 "Photo: Allyson Riggs")
On any given day you can see the Humboldt Community Access and Resource Center [HCAR] building alive with people of all kinds taking part in community with each other.
Once designated to the special needs citizens and care takers, the building has made room for a new citizenry. People working with art, learning how to use transit,cooking food or focusing on healthy mind and body are now all received and have a place.
The Humboldt Patient Resource Center (HPRC), located in Arcata at 980 6th St., has found a new way to extend health and wellness to the community. The non-profit, mutual-benefit cooperative is a marijuana dispensary that grows its own organic cannabis on site so they can focus their resources on the new center. The HPRC sponsors free or reduced-price wellness classes on nutrition education, yoga, massage, Tai Chi, dance and art.
Chelsea Brown, a nutritionist at the new Wellness Center, said, “We want anyone to feel free to visit us for classes in health and well-being education.”
Mariellen Jurkovich, director of the HPRC, said a lot of dispensaries have come and gone in the community, but believes the HPRC is still here because it is a legitimate business.
“We try to pay our employees good salaries and try to make a positive impact on the community,” she said. The actions taken by the dispensary can serve as a model for the positive and useful benefits of a marijuana dispensaries statewide.
In addition to opening the Wellness Center, the HPRC will use funding to keep the doors open at a facility for disabled citizens. The center is located at the Humboldt Community Access and Resource Center [HCAR] building on Valley East Boulevard in Arcata. HCAR is a federal and state-funded program that provides care for local citizens with developmental and other disabilities. This program puts emphasis on community inclusion and independence.
Without HCAR many of these patients would be “institutionalized, or forced to stay home unsupervised,” said HCAR Program Director John Meyers. “California is the only state that is mandated to provide care to special needs citizens, but we aren’t mandated funding.”
John Meyers refers to The Laterman Developmental Disabilities Act that sets out rights and responsibilities for disabled citizens. Section 4501 of the Lanterman Act reads the State of California accepts a responsibility for people with developmental disabilities and an obligation to them.
This legislation, created 50 years ago, makes HCAR one of the most important and oldest non-profit agencies in the state. The legislation includes state responsibilities to open regional centers and agencies that coordinate services and support for patients and family that foster an independent lifestyle among special needs citizens.
HCAR recently lost funding from the state and almost closed, but Jurkovich, was glad to share the space by taking over the lease and extending the use of the building to the program. She has been running the HPRC for 10 years.
HCAR Program Director John Meyers said the program lost funding statewide in July. “Thanks to the good graces of Mrs. Jurkovich and the Patient Resource Center,” he said, “we can continue care for the special needs citizens of Humboldt.” Meyers attributes the resiliency of the program to a dedicated staff who say they would do it for free.
Shaun Wilkins frequents the Wellness Center. “It looks like a win-win situation for everyone,” he said. “I’m glad the location is here for not just special needs citizens or the sick, but opened up to the everyone in the community. It helps to remove the negative stigma people might have associated with cannabis cultivation or the handicapped.”
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