Richardson Bay anchor-out removal effort gains steam

Marin County supervisors have agreed to a $344,680 contract for caseworker outreach to people living on the boats.

The effort to remove all illegally anchored vessels from Richardson Bay is ramping up.

Marin County supervisors agreed this month to a $344,680 contract with Episcopal Community Services to provide a caseworker for outreach to people living on the boats, who are known as “anchor-outs.”

The caseworker will attempt to coax the anchor-outs into moving off their vessels in return for a one-year federal housing voucher supplied by the Marin Housing Authority. A large part of the expense, over $116,000, will pay for four boat trips per week.

An amendment to the 2022 state budget made at the request of state Sen. Mike McGuire provided $3 million to fund the three-year program to find housing alternatives for the anchor-outs.

If anchor-outs want to take advantage of the housing offer, they first must sign an agreement pledging to permanently remove their vessel from Richardson Bay.

Despite a maritime law that prohibits boats from anchoring in the bay for longer than 72 hours, many mariners have lived illegally on their boats there for decades. The number of illegal anchor-outs swelled to 240 in 2016. Today there are about 50.

In August 2021, the Richardson’s Bay Regional Agency approved a settlement with the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission that requires the removal of all illegally anchored vessels by Oct. 15, 2026. The agreement was reached after threats of enforcement action by the commission.

Regulators were moved to act when it became apparent that the anchor-outs were degrading ecologically vital eelgrass in the bay. Eelgrass beds reduce coastal erosion, sequester carbon, reduce ocean acidification and provide nursery habitat for commercially, recreationally and ecologically important marine life.

In June, the Richardson Bay agency accepted a $2.78 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to fund the restoration and protection of 15 acres of eelgrass in the bay.

Brad Gross, the agency’s executive director, said it received the $3 million in funding for the voucher program in March and launched the effort with the temporary assistance of the Downtown Streets Team and the county’s Department of Health and Human Services in May.

“We have four anchor-outs participating in the program right now with 11 in the queue to participate; three vouchers have been issued,” Gross said. “Any day now we expect somebody to be housed. It’s a big success.”

In April, the agency reinstated a vessel buyback program targeting anchor-out boats through October 2026. During the first iteration of the program, from June to December last year, the agency spent about $51,000 to purchase nine vessels. Three more have been purchased since the program was reinstated.

Despite the progress, at a meeting of bay commission’s enforcement committee on Wednesday, the Richardson Bay agency requested a deadline extension to remove all vessels that arrived at the anchorage after August 2019.

The committee granted the request, extending the deadline a year. The change will affect 14 boats and three floating homes.

“I don’t have an objection to the extension,” said Rebecca Eisen, a member of the commission, “but I do have a sense of urgency about making sure that this doesn’t keep getting extended. Everybody is hoping to get some results as quickly as possible.”

Gross said the extension will give the agency time to try to get the people living on the vessels into its voucher program.

Otherwise, he said, “They’re simply going to go somewhere else, and they’re going to be a problem for another agency that may not have the services that we have available for them.”

Also discussed at the meeting Wednesday was Sausalito’s continuing efforts to convince the commission to allow more people to live permanently on vessels in marinas in its jurisdiction. The commission allows 10% of the vessels in marinas to have people living on them. Sausalito is seeking an increase to 15%.

In 2021, McGuire floated the idea of securing state funds to rent slips in Marin marinas where residents living illegally on their boats in Richardson Bay could be relocated. The proposal received a cool reception from the commission’s legislative committee, which told Sausalito that in order to make such a change a regional benefit would need to be demonstrated.

Sausalito Councilmember Joan Cox, who attended the meeting Wednesday, said the proposal was never officially rejected, however, and the city wants to revisit it.

“As part of our housing element, we thought it would be important to revive the dialogue that we commenced several years ago,” Cox said. “We will be caucusing with BCDC staff on it in the next couple of weeks.”

Brandon Phipps, Sausalito’s community development director, told the committee, “It could potentially be a great way for the city of Sausalito to increase its residential unit count.”

“I think it is a brilliant idea,” said Steve Meckfessel, manager of the Marina Village Yacht Harbor in Alameda. “If it is properly monitored it will be a very responsible use.”

But Rebecca Schwartz Lesberg, a biologist who was hired by the Richardson Bay agency to prepare an eelgrass protection and management plan, said, “We do need to look at the precedent it would set for the entire bay and how we are using our bay for permanent residency. Once that cap goes up, it is unlikely it would ever go back down.”