Veteran building official Lou Kirk has been appointed assistant director of community and economic development for the city of San Rafael and will oversee the city’s building and code enforcement divisions at a time when mounting concerns over aging housing stock and climate vulnerability are putting new pressure on the city to find solutions.

Kirk, who recently joined the city after serving as assistant chief building official in Santa Rosa, said his immediate priority will be ensuring fair and consistent enforcement of safety standards citywide while he learns the complexities of San Rafael’s housing challenges, particularly the flood-vulnerable Canal neighborhood.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.