DID YOU KNOW That Floating Homes are Affordable and Float in a Flood?

Back in December low-laying areas across California flooded. Locally the Le Mar Trailer Park and Redwood City (RC) Trailer Parks in Redwood City are still having to deal with the repercussions of the flood. But homes in Docktown Floating Home Marina for the most part like their regular land based counterparts did not flood; they floated up and down with the water. As sea level rises, land sinks (think land settlement from fracking and other activities) and weather patterns change so that rains instead of coming steadily for a longer period come down instead in a short deluge the importance of building floating homes becomes increasingly the way of the future.

Amsterdam now has IJBurg a planned neighborhood of floating homes. London has started development of a floating community in the East End. ( http://patch.com/california/redwoodcity-woodside/did-you-know-london-getting-floating-village)

But in the United States things are a bit different. Rather than understanding that dwellings on the water are the wave of the future (full pun intended) and in spite of acclaimed floating communities in Sausalito, Portland, and Seattle, many municipalities and state and federal agencies continue to view floating homes as de facto substandard housing. Did you know that Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Section 8 housing vouchers cannot be used to rent a floating home? Yet they can be used to rent manufactured homes in areas that flood!

Because of the shortsightedness of government agencies low income residents and workers can no longer afford to live here. Floating homes that are one of the last pockets of affordable housing are under attack especially in areas like Redwood City where rents for one bedroom apartments if you can get one are inching up towards three thousand dollars a month. Rather it appears the City of Redwood City wants the few remaining floating homes within its city limits gone. One floating home owner at Docktown was under pressure to move and sell his floating home but since the City took the position that if anybody else bought it they could not live there the owner was essentially forced to sell a perfectly good floating home to the City for less than $26,000. A home that is approximately five hundred square feet that kept it’s owner safe and dry as it did not flood nor leak during the recent deluge.

This floating home comparable to most of the homes at LeMar and RC trailer parks is more weather resistant than the ones they have is now rumored to be slated for demolition by the City of Redwood City. Had the city allowed a new buyer to buy the property and keep it where it is, I am sure there would have been plenty of interested buyers. This policy removes affordable housing for low income workers, the elderly and others when the city badly needs to be adding more.

What do you think? Should the City of Redwood City be allowed to destroy a perfectly good affordable home or should they sell it and allow one of the deserving families from Le Mar, RC trailer parks, or any other local resident to live there?

photo credits: photo1: D. Serero. photo 2: Netherlands -- Regenboogkade -- Plus 31 Architects www.plus31architects.nl