West Marin’s workforce housing crisis has been brought into sharp relief at a Point Reyes Station ranch where the county recently red-tagged 13 dwellings that lack proper septic systems and permits. The residents fear they could soon be evicted and that they will have no place else to go.
Nearly all the roughly 40 people living at the Martinelli ranch are Latinos, and some have been working in essential jobs in town for decades. Their children go to school here, and the ranch is the only home some have ever known. Many don’t want to leave, even though the county has posted signs saying their housing is unfit for human habitation.
“PELIGRO: ENTRE A SU PROPIA RESPONSABILIDAD,” state the signs that appeared on their doors last May. “CAUTION: ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.”
Last week, the county sent the ranch owner, Vicki Martinelli, a letter ordering her to install temporary septic tanks and portable toilets within seven days. As of Wednesday, the county had yet to receive a response that satisfied its concerns.
Ms. Martinelli told the Light that she wanted to make things right but might not have the money to immediately comply with all the requirements, which she found complicated and confusing. If she doesn’t, she could be fined $2,500 a day.
Local nonprofits and foundations are scrambling to find alternative housing for the residents. Whether they can find a solution in time remains to be seen.
Last week, about a dozen ranch residents invited Supervisor Dennis Rodoni to a meeting at the Point Reyes Community Presbyterian Church to share their concerns, and they invited Light reporters along to listen.
“I’ve been living in Point Reyes Station for 30 years,” said an elderly woman whose grandson attends West Marin School. “What would happen if we had to move out tomorrow? Where would we go?”
Housing is scarce and rents elsewhere in town are high. If the ranch closes, the residents said, they would likely be forced to move to Petaluma, Rohnert Park or Santa Rosa, far from their work, their friends and their schools.
At the Martinelli ranch, a 1,000-acre Tomasini Canyon property just north of town, residents pay $1,000 to $1,500 a month to live in one- or two-bedroom trailers or mobile homes. Their landlord covers utilities. It would be extraordinarily difficult to find anything else for that price in town.
“Now that there is a red-tag notice above my door, what is the possibility of getting those violations corrected?” asked Enrique Hernandez, who has lived in West Marin for more than two decades. “Is there any possibility that we can remain on the ranch?”
Supervisor Rodoni listened sympathetically but could not answer that question.
“I’m not going to tell you that this situation can be resolved quickly, because it can’t,” he said.
Addressing violations of the county’s zoning and safety codes can be complicated, Mr. Rodoni said. But the county has outlined short-term steps that Ms. Martinelli can take while working to address longer-term issues.
“My personal goal is to keep you housed, to make sure you have a place to live,” Mr. Rodoni said. “My second personal goal is to keep you in the community and to keep your kids in school.”
While residents like Mr. Hernandez would like to stay, others have already left, unhappy with the condition of their housing or worried about being evicted.
Abigail Montiel, who lived at the ranch for four years but recently moved to Inverness, said conditions at her trailer were miserable.
“Water leaked in, and it was damp and humid,” she said. “For two years while I was living there, there was a tarp over the roof to keep water from leaking in, but the water kept leaking in anyway.”
For a time, she said, the property manager kept the gate to the ranch locked with a padlock that was sometimes difficult to open.
“I felt imprisoned,” Ms. Montiel said.
Aracely Rivera, who served as property manager at the time, said the gate was locked for a couple weeks because thieves had been sneaking onto the property and stealing diesel from farm equipment.
“I enjoy living on the ranch,” said Ms. Rivera, who has lived there for more than a decade. “If you are having issues with your trailer, I believe you have a choice. If you are not happy, if it’s not suitable for you, you can relocate.”
No easy answers
Mr. Rodoni urged the residents to continue to confer with West Marin Community Services and Marin Legal Aid while they wait to see how the situation is resolved. Staff from both organizations were present at the meeting, one of several they have attended with the residents since the red tagging.
“I don’t have a magic wand,” Mr. Rodoni told residents. “I don’t know what’s going to be happening long term. But I’m going to be standing by your side the whole time, trying to help you work through it and make sure the outcome respects you and your wishes. We have to be partners in this, and we have to support each other.”
For decades, the Martinelli family operated a landfill on the ranch, but the county closed it in 2009 due to concerns that it was contaminating a nearby creek. Environmental health inspectors continue to regularly visit the ranch to inspect the former dump, and on May 15 they noticed potential violations of housing, health and safety codes.
In a June 5 letter to Ms. Martinelli, the code enforcement division outlined steps she must take to bring the property into compliance.
“Throughout the property there are trailers, mobile homes and R.V.s being used for habitation with no approved means of sewage disposal,” the letter states. “Unpermitted septic systems and holding tanks have been installed throughout the property without benefit of a permit. Sewage was observed surfacing in two locations.”
When county staff returned for a follow-up visit on Aug. 16, they noticed sewage surfacing in two additional locations. They sent Ms. Martinelli a second letter on Sept. 16 ordering her to install temporary septic holding tanks and hire a licensed sewage hauler to pump them at least once a week. The letter also ordered her to install portable toilets.
Seeking solutions
The code enforcement and environmental health services departments are part of the Marin Community Development Agency, which is headed by Sarah Jones, who has made a priority of finding safe, affordable housing for the county’s workforce.
She said the agency is working with Ms. Martinelli to address health concerns at the ranch until alternative housing can be found.
“We do not want people to be evicted when they have no place to go,” Ms. Jones told the Light. “We also don’t want them living in unsafe or unsanitary conditions. Our obligation under the law is to address situations that are a significant hazard to human health and safety. We’re trying to do that without residents losing their homes.”
County housing specialists have been conferring with the Community Land Trust Association of West Marin and other local nonprofits and donors to locate alternative housing in the short and long term.
Earlier this month, the Marin Community Foundation gave CLAM a $150,000 grant to explore potential interim and long-term housing solutions for people at risk of displacement from the Martinelli ranch and the ranches and dairies in the Point Reyes National Seashore.
“We recognize the urgency of the Martinelli Ranch housing situation,” Jarrod Russell, CLAM’s executive director, said in an email. “We are actively exploring ways to help Martinelli residents secure stable, affordable homes. This is a complex challenge that no single organization can solve alone—it requires collaboration with nonprofits, government agencies, specialists, and funders.”
County staff have been hearing complaints from Martinelli ranch residents for years, said Chloe Cook, manager of the West Marin Multi-Services Center.
“They are living in terrible conditions,” Ms. Cook said. “None of us want to see anybody displaced, but we also want to acknowledge that we are concerned about the health and wellness of the families that are living there.”
After the property was red tagged, residents were advised that they no longer needed to pay rent. Some have voluntarily continued to pay anyway, for fear that Ms. Martinelli would be forced to close the ranch without their rental income.
A ranching family’s long history
Ms. Martinelli inherited the ranch from her father, Leroy Martinelli, who inherited the ranch from his parents. Leroy died in January, at age 94. At one time, he operated another ranch on the opposite side of Highway 1, where he rented trailers to Mr. Hernandez and two other tenants.
Leroy eventually sold the bayside ranch to the National Park Service, but he continued ranching there under a formal agreement with the park. After that agreement expired in 2013, he moved three trailers to the Tomasini Canyon ranch and eventually added several more.
Ms. Martinelli acknowledges that some of those trailers were in bad shape, and that the ranch needs significant work, which she began undertaking in February. After several families moved out in recent months, she removed four trailers.
“I bulldozed them,” she said. “I have my own standards. They were old and had served their time, and so I did a major cleanup.”
The remaining trailers are in good shape, she said.
“I went through a section at a time, making sure each person living there had adequate plumbing, with North Marin Water District coming in,” she said. “Everything that needed to be repaired was repaired. I pulled out 16 dumpsters of trash.”
Ms. Martinelli said her father came of age in a different era, when ranchers were less aware of zoning rules and felt free to do as they wished with their land.
“It was his ranch, and he had his way of doing things,” she said. “If you picked up a screwdriver anywhere on that ranch, he would know about it. As long as he was alive, you couldn’t touch anything. There was one way of doing things—Leroy’s way or the freeway.”
In addition to installing unpermitted structures, Leroy allowed a contractor to store heavy equipment on the property, which is only zoned for agricultural use—another violation cited by code enforcement officers.
Leroy loved the ranch and kept working past his 90th birthday. “He’d be on that Kabota excavator, and he’d be making that thing dance,” his daughter said.
Leroy cared deeply for his tenants, she said, and they cared deeply for him. “He had nicknames for people, like Colonel Sanders and Bubbles,” she said.
His longer-term tenants, including Mr. Hernandez and his nephew, Cesar Angeles, say they are deeply grateful to him.
Mr. Angeles has a landscaping business and lives with his wife, Nayeli Leal, and their two sons in an apartment at the back of a large building that serves as the ranch workshop. The apartment is small but tidy. Their boys sleep on a bunkbed tucked between the kitchen and their parents’ bedroom, which doubles as a playroom. The TV sits on top of the refrigerator, tuned to a Mexican channel.
“This is all I need,” Mr. Angeles said. “I’m happy here.”
But just up the road, one trailer on the property has a large hole in the roof that’s partially covered with a tarp. Another badly damaged trailer has a hole in its side, but it is unoccupied and headed for the dump.
In all, county inspectors found at least four locations where sewage was draining onto the ground, and all the units had unpermitted septic systems that posed a potential health hazard to residents.
Dr. Christina Gomez-Mira, the medical director of the Point Reyes and Bolinas Community Health Centers, said she has seen several patients from the ranch with fungal infections that could have been caused by mold, excessive indoor humidity or contaminated soil.
Some tenants may be afraid to speak out due to loyalty to their landlord or fear of retaliation, she said.
“Sometimes people are hesitant to speak up about the injustice they’re experiencing, either because of the power dynamics that exist or because they don’t have the language for what they are experiencing,” Dr. Gomez-Mira said. “It’s not because the conditions aren’t bad. It’s because they don’t feel empowered or safe enough to speak out.”