ANCHORS AWEIGH, ‘BITTER-ENDERS’?
On the waterfront: City has already removed out some 27 of 70 floating homes at Docktown Marina
REDWOOD CITY >> As an eviction deadline looms for the weathered houseboats that bob along the muddy shore of Redwood Creek, a few stubborn holdouts are fighting to preserve both their homes and a way of life that’s quickly disappearing.
If their long-shot legal efforts fail, the remaining residents of Docktown Marina — one of the Bay Area’s last floating communities — soon will be tossed into a housing market few can afford. As they lose their homes, the Bay Area will lose a rare, quirky enclave that for decades remained untouched by the high-end, tech industry-fueled development rising all around it.
“We’re going to fight like hell,” said Docktown resident and lawyer Alison Madden. “It’s just such a loss.”
Residents have five lawsuits pending against Redwood City, including one
“This is a tragic situation. If there was any way that we could have avoided this situation, we would have.”
— Redwood City Mayor Ian Bain
that accuses the city of failing to study the potential environmental impact of removing Docktown’s floating homes and another claiming the city doesn’t have authority to disband the community. The holdouts, calling themselves the “bitter-enders,” still hope the court will provide relief, or at least delay their Feb. 28 evictions.
The city says it has no choice but to remove Docktown’s 70 floating homes. The state owns the land under the marina, and granted it to Redwood City in a trust that came with a caveat — the land must be available to the public. Docking houseboats is not allowed, the city’s attorney says, because it turns the area into a private, residential space.
Boaters have been living at Docktown since the 1960s, but recently Redwood City officials started questioning that arrangement. The issue came to a head in late 2015, when a lawyer living across the river from Docktown sued the city, claiming the floating homes violated the intended use of the waterfront. The city agreed to disband the community, promising to buy out residents and give them extra cash incentives to move.
It will cost taxpayers some $20.8 million to relocate the marina’s residents, city officials expect — more than twice what they estimated last spring. Some residents are fleeing the Bay Area in search of cheaper housing. Others are contemplating homelessness.
“This is a tragic situation,” Redwood City Mayor Ian Bain said at a council meeting earlier this month. “It’s tragic for the residents. … It’s tragic for the taxpayers who have to foot this bill. If there was any way that we could have avoided this situation, we would have.”
Efrat Berman, 52, pays about $600 a month to dock her blue-and-white houseboat at Docktown. She’s been looking into RV parks, but most have a long waiting list and accept only newer, more expensive motor homes.
“I bought an older RV just so I’m not in a tent,” said Berman, who has lived in Docktown since 2010. “But basically I don’t have a place to park it. … That means I’m going to be on the streets, like the rest of the people living in their cars.”
The city gave Berman, who owns a tailoring shop in San Carlos, $3,750 for her houseboat, and another $10,000 incentive payment for signing the paperwork early.
So far, 27 of the 70 households at the marina have moved, and another 31 have agreed to leave. The homes include small boats, traditional houseboats, and large two and three-story houses on floating barges. The city offered between $4,000 and $48,000 for residents’ boats, and $83,000 to $1.2 million for the large homes, according to a staff report. So far, the city has demolished nine of the vessels it acquired, and plans to auction off others.
Joe Ryan, 59, stood surveying the gutted 43-foot Delta Clipper where he lived with his wife and two young children for seven years. Then he packed one last load — a light blue child’s bicycle — into the back of his waiting truck. Ryan, a contractor, planned to head to Half Moon Bay, then likely on to the Pacific Northwest.
Ryan met his wife here, just one of many residents to fall in love on the docks. Over the years, he and his neighbors gathered at the Peninsula Yacht Club — the community watering hole in the base of a historic water tower — to celebrate weddings, mourn deaths and toast baby announcements.
“It’s really sad to watch our community falling apart,” Ryan said, turning his head as he wiped away a tear.
Redwood City is considering a plan to build 131 townhomes bordering Docktown, but officials are quick to say that development wouldn’t affect Docktown itself. They still don’t know what will become of the marina once residents move out. They might convert it into a nonresidential marina or restore the natural wetlands.
Across the river from Docktown, new high-end condos dubbed One Marina rise out of the marshland. One of those units is home to Ted Hannig, whose lawsuit against the city prompted the Docktown evictions.
Hannig’s kitchen window looks out over the floating community, and he docks one of his three sailboats, the Knot Guilty, in the neighboring marina. The 59-year-old lawyer says he watched Docktown boats scraping against the riverbed’s shell-laden mud in low tide, and wondered if toxic paint from the hulls was washing into a nearby wildlife sanctuary. He started researching the issue, which he says caused a stir among residents.
One day while he was unloading groceries from his car, a golf ball came flying toward his head, barely missing him. Hannig suspected someone at Docktown wanted to hurt him, and filed a police report. Now, it was personal.
“I decided I wasn’t going to lie down, and I was going to fight the issue,” Hannig said.
He filed a lawsuit, claiming Docktown residents were polluting the public trust land. He also alleged conditions at the marina weren’t safe, citing exposed wires, tripping hazards and a lack of fire hydrants.
Hannig says he sympathizes with Docktown residents. But it’s because of his settlement with the city, he says, that they received a year’s grace period and relocation payouts.
“It’s easy to point at me as the hatchet man,” Hannig said, speaking from Panama, where he was working on coral reef preservation and HIV prevention, among other nonprofit projects. “But this was going to happen. I just tried to make provisions so that the impact was buffered with some time and with millions of dollars.”
Though the case has made Hannig plenty of enemies — he says he sometimes gets accosted when he goes out to eat — Hannig has a résumé filled with humanitarian activity. He’s chairman and CEO of the Danford Foundation, which supports local nonprofits, and previously served on the board of Casa de Redwood, a housing facility for low-income seniors.
Docktown represents a dying way of life, leaving boat-dwellers few options. Floating communities at nearby Pete’s Harbor and Peninsula Marina have been wiped out to make way for waterfront developments.
Some Docktown residents are considering moving to the Port of Redwood City or the Berkeley Marina, but space is limited, and they won’t take many larger Docktown boats.
Redwood City officials say they tried to save Docktown. They twice petitioned the State Lands Commission to grandfather the marina’s live-aboard vessels, and worked on legislation that would have given residents a 15-year extension, but both efforts failed. The commission has allowed residential boats at other marinas on public trust land — such as the Petaluma Marina. But Petaluma is different, Redwood City says, because its land is leased to the city, not granted.
At Docktown, “bitterenders” are left eagerly awaiting a ruling in the environmental lawsuit.
But whatever happens in court, it will be too late for 68-year-old Ellen Savage, who already gave up her three-story floating home of 15 years. Now she rents a manufactured home in a 55-and-over community in Half Moon Bay.
“I had everything in the world that I wanted,” Savage said. “This was the place that I felt I was meant to be in for the rest of my life.”