Health Impact Assessment demonstrates Health Impact Assessment proponents are unhealthy

As expected, a grant-funded Health Impact Assessment presented Thursday to the Planning Commission demonstrates that the most restrictive development option before the commission is by far the healthiest choice for Humboldt County.

The HIA, presented by Public Health Officer Dr. Ann Lindsay, shows that Alternative A, which would allow only minimal urban infill—a maximum of 6,000 additional housing units over the next 25 years—would reduce childhood obesity, improve access to vital services and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

The enormous health benefits that naturally accrue from living in crowded urban centers would increase even further if builders skimped on design and materials costs, according to the HIA.

The number of Planning Commissioners who nodded their heads approvingly while listening to this shit?

All of them.

The number of commissioners, supervisors, medical doctors or other HIA proponents who volunteered to live in the low-quality, high-density housing projects the assessment recommends?

Uh, yeah. That would be zero.

According to the results of an internet search, Dr. Lindsay herself, who oversaw the study, is said to live on North Bank Road, a low-density rural interface between McKinleyville and Fieldbrook.

Mark Lovelace, infill proponent extraordinaire, is listed as living on Buttermilk Lane in the unincorporated Bayside area. One of his neighbors, living on Coffey Lane, is our very own Community Development Disservices Director Kirk Girard.

Anti-sprawl supervisors Bonnie Neely and John Woolley are no better at living their high-density values.

Neely is listed at two addresses, one on Brindle Lane and the other on Glendale Court, both along the outer edge of the unincorporated Myrtletown area, while Woolley resides in a coastal zone on Melvin Road in the unincorporated Manila area.

As for the planning commissioners themselves, only one or two of the seven live within the boundaries of any incorporated city in Humboldt County.

We’re just asking, but does anyone else here ever grow weary of listening to people who live one way telling the rest of us we ought to live another? If ghettos are so wonderful, why aren’t they living in them?