Several dozen South San Francisco residents who live on their boats, many of whom say they have nowhere else to go, are being evicted from Oyster Cove Marina to make way for a biotech campus expansion.

Residents of the private 200-slip marina were given just two weeks last month to sign a document agreeing to leave by Oct. 15 — or else face eviction after 30 days. And while 14 were offered $10,000 to relocate, many others, some of whom lost their legal “live-aboard” status in recent years, are being left out of the offer.

The move comes after Kilroy Realty purchased the marina, along with 50 acres adjacent, in 2018. The Southern California based developer is currently in the midst of building 3 million square feet of office and research space on the land.

“For me, I’m not going to be able to afford a place on land, that’s the end of my life here,” said Dave H., a resident of the marina since 2001 who did not want his last name published. The 77-year-old Vietnam veteran retired last year and now relies on Social Security and disability to afford his $500-a-month slip costs.

He’s also among those not being offered the monetary relocation assistance, despite having held a live-aboard permit for more than a decade. His current permit is for an “extended stay,” a downgrade sold as a way of being allowed to keep a second boat at the marina, according to several residents who are estimated to be 40 or more who live at the dock lack the paperwork to do so .

The marina now sits more than half empty, and those left aren’t being charged for their slip if they sign the agreement to vacate, which Kilroy recently extended the deadline for to July 31 following a call from the city to do so. Ten of the 14 offered checks have agreed to the offer.

But those who remain say they need more time to either find another marina or make arrangements to move elsewhere. And even those offered the checks contend it’s not enough to cover boat inspections and other costs associated with moving — assuming they could find an increasingly rare live-aboard slip to take them.

Just 10% of the nearby 455-slip Oyster Point Marina, which is the jurisdiction of the San Mateo County Harbor District, can legally be rented to live-aboard tenants, for instance, and the waitlist is years long.

That’s in part a product of multiple marina closures on the Peninsula in recent years, including Pete’s Harbor in Redwood City in 2015, which forced about 50 live-aboard residents out. Amid bitter litigation, Redwood City’s Docktown has also been in the process of moving out its 70 residents since 2013.

Lucia Lachmayr, a resident of Oyster Cove since 2012 and one of those not offered a check to leave, said many at the marina are in their 70s, are low income and some are disabled.

Corey Browning/Daily Journal

Lucia Lachmayr, a resident of Oyster Cove since 2012 and one of those not offered a check to leave, said many at the marina are in their 70s, are low income and some are disabled. As an instructor at Skyline College, she said she’s one of the lucky ones to have a good income and other housing options.

“There’s a lot of people here that are working poor,” she said. “They have no place to move to, so they’re just terrified, where are they going to go? The reality is some will become homeless and some will just say screw it, I’m going to go take my boat right out here in the channel and be an anchor-out.”

In Sausalito, the closure of marinas offering live-aboard slips and tightening enforcement around people unlawfully calling their boats home has led to both outcomes, as some have opted to brave the Bay waters by dropping anchor offshore, risking unsafe conditions that can often lead to boats being swept into rocky shores. It’s also led to encampments of ex-boaters who’ve become homeless following the loss of their vessels.

Lachmayr said some of those displaced elsewhere ended up at Oyster Cove, also around the time more residents began living on their boats without proper permitting.

While some expressed the leniency had been granted by the Oyster Cove harbormaster at the time to make accommodations that skirted the limits on live-aboard slips, Lachmayr said she felt it was done so to aid in the eventual evictions.

“This was intentional,” she said. “They got rid of the live-aboards so that when they did offer, it was only a few people that were left to make that offer to.”

Real estate firm Shorenstein originally gained approval to develop the area in 2011, but sold the land to Greenland Group in 2016. Plans at the time were for a 2.2-million square-foot campus aimed at the biotech sector, with the marina retained. Lachmayr said residents met with city planners as recently as 2018 and were assured there would not be displacement.

But the eviction notice, delivered June 16 on behalf of Oyster Cove Marina Owner LLC, states “as part of the planning for the neighborhood, we are currently reevaluating the long term use of the marina … we will not be providing return rights of any kind to existing tenants.”

A statement from Kilroy uses similar language and adds “we understand the uncertainty that these changes will introduce to our boat owners, which is why we are working with them to make their transition as painless as possible.”

South San Francisco Councilmember Eddie Flores said the city is actively working with Kilroy to reach better terms for the boaters, including an extension of the move out date to February next year and more assistance with relocation. He said city staff had provided a list of nearby marinas with openings.

“We will continue to use our voice and bring the dialogue so that Kilroy knows that these are very important residents, and we take care of our residents here in South City,” he said.

He noted, however, that ultimately the city has limited say in the matter because the marina is privately owned, and state tenant protections do not apply to those living on the water, regardless of live-aboard status.

“For those living on their boats without a permit, I’m also willing to discuss with Kilroy Reality whether any relief can also be provided to those boaters, but whether relief is possible is really unknown,” he said. He indicated a meeting with Kilroy had been set for next week.

In the meantime, Chris Robinson, a resident of the marina since the late 90s, said he’s both been unable to find another marina and unable to find affordable housing on land since being asked to leave.

“There’s no reasonable option that you can find any type of live-aboard slip,” he said. “It’s just a disappearing lifestyle.”

And while South San Francisco has looked to offer more affordable housing in recent years, units available often go to those who have been on waitlists for years. Additionally, even the most affordable studio (for those dubbed “extremely low-income” per state lingo) is nearly double the monthly rent of an Oyster Cove slip.

“Just living around here, the bigger picture I think people don’t realize … there’s really no longer a middle class, there’s really no longer a lower class,” Robinson said. “There’s either homeless, left the state, or high-income, and that is it. And that’s the way this whole Bay Area is going to become at this point.”

Kilroy Realty is currently in the second of four phases of construction on the waterfront campus. The company is worth approximately $6.3 billion and the second phase alone is projected to cost $900 million.

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For decades, a group known as the “anchor-outs” enjoyed a relatively peaceful existence in a corner of the San Francisco Bay. The mariners carved out an affordable, bohemian community on the water, in a county where the median home price recently hit $1.8m.

But their haven could be coming to an end – and with it, a rapidly disappearing way of life.

The anchor-outs live aboard semi-derelict boats abutting the town of Sausalito, an upscale enclave just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin county where mansions boast floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the water. Tourists arrive by ferry from the city on weekends, strolling the promenade of restaurants, wine bars, art galleries and boutiques.

• Top: Anchor-out boats sit in Richardson Bay in Sausalito, California, last month. Bottom: Jeff Jacob Chase looks out the window of a friend’s boat.

The agency that oversees the local waterway known as the Richardson Bay has in recent months begun a fervent crackdown on the boat dwellers, who they say are here illegally and pose a threat to safety and the marine environment. Determined to clear the waters, a hardline harbormaster has even begun confiscating and destroying boats that overstay their welcome.

The anchor-outs, meanwhile, are fighting back, staging protests and clashing with authorities who they say are in effect rendering them homeless.

On a recent afternoon, the sounds of a tractor’s hydraulic arm crushing a fiberglass sailboat carried on the wind. The noise lingered over a homeless encampment that has grown near the waterfront. “Camp Cormorant”, as boaters nicknamed it, has become the political base of the anchor-outs’ protest movement.

For the 50 or so people camped in neat rows of tents, the frequent whir, crunch and crack of the crusher represents their way of life being torn to bits. Many say they were forced to decamp here after their vessels were destroyed.

“They want to take our homes and shut the anchorage down,” says Jeff Jacob Chase, a 20-year anchor-out with a trademark pirate swagger, a long, salt-and-pepper beard, spectacles and floppy hat. “They basically want to eradicate a culture.”

In a region dominated by water, boats have been used as a cheap source of housing since the Gold Rush, when miners lived aboard vessels. In the 1950s, a community of bohemians and artists grew along the Sausalito shoreline, with residents building wildly creative floating constructions that offered shelter and inspiration to Beat writers and artists such as Allen Ginsberg and Shel Silverstein. It transformed into a hippy music scene in the 1960s, but in the mid-1970s, residents of those houseboats were mostly pushed out in a series of local enforcement actions known as “the houseboat wars”.

Despite its beatnik origins, today the Richardson Bay hosts a unique waterfront class system.

At the top are the authorized houseboat marinas where floating, luxury homes with shingle siding, plumbing and electricity can sell for over $1m. Other boaters, known as live-aboards, can pay a monthly fee to dwell on their sailboats and cabin cruisers in a marina slip, but the number of spots is tightly controlled and authorities say there is a long waiting list. Finally there are the anchor-outs, whom some see as the last of a dying breed of free spirits who eschew the world of rent deposits, credit checks and bills.

The anchor-outs get by with minimal resources, hauling their own water and generating power from tiny solar panels. They brave the bay’s famous winds to travel to and from the shore in rowboats or motorized dinghies.

Housing advocates say the battle over their way of life is just the latest chapter in a crisis that has seen living options for low-income residents all but vanish.

Chase still has his sailboat, a sloop named the Jubilee, but he also spends time in Camp Cormorant, organizing his fellow boaters to protest against the evictions as an officer of the local chapter of the California Homeless Union.

“What they’re doing is criminalizing this entire community,” said Chase.

Waterfront patrols and crushed boats

Curtis Havel, the harbormaster, would be the first to call himself the villain of this story.

It’s a breezy Wednesday morning and Havel is out patrolling the waters. He stands on the bow of his aluminum patrol boat and gestures at the spectacular scenery around him.

“For a long time, people regarded Richardson’s Bay as this sort of bohemian live-and-let-live situation and the vessel count continued to increase,” he says. “Now it’s time for us to enforce our rules.”

The state agency that oversees the San Francisco Bay had been building pressure on local authorities to act, and Havel says clearing the harbor of illegal anchoring was the primary mission he was given when hired two years ago.

Citing a long-unenforced rule that says boats can anchor for no more than 72 hours, Havel has been confiscating boats, dragging them into a shipyard and crushing them into chunks. Of the 190 boats out here when he took over, Havel says he has gotten rid of all but 86 vessels – about 70 of which are now occupied by full-time residents.

Havel argues boats and their occupants can cause a laundry list of problems and environmental concerns. Their anchors drag along the bottom and destroy the eelgrass, an important habitat for marine life. Boats break loose from their anchors during storms, endangering those aboard and others along the shore. The residents dump sewage and leave abandoned boats and parts polluting the bay. And there have been complaints about drug use and crime.

Havel says his enforcement has made him unpopular, but he’s willing to take some flak in order to get the job done.

His patrol boat edges up to the side of a rusting, metal-hulled craft, piled with plywood and corrugated metal, which appears to have become home to a flock of seagulls. Havel had already plastered a note on the side of the boat, warning that it would be disposed of if not removed within 10 days.

“I hate to even call this a boat; at this point it’s just a shell,” he says, adding that he hasn’t seen occupants aboard the vessel for several months. “That’s a dead boat you’re looking at.”

Havel recently announced plans to leave his role at the end of the month, and while his agency appears undeterred in its mission, he says they are trying to find long-term solutions. The state has agreed to extend the timeline for clearing the bay by a few years, and for those still living aboard, Havel says, the county plans to send outreach workers to help find other housing.

But around the anchorage, signs of rebellion abound. Some boats fly upside down American flags, the maritime signal for distress. Occupants of a boat named Evolution have taped up a big, hand-stenciled “R”, rebranding it the “REvolution”.

As Havel patrols, a metal dinghy motors up behind him. The driver, a boat-dweller with a white megaphone, starts shouting at Havel, peppering his taunts with expletives. “Tell them how you’ve been crushing people’s homes, sir,” yells the man. Havel, however, appears unflustered.

“It’s always been politically charged; it’s just getting heightened because we’re doing something.”

‘I’m not homeless, I’m houseless’

Authorities say they have only been seizing abandoned and derelict boats, but around Camp Cormorant, numerous residents claim to have lost their homes to the crusher.

Michael Adams and his wife lived in the anchorage for decades, raising two kids. The couple had recently become afraid to leave their boat, a historic 1928 pleasure cruiser named the Marlin, for fear it would get destroyed.

“I went off one morning and he crushed it,” says Adams as he paints a mural on the plywood patio he built in front of the tent he and his wife now call home.

Robyn Kelly, a former skincare technician, moved into the anchorage after giving up her apartment and job to care for her sick mother, and ended up living on a 28ft power boat for a decade. She says it made an excellent home, until one day in 2019 she found it had been confiscated by the harbormaster.

“I went away for 24 hours and I came back and it was gone,” said Kelly, who has since filed a lawsuit against the authorities for destroying her boat and possessions.

Kelly and her two pups, Hank and Nacho, are currently staying on a friend’s boat; she’d like to move back to shore but her small income isn’t enough to make the deposit for an apartment and her arthritis is starting to give her trouble. “I couldn’t afford an apartment now,” she said. “I’d love one.”

Kelly’s friend, Billy McClean, is a fourth-generation Marin county resident. He can look across the water from where his Dutch cruiser is anchored and see stately houses constructed nearly a century ago by his grandfather, a local builder.

He recalls growing up seeing people living freely on the water. “When I was a teenager I used to come down here to the boats and buy pot from what I called ‘the hippies’,” he says. “Now I live here.”

McClean says people like him have been priced out of the region by an influx of tech workers making six-figure salaries. McClean couldn’t afford a decent apartment at his previous job working for a fencing company – so he bought a cheap motorboat and moved into the anchorage in 2009.

His vessel has a TV, DVD player and a small refrigerator, all powered by a generator. He doesn’t have much space inside, but from his white decks he can see green waters and California hillsides all around him.

“It’s nice out here – and then it’s not,” he said. “It’s a lot of work – and in the winter, it can be downright life threatening.”

• Top: Brian Doris, left, the homeless coordinator Robbie Powelson, center, and Jeff Jacob Chase, right, talk in Doris’s boat. Bottom: Doris on his boat.

A short skiff ride across the anchorage from McClean, Brian Doris is fixing up an old pleasure yacht named Marlia that he bought for $1 after it was abandoned. The outside of his boat is still cluttered with toolboxes and boat repair supplies, but he’s transformed the interior with sumptuous Turkish rugs and plants.

“I’m not homeless, I’m houseless,” says Doris, who says he can no longer sleep on land because he misses the rocking of the waves.

Like many anchorage residents, Doris scoffs at the idea of being placed into shelter housing. “This is my home,” he says, adding if they want to take his boat, they should “bring a body bag”.

The last of a dying breed

Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of the San Francisco-based Coalition on Homelessness, says living on a boat was one of many “very-low-income housing options” that used to exist in California alongside residential hotels and live-work spaces in warehouses. But these types of marginal housing have vanished.

“Once gentrification came, those options disappeared, and that puts pressure on homelessness,” says Friedenbach.

Timothy Logan, a boat owner descended from three generations of California travelers, bought his houseboat cruiser the SS Patio nine years ago to serve as his primary residence. But since then, he has been kicked out of one harbor after another.

He started as a resident of a marina in Sacramento, living along river waters that eventually feed into the San Francisco Bay. That marina closed for development, so he moved his boat to other harbors, including ones in Antioch and Oakland, only to see boaters kicked out of those places too.

“Out of the blue, the whole state of California was like: ‘You can’t live on the water,’”he says.

While the SS Patio is still anchored out in Richardson Bay, Logan fears his boat will eventually end up being crushed like many of his friends’.

Havel, the harbormaster, and authorities governing both Richardson Bay and the state of California say they are determined that within five years, the last of the anchor-outs will be gone. For their part, the anchor-outs don’t intend to go quietly.

“We are a community; we’re trying to stick together,” says Logan.

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