100% Humboldt with Scott Hammond – a video podcast featuring the movers and shakers of Humboldt County. It’s a beautiful interview speaking both to Nezzie’s legacy of education and advocacy, as well as her tireless efforts to help create alternative shelter solutions with our unhoused community members here in Humboldt. Thank you, Scott, for being such a wonderful interviewer! We’re also forever grateful to Access Humboldt for keeping us informed and truly representing the best of Humboldt.  

We look forward to seeing all who can make it to the Housing Forum this weekend!

Please stay warm, dry, and keep each other safe,

Your AHHA Board

www.ahha-humco.org