The California Coastal Commission will hold a preliminary hearing next week that could determine the fate of an emergency R.V. park that is housing former residents of a condemned Bolinas ranch.
On Friday, the commission’s staff recommended that commissioners allow the park to remain, rejecting the arguments of opponents who claim the project violates Marin County’s coastal zoning regulations and state environmental safeguards.
The county approved permits for the R.V. park last year as a short-term measure to house about 60 people, nearly all of them Latino, who had been living in ramshackle dwellings on a Big Mesa ranch formerly owned by the Tacherra family.
If commissioners dismiss the group’s appeal, the Bolinas Community Land Trust can continue moving forward with its plans to upgrade the temporary housing and procure land next door. The trust plans to clean up the site and replace the dilapidated structures with permanent farmworker housing.
The appeal was brought by a group called Bolinas for Compassionate Land Use. If the commissioners decide that the group has raised substantive objections, they will schedule a full hearing at a future meeting, where they could overturn the county’s approval of the R.V. park.
The project has received widespread support in Bolinas, and it is unclear how many people belong to Bolinas for Compassionate Land Use. The appeal was filed by attorney Edward Yates and signed by Cheryl Ruggiero, who has spoken out against the project in the Bolinas Hearsay News.
The county’s designation of the R.V. park as a campground is a central part of the appeal. In approving a coastal development permit and a use permit allowing the park to operate, the county identified the project as an “R.V. campground.”
Ms. Ruggiero’s group argues that the project is not a campground but a mobile home park, a use prohibited in the coastal zone. And while campgrounds are permitted, they argue, guests are only allowed to stay in them for 30 days a year.
“The county’s contention that such placement and use of permanent manufactured housing structures can be defined as a ‘campground’ is simply not credible,” the appeal states.
The group also maintains that the project violates the Williamson Act, a law that gives property owners a tax break for keeping their land in agricultural production. They also argue that it encroaches on wetlands and was subject to insufficient environmental review.
Though the coastal commission’s staff agreed that the R.V. park is not technically a campground, they contend that the project should be approved despite this “confusing” inconsistency.
“The project furthers Local Coastal Program farm worker and related affordable housing objectives applicable to a ranch property like this,” their report states. “The county may have called it a campground for various technical reasons of its own, but that is less germane than the [outcome of] the project.”
County zoning regulations prohibit development within 100 feet of wetlands, and the R.V. park is located within 50 feet of officially designated wetlands on one side and within 10 feet of wetlands on another. But commission staff said both areas appear to “lack hydrology,” and their report concluded that the project would lead to a “net environmental benefit” because it would remove red-tagged structures with condemned sewage disposal systems.
“As this project addresses a public health hazard and provides much-needed affordable housing for a marginalized community of Latinx farm workers and related persons, it also promotes equity and environmental justice,” staff wrote.
The R.V. park is located on a 2.5-acre portion of a 20-acre parcel at 130 Mesa Road, next to the Bolinas fire station. The lot was once part of a 46-acre ranch that historically provided meat, vegetables and eggs to the community. But the ranch has been in a receivership for years due to a legal and financial dispute between family members, and the court-appointed receiver managing the property sold the 20-acre parcel to the land trust in 2018 to help pay off debts and tax liabilities.
The trust intends to restore the 20-acre parcel to agricultural use after it builds permanent housing, which is expected to take up to six years. Residents of the R.V. park would be given an opportunity to purchase units of the new housing at subsidized rates.
The county red-tagged the ranch in 2022 for housing unpermitted structures that pose public health and safety hazards. Many of the 23 dwellings on the site lacked heat, safe drinking water and sewage disposal systems. Some residents had to shower outdoors with hoses and cold water.
If the coastal commission reverses the county’s permit approvals, the consequences could be grave for residents of the R.V. park, called Bo Linda Vista, said Annie O’Connor, executive director of the land trust.
“It would have a pretty disastrous impact,” she said. “It could result in the relocation of all the families and roll back all the work that we have done.”
Sarah Jones, the director of Marin’s Community Development Agency, said the county remains committed to moving the project forward. If coastal commissioners conclude that the appeal raises significant concerns, county planners would seek solutions that address them, she said.
“The Coastal Act did not envision that people should be forced to keep living in squalor,” she said. “These are people’s lives here. We’ve worked very hard to keep this community from being displaced. They are an integral part of Bolinas.”
The Bo Linda Vista residents are considered the backbone of the local workforce. In addition to doing farm work, they are employed in restaurants and shops around town and do yard work and maintenance jobs. Their children make up a significant portion of the school population.
The trust has made a priority of making sure the Bo Linda community’s voice is heard while advocating for the project. But in a statement to the Light on Tuesday, Mr. Yates stated it was important to speak out for the “endangered and voiceless creatures” that inhabit the coastal zone. “The B.C.L.T. and the Coastal Commission staff have chosen to ignore the Coastal Act and not to protect the environment,” he said.
The county has contributed $668,000 to the housing project, and the state has committed $8.7 million from a fund established to combat homelessness. The funds would be used to cover operating costs of the R.V. park, to provide social services to the residents and to purchase the property next door.
Ms. O’Connor said the transfer of money from the state’s Encampment Resolution Fund has been delayed by a legislative audit that raised questions about California’s monitoring of spending on homelessness services. “The award has been made but the distribution from the state to the county and the county to the B.C.L.T. has been held up in a bureaucratic process,” she said.
To keep the project on track, the land trust plans to request a $500,000 bridge loan from the county in September.
Some of that money would be used to replace five of the R.V.s, which are not large enough to comfortably accommodate families with children. The funds would also be used to repair other trailers, some of which developed leaks and mold during last year’s rains. The trailers with the worst problems have been replaced, Ms. O’Connor said, but some replacements face new issues.
This article was corrected on Aug. 9 to remove the word “condemned” from a description of the Tacherra property. The property was red-tagged, but it was not condemned.