While
in Sausalito for the weekend, Note: I took this tour as part of researching my book Seasteading: How to Homestead the High Seas and Why. I have since founded an organization, The Seasteading Institute, with the mission "To establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems." If that sounds interesting, you might want to read our brief introduction, or check out our blog.
On the north side of the Golden Gate bridge, across the bay from San Francisco, lies the charming town of Sausalito. Most notable for our interests is its large community of floating homes, about 450 of them. A floating home is a house built on a floating platform, without propulsion. The Bay has hosted such homes for over 100 years, since the time when they were called arks and "The butcher, the baker, and others...who supply the needs of daily life each has his little boat which he sends around every morning for his customary order, and the joint for dinner and the ice cream for dessert are delivered as promptly to the ark-dwellers as they are to those who are still in the city." The history and legal struggles of floating homes in the SF Bay are described in this article.
While
in Sausalito for the weekend,
Infrastructure - Each berth has an individually metered electric hookup (this is true in the nearby boat marina as well). This is nice for Baystead purposes. While Baystead should certainly experiment with generating its own electricity, it would be nice to not have to depend on it. The less problems we have to solve initially, the better. Some homes use septic tanks, but a few dump their sewage, which has been a legal issue. However, the monitored water quality of the bay has been steadily increasing for 10 years. Many berths are connected to all municipal utilities (water, gas, sewer, electric, phone, cable), which again would be very convenient for Baystead, allowing us to incrementally move to infrastrucure independence rather than having to do it from the beginning.
Flotation - Most of the homes sit on concrete barges, quite similar to the design we describe here. Some of them use other flotation materials such as styrefoam, which works alright but slowly decays (it takes decades). You can get a bank loan to build concrete-based homes but not styrefoam ones. The houses closer to the start of piers often sit on mud when the tide is low.
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Appearance - While there are conventional homes built in a standard style, there are enough converted houseboats, ferries, and self-built homes of many types to make the architecture notably heterogeneous. The contrast with homes on land is striking, here every home looks different, which is quite refreshing. Even the standard styles have different docks, colors, etc. The homes looked fairly small, and have about 1000-2000 sq. ft of space, although there are a few larger luxury homes. Most homes had small floating piers with canoes, kayaks, sculls, dinghies, zodiacs, or sailboats tied up. A few had floating gardens as well. This variety in architecture has been present since the earliest floating homes in San Francisco, which ranged from a 62-foot long luxury vessel with a glassed-in garden to a home consisting of a raft which 4 abandoned streetcars had been moved onto.
Berthing
- Most of the homes are in berths on piers. A few of them are
"anchor-outs", sitting out in the middle of the bay, unconnected to
city infrastructure. Regulatory agencies don't like this, and there
have been long-running arguments about whether they are allowed to
anchor. There aren't very many floating-home marinas, but finding a
berth is not a problem. Berths here are about $600/mo for a 40'x40',
and the rent cannot increase faster than cost-of-living index until
berth is sold. But this rent control does not seem to have caused
shortages (perhaps because there is always room to build new piers).
There are many seperate sub-communities, each based on a different
pier, which sounded like they had different owners. This provides for
a somewhat competitive market, which is good.
Legality
- Serious regulation of floating homes began in 1965 with the
passage of the McAteer-Petris act which established the state-level SF Bay Conservation and Development
Commission (BCDC). This was done as a response to problems with
waste discharge and navigational hazards. The BCDC is the agency we
will need permission from
to moor Baystead in the bay. The more recent Floating Home Residency
Act [PDF]
gives floating homeowners rights similar to trailer homeowners. For
example, management may not charge a fee for guests who stay for less
than 20 consecutive days or 30 days/yr. This is good for Baystead,
which we want people interested in seasteading to come visit.
Some 40-50 of the homes (Gates Co-Op) have been in a dispute with the government over codes/standards for about 20 years. This was recently resolved with the homeowners agreeing to bring their homes up to code, funded by zero-interest loans from the government. Building codes are as strict as land for things like fire codes, electrical wiring, space between homes, etc. However they seem to be much more spottily enforced, as evinced by the decades-long battles over regulation. Although it sounded like this applies more to grandfathered structures than new ones. (And we certainly don't mind Baystead conforming to fire codes).
The
last remaining non-code-compliant area is the small number of
anchor-out homes, like the one pictured at right. The BCDC claims
that permanent living on a moored vessel is illegal, and state law
treats a vessel anchored in one place for an extended period of time
as a type of bay "fill", like a landfill. Since the waters are
public, it is illegal to put a private residence there - they liken it
to putting a home in a public park. However, they are reluctant to
enforce these laws due to the long tradition of liveaboard boating on
the bay, and seem to generally seek compromises. New anchor-outs are
prohibited, and the BCDC seeks to move old anchor-outs into berths,
but does not force them unless vessels are abandoned or they dump
sewage.
Conclusions - This is all quite promising from a Baystead standpoint as a precedent for living in the bay. It is a legal category that we can fit into. There will be codes to adhere to, but they sound pretty reasonable (no dumping, electrical wiring up to standard, enough space so that a fire will not jump to nearby structures, etc). There is a fair amount of tourist interest in the floating homes, which bodes well for generating such interest in Baystead.
It would be great to actually moor at one of these floating home marinas, but it may not be possible. The unusual shape may be a problem (ie neighbors worried it will topple on them). Another potential issue is that if we have a lot of tourists, it could be annoying to others living on the same pier. But the greatest issue is depth, as our seastead design has quite a bit of draft (being meant for the ocean). Most of Richardson Bay is less than 10 feet deep (often much less). It may be difficult or impossible to find a marina dedicated to floating homes with the necessary water depth. However if we are not in a floating home marina, we will have to show the BCDC that we are not going to dump sewage.
This would be a great community to connect to. Our guide was quite interested in the seastead book, and others might be as well. They clearly have useful experience with actually living on the water, as well as dealing with the relevant local/state/federal governmental authorities. The development of the area is a nice illustration of incrementalism at work. It started with hippies and artists aqua-squatting, and has grown home by home and pier by pier into a fair-sized community. It was very exciting to see this living example of a permanent, floating way of life.
The Sausalito Floating Homes Association has a big annual tour where you get to go inside a number of houses.