Just over a year ago we reported that Peter Romanowsky, the self-proclaimed pirate chaplin (sic) of San Francisco Bay, who anchored out for six decades, had accepted a housing voucher from the Richardson Bay Regional Agency and moved to an apartment in Larkspur. Recently, Romanowsky told the Marin IJ: “After...
Journalist Joe Kloc first learned about the anchor-outs of Richardson’s Bay while on assignment for Harper’s Magazine. His new book, Lost at Sea: Poverty and Paradise Collide at the Edge of America, grew out of his Harper’s feature on the alternative society of boaters. As early as 2010, Kloc began...
The Richardson Bay Regional Agency (RBRA) continues to make progress toward reducing the number of anchor-out vessels from the waters off Sausalito. In September, the agency removed the last illegal floating home off Waldo Point, a condition of its agreement with the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC). ...
With the help of $3 million in state funds, the Richardson Bay Regional Agency (RBRA) established an innovative housing voucher program in 2023, allowing eight boaters previously living on the water to move into safe, secure housing on land. Others are participating in the program this year, all of which...
The New York Times recently reported on London’s growing houseboat community. Some of the challenges these houseboaters face will sound quite familiar. “In London, a Houseboat Used to Be the Affordable Option. Not Anymore,” reads the headline. It’s the old story of supply and demand, according to the Times: “With land-based...
Local media has been abuzz lately with stories from the Southern Marin waterfront. Galilee Harbor. The March 27 San Francisco Chronicle carried a front–page story about rising berth rents at Galilee Harbor. The article describes Galilee’s unique status this way: “It is the only wholly owned and operated live–aboard cooperative harbor...
The recent front-page headline in the Marin IJ, “Richardson Bay agency scraps mooring field plan” took most of us by surprise, including Sausalito councilmember Jill Hoffman, who has been a vocal opponent of the plan since it was first suggested by the RBRA in 2014. Hoffman reiterated her concerns with...
On June 23, the board of directors of the Richardson’s Bay Regional Agency (RBRA) voted unanimously to initiate a buyback incentive program to accelerate the removal of vessels from the anchorage. Interim Executive Director Steve McGrath said the agency will offer owners of vessels anchored in local waters $150 per...
Singer-songwriter Dino Valenti, though little known today, was an early mover and shaker in Sausalito’s houseboat community. Born on the East Coast in 1937, Valenti (real name: Chester William Powers, Jr.) began performing in Greenwich Village and North Beach coffeehouses, occasionally with Karen Dalton, Bob Dylan, Lou Gossett, Josh White,...
Recently we mentioned a plan, put forth by Michael Haas, to turn the drydocks in Richardson’s Bay into a “Lunar Village,” a completely self–sufficient biosphere. The plan never materialized, but that didn’t stop Haas, AKA “the Shaman of Rainbow Bay,” from creating another fantasy for an old dredging barge moored...