Betty’s Blue Angel Village in Eureka gets $130,000 boost for expansion

The Betty Kwan Chinn Foundation said $130,000 in new community donations will add 30 independent units to Betty’s Blue Angel Village in Eureka, doubling the transitional housing site from 30 units to 60 and giving more people a place to move off the street and out of emergency shelters.

The expansion is planned for the village at West Washington and Koster streets, where the existing housing is built from retrofitted shipping containers. The added units would significantly increase the foundation’s capacity in a city where homelessness continues to strain shelters, front-line service providers and emergency systems.

The announcement came May 22 at the Betty Kwan Chinn Day Center and coincided with Chinn’s 46th anniversary of service to Humboldt’s homeless community. The funding includes a $50,000 contribution from Eureka Natural Foods and another $80,000 from community partners, a split that shows the project is being driven by both a local business and a broad donor base.

Much of the $80,000 from monthly donors was organized by Kathleen Lee and Julie Fulkerson. The celebration also included traditional Chinese longevity noodle nests, underscoring the occasion’s ties to Chinn’s life and work in Humboldt County. Chinn said she would keep serving the community “until the day I die” and described the effort in terms of “community and unity.”

Fulkerson described Chinn as someone who sees unhoused people as individuals rather than as a problem to be pushed aside. “takes that thin sheet of glass away” between people and “sees everyone as a real living human being,” Fulkerson said.

The expansion also connects to the foundation’s other housing work, including Bayside Village on Hilfiker Lane, which began welcoming residents last summer. Chinn said the foundation will provide more services for people who need them, “like a little tiny houses,” as the group continues building on the model it has already put in place in Eureka.

Chinn’s standing in Humboldt goes well beyond this latest project. She has spent more than four decades serving the county’s homeless population, was named one of the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Great Immigrants of 2023, received the Presidential Citizens Medal from President Barack Obama in 2010 and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Cal Poly Humboldt in 2022.

The new units matter because the need remains large. Humboldt County’s 2024 point-in-time count estimated 1,573 people experiencing homelessness on the night of Jan. 22, 2024, and a recent Eureka homelessness survey found fewer respondents sleeping in shelters than in 2024, but still far from stable housing. The Blue Angel Village expansion offers a concrete increase in transitional beds and a rare local response built around housing instead of enforcement.