Activists occupy Arcata Plaza protesting homeless encampment enforcement, no arrests reported

Tents and flyers took over Arcata Plaza as activists protested the city’s enforcement against homeless encampments, turning downtown’s busiest public space into the latest flashpoint in Arcata’s fight over where unhoused residents are supposed to go when camps are cleared. No arrests were reported.

The demonstration landed in the middle of a dispute that has been building for months. In July 2025, about two dozen protesters disrupted a special Arcata City Council meeting over alleged encampment sweeps and forced it to end early. A similar protest followed in August 2025, when demonstrators objected to the displacement of one of Arcata’s longest-running encampments.

City leaders have repeatedly denied that the city is organizing sweeps. Mayor Alexandra Stillman said the encampment in question was on private property, and City Manager Merritt Perry said the city was not sweeping encampments but was instead enforcing trespassing laws on private land. Activists have pushed back, saying the people living there were not transient squatters but residents who had remained in place for years. Ethan Makulec of the Humboldt Area Center for Harm Reduction said some people had lived in the encampment for close to a decade.

The question now at the center of the conflict is not only whether Arcata is enforcing property rights, but what happens next for the people being moved. Humboldt County’s 2024 Point-in-Time count estimated 1,573 people experiencing homelessness, down from 1,648 the year before, underscoring the scale of the county’s housing crisis even as local governments continue to look for ways to shift people out of encampments and into shelter or housing. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires participating communities to conduct that count at least every other year.

Arcata’s own housing policies acknowledge the pressure. The city’s 2019-2027 6th-cycle Housing Element says meeting residents’ housing needs and Arcata’s share of regional housing demand remains an important goal. City officials have also pointed to the Gateway Area Plan as a way to create low-income housing closer to downtown services and walkability, but that remains a long-term answer in a dispute driven by immediate enforcement.

That tension sharpened again in February 2026, when public records reporting showed Arcata had played a hands-on role in coordinated removals along the Great Redwood Trail corridor across four properties after a January warehouse fire expanded enforcement. In that case, Robin Brooks submitted a formal ADA reasonable-accommodations request on Feb. 3, asking for more time, help moving belongings, transportation to accessible housing, a mental health professional during enforcement, and protection of property. For Arcata, the plaza protest showed the same unresolved problem: enforcement is happening now, but the place for people to land is still in dispute.