Richmond roundup at unlawful stable
City moves to oust 100 horses from land not zoned for boarding
One hundred horses that haven’t done anything wrong except, perhaps, answer nature’s call too often have been ordered to hit the trail in Richmond.
It’s the biggest roundup in city history — and the horses’ owners pledge it will never happen.
“They’ll have to arrest me,” said Javier Castaneda, who has been boarding Ghost and Princess at the low-budget Richmond Stable for years. “I have no place for them to go. I’m not going to let them go hungry. If they lock the gate, I’ll come in and feed them anyway. If that’s trespassing, I guess I’ll go to jail.”
The stable, operating for nearly two decades on a patch of industrial land next to the Amtrak tracks on the north side of town, got a notice of code violations three weeks ago. City officials say the land is not zoned for a stable and that the property owner allows illegal dumping on an adjacent tract of land. They contend the stables are an eyesore, full of debris, lack adequate drainage and feature a small, pungent mountain of what horsemen refer to as “gardener’s gold.”
“Well, it’s the same stuff that comes out of the mayor and the City Council,” said one horse owner, who preferred not to be associated by name with that particular sentiment.
The horse crowd happily acknowledges that the Richmond Stable is a low-
budget affair. Horse owners pay $160 a month to board a horse, said to be the lowest rent in the Bay Area by at least half. That sum entitles a horse to a modest, jerry-built stall fashioned from repurposed plywood. The stable’s main office is a converted truck trailer. Inside is manager Brian Gaither.
“There’s no way the city could take care of all these horses if they make us leave,” Gaither said. “The animal care and control people said they didn’t have room for more than four horses. So they can’t just shut it down.”
Gaither said the city, in seeking to end the illegal dumping, is turning the horses into scapegoats.
The tenants say the Richmond Stable is just about the last affordable place where a blue-collar horse lover can board a horse in the Bay Area. Owning a horse in a city is not a blue-collar kind of thing, the Richmond Stable tenants acknowledge. At the historic Folger Stable in Woodside, for example, where horses get “long-stemmed high quality hay” and a comfy blanket at night, the monthly boarding charge is $1,000.
Cliff Yamashita, a retired tow truck driver, owns Miley and her new colt, Titan. Like most of his fellow boarders, he likes to go riding at nearby Point Pinole Regional Shoreline. He said he would probably have to sell both animals if he gets kicked out.
“I can’t afford the other stables,” he said. “Nobody here can. There are nicer stables, sure, but they charge you for that. As long as the horse is taken care of, it doesn’t mind what the stable looks like.”
Inspectors from the city and from the animal control department visited the property this month. A spokesman for the animal control department said the animals all looked fine.
“The horses were all healthy, with food and water,” said Steve Burdo, a spokesman for the department. “There were no issues of abuse or neglect.”
Code enforcement officers issued abatement orders and installed padlocks on the gates leading to what they said were the illegal dumps next door, but allowed the horses to remain. Horse owners said the city inspectors told them they did not even know there was a stable on the property. City Manager Bill Lindsay said the stable had operated “under the radar.”
At that, the horse owners whinnied in disbelief. It’s not easy, they said, to hide 100 horses for 17 years.
Richmond Councilman Jael Myrick, who met with the horse owners, said he “hopes we can find a way to let them stay there, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.”
Myrick, choosing his words as carefully as a man in fancy shoes might choose his path through a corral, called the stable a “community resource that the city wasn’t officially aware of.”
Lindsay said the city would “use appropriate patience” with the stable tenants and allow them to occupy the premises “temporarily, pending relocation” if they show good faith at cleanup efforts. Asked how long “temporarily” might be, Lindsay said, “weeks — not days, not months.” But he said the landlord could also file a formal application to operate a stable and submit a request to have the property rezoned.
Frank Frizzie owns the entire site, including the stable and the illegal dumps. He also drives a small bulldozer around the property, trying to stay ahead of the debris that always seems to pile up at a place with 100 horses. He said the city knows all about his stable and is not shy about accepting his property tax checks, so for officials to plead ignorance is “not right.”
As for the giant pile of horse poop, Frizzie and Gaither arranged this month to have most of it hauled to a nearby organic garden, where operators understand the miracle of horse poop, refer to it as “manure” and welcomed it with somewhat open arms.
The horse owners say they suspect that bigmoney developers have their eye on the property and want to see the horses and the construction debris gone.
Horse trainer Nancy Artegiani, who gives $10 riding lessons to city kids who have never been on a horse before, said the Richmond horses are all “healthy and clean,” even though the stable is on the modest side.
“So what if things don’t match and the place ain’t picture pretty?” she said, while taking a 7-week-old colt out for a walk. “The horses are happy. They’re not complaining.”