by Yucheng Tang
posted Jan. 28
Editor’s note: This is the first story in a series called “Changemakers” that ChicoSol will run monthly in an effort to highlight some of the remarkable work underway in our community.
Standing in front of his booth at the Chico Certified Farmers Market, Charles Withuhn greets passersby on this winter Saturday.
He shakes hands with some and passes out newsletters or fliers produced by the North State Shelter Team (NSST). Some people stop to listen and some barely show interest. Even though some people ignore him, Withuhn — like the mythological Sisyphus who relentlessly rolled a boulder up to a mountain top only to have the boulder roll down — just keeps making attempts at conversation.
As NSST president, Withuhn appears at the market almost every Saturday at 6:30 a.m., erecting his booth and ready to talk to any passersby about the shelter crisis facing Chico.
In his own words, he is dealing with a lack of empathy among people, which he thinks is the “biggest challenge” in addressing the shelter crisis.
“People are busy watching sports, playing recreational games. Besides, they have to make a living to support themselves – it takes up all their time.
“The last two years, we have had somebody die outside about every other week. This is unprecedented. It is accelerating — the rate of deaths outside. It’s an indictment of our community that we are so brutal, and so ignorant, so uncaring of all the suffering going on around us,” Withuhn said.
(ChicoSol has confirmed 10 of 18 deaths of homeless people that the group Butte County Shelter for All says it recorded in 2024.)
Withuhn grew up in Modesto. In 1972, after dropping out of UC Berkeley and working in San Francisco for a few years, Withuhn came to Chico, where some of his relatives lived, and attended Chico State to study graphic design.
“It’s a little bit embarrassing,” he says, the blue sweater and scarf shifting with his hearty laugh. “I went to Chico State for 10 years, but I never graduated.”
Withuhn first ran a sign painting business, and then became an electric sign contractor with employees, earning up to $80,000 annually.
He didn’t get involved with homelessness issues until 2018 — after the Camp Fire destroyed many people’s homes and an increasing number of people began to live on the sidewalk and in streets and parks.
He says he wouldn’t describe himself as religious, but rather “spiritually and ethically directed.” He appreciates everything Jesus said, but he is more a Buddhist than a Christian. “I spent a month at a monastery, and I’ve studied Buddhism a little bit, and my brother-in-law is a Buddhist,” he noted.
But when Withuhn saw so many people without a roof, he thought of a tenet from the Bible: “We should do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
“It’s just one of my favorite phrases that I think people forget and very few people live by,” he said. “Maybe (if) we all speak it more, we remember it more and live by it more.”
He joined Chico Housing Action Team and joined the board of directors, helping build Everhart Village, a project that provides 20 tiny homes for unhoused people or people at risk of being homeless.
He co-founded NSST in 2021. At the beginning, the team collected clothes and shoes, distributed supplies to homeless people and cleaned up the parks.
One day, a homeless woman came up to Withuhn when he was cleaning up a park and told him, “I haven’t had a shower in a year.” Withuhn still looks shocked when he tells this story four years after the encounter.
Withuhn started talking to nurses and doctors, and was told that visits from people in the homeless community were clogging up the emergency rooms. If the unhoused had just “a little bit of basic hygiene” many medical problems would be minor.
“Instead with no hygiene, minor infections become serious and it’s been a burden on the emergency services,” Withuhn said.
So he sat down with some friends and drew up plans. They designed and built the first solar-charged shower trailer in Chico. In a comment he made under a ChicoSol article, he said the idea of the award-winning trailer was also inspired by Haven of Hope on Wheels in Oroville.
The trailer provides shower service to residents of the encampment — the so-called “Alternate Site” — at the corner of Eaton and Cohasset roads every Friday, usually serving 18 people every time.
Withuhn’s everyday life now centers around his work with the homeless community. On Monday, he puts everything together for Tuesday’s Mutual Aid, an event providing free food, first-aid kits and clothes. On Wednesday and Thursday, he prepares for Friday’s shower trailer service.
That requires a lot of work — he needs to drain off the gray water from the previous shower session, fill the freshwater tank with a special hose that doesn’t impart odor or taste to the water, and then clean out the shower stalls and the three filters.
He has repeated those actions for almost three years, every week.
Withuhn used to spend all his spare time sailing. He owned a sailboat that had a “big white pole, had a big sail, and you can glide on the water with making almost no noise.”
But he sold the boat two years ago, because it had taken up all the space in his backyard, and he needed a place to park one of the tiny homes. “I decided this is more important than sailing,” he said. “I miss the boat.”
His wife, Sally Withuhn, supports his work by “keeping our home together.” She often makes three tubs of hot coffee that will be brought to the shower service site. Sometimes, Withuhn calls his wife for things he forgets and she brings them.
Withuhn was honored Jan. 26 by the Theta Chi fraternity he joined as a student at UC Berkeley. The Greek letters translate to “helping hand,” said Withuhn, who was recognized with the annual Lewis Memorial Award.
“The homeless are part of our community,” said Matt Mattis, a Chico State student who belongs to the local chapter. “I have volunteered at Mutual Aid and I’ll continue to help Charles.”
Withuhn has made friends with many unhoused people during years of work, some of them having passed away, unfortunately.
One of them was Jason Merced. The board leaning against the pillar of the market booth still displays a picture of Merced helping the team pick up trash at the park.
Withuhn describes Merced: “Easygoing, soft spoken, helpful, friendly, brave.”
During the Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day in December, Withuhn also mentioned his deceased friend while giving a speech.
“Our friend Jason Merced died on the Chico street. Jason was a fine young man. He worked with the North State Shelter Team on several occasions, pulling trash out of Chico parks. He would help you if you needed it.
“He was strong. He was intelligent. He was evicted from the pallet shelter. He was robbed of his belongings, and shortly after, died on the corner about a block from here,” Withuhn said in front of the Our Hands sculpture, choked with sobs.
Behind him, lit candles shone under the dark blue sky.
Withuhn’s ultimate goal is to eliminate homelessness in Chico and the related deaths outside.
“Several churches will have tiny homes in our parking lots and (Chico will) have a managed campground, maybe one on the south end of town and one at the north end of town,” he says.
Until then, at age 75, he wants to continue working on homelessness with NSST; he’s not pessimistic because just today, for example, he delivered his team’s research into managed campgrounds in other cities to Chico officials. “I’m gonna do [the work] until everyone has shelter, everyone has safe shelter, and the programs are steady,” he says.
Yucheng Tang, a California Local News Fellow, reported this story for ChicoSol. Photographer Karen Laslo contributed photos and quotes from the award ceremony.
Thank you.
Our crisis is calling for more letters to the Editor and more letters to the City Council requesting them to agendize NSST’s proposals for a Managed Campground and our Safe Spot Community proposal for tiny homes in church parking lots. Write your letter today; Have fewer deaths on the street tomorrow.
We have the names of 20 people who died outside in 2024.