What’s coming in 2024
Three pieces of news, a word on invasive pests, and a look at Ojai’s homeless community.
Greetings readers — Happy New Year! You’re receiving this because you’re a paid subscriber to This Little Valley. Thank you so much for investing in this effort. This work would not be possible without your support.
I have three pieces of news to share. First, the four-part series that gave birth to this publication, OUSD, WTF!?, my investigative series about the Ojai Unified School District’s financial crisis, was the VORTEX’s most popular story of 2023! It’s gratifying to know that readers like you are willing to walk with me through the dense weeds of local bureaucracy, in search of understanding. Get ready for more obsessively researched (and hopefully entertaining) deep dives in 2024!
Here’s my second piece of news: This Little Valley is The First Amendment Foundation of Ventura County’s first-ever grantee! I’m proud and thankful for their support. With their advice, I’ve also adopted an editorial independence policy.
Third, I’m excited to share that I’m working with the Ojai Valley Museum on a forthcoming exhibit about the future of agriculture in the Ojai Valley. Fascinating, right?! I’ll spend the next few months interviewing local farmers and farmworkers about their lives, experiences, and expectations for the future. I’m particularly looking forward to talking to the laborers who harvest the valley’s citrus. I plan to publish a companion piece to the exhibit on This Little Valley.
There are myriad angles through which we can examine the valley’s agriculture industry — and we’ll explore many of them. I’m personally fixated on the invasive pest angle. As readers may be aware, an invasive pest known as the Asian Citrus Psyllid (ACP) carrying the “citrus greening” disease Huanglongbing (HLB) was detected in a Santa Paula backyard in October. Why is this important? HLB kills citrus trees — and there’s no known cure. Take a quick look at Florida’s citrus production (in orange) after HLB was detected there in 2005.
Yikes. The California Department of Food and Agriculture emergency protocol for managing ACP/HLB infestation (remember: ACP is the bug, HLB is the disease) calls for insecticide treatments — something notoriously controversial in the Ojai Valley — or tree removal. Anxiety about change is in the air, and it seems our agriculture industry, too, is on the precipice of transformation. I’ll share more details about the museum exhibit soon.
Last but not least, my deep dive into the Ojai City Council continues. My last story explored the various affordable housing projects in the works, so it seems appropriate to look at the housing crisis on display on the City Hall campus: a camp of approximately 32 individuals.
I’ve visited the City Hall campus three times to conduct interviews with the folks living there — and I’ve met a fellow Nordhoff High School graduate every time. On Wednesday, I spoke to a woman born and raised in Ojai — she’s a member of Nordhoff’s class of 1989. She recalled how her grandfather used to recount memories of Ojai Avenue as a dirt road. Today, she lives in a tent pitched on the City Hall campus. She’s surrounded by all of her possessions, many of which were waterlogged during a recent rainstorm.
She told me that she became homeless after a health crisis and an invasive surgery. She was unable to work, her disability benefits ran out, and she went from living in a local rental to living in her car before she relocated to City Hall. Her eyes were glassy with tears as she recounted the story.
Another Ojai woman, Ruth Miller, spent much of 2023 trying to ease this community’s suffering as the leader of the Ojai Homeless Taskforce. I asked Miller what inspired her to take action. “Our elderly are living in tents in the mud,”1 she said, adding, “When you start saying maybe somebody should, maybe that somebody is you.”
Next week, I’ll publish a wide-ranging story about our local homeless community — who they are, how they became homeless, ongoing efforts to improve their daily lives, and Ojai’s place in the statewide housing crisis.
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This is no exaggeration.