DID YOU KNOW That Keeping Docktown Likely Won't Cost Residents of Redwood City Money?

This past week the City Council finally approved some much needed affordable housing development requirements. The City Council is also in the midst of proposing and approving an Airbnb and other home based stay transiency tax that at least at this point appears will be dedicated towards creating additional affordable housing.

In the meantime however it is important to preserve the existing housing stock diversity. Docktown’s housing stock to the extent that it hasn’t been destroyed by the City (see http://patch.com/california/redwoodcity-woodside/news-flash-redwood-city-removes-perfectly-good-affordable-floating-home) is one such source of alternative, affordable. sea level rise resistant, potentially state of the art housing. However as the community is well aware, due to the month to month nature of the leases, investment in infrastructure has long been deferred. Unfortunately the reality is that even when residents such as myself take it upon themselves to improve their homes, the city destroys these improvements. In my case at my one cost, I had a sewer system connection consistent with Sausalito floating homes installed. (Before anyone jumps up to point out that I didn’t have a permit, you should all realize that there are four other sewers in the community, that there is no permit system for properties on the water and finally most importantly that the current pump out boat system delivers its contents to the exact same sewer lateral but instead of a direct more hygienic and less likely to leak connection what we have is a manned boat that comes out once a week more or less depending on need and pumps out the contents of an onboard tank that is then transported the in my case less than fifty feet away to the same exact sewer lateral connection.) However the city instead of realizing that my connection would not only improve the quality of the community infrastructure and reduce the number of raw sewage leaks into the creek decided to unilaterally disconnect my sewer.

I am far from the only resident of Docktown interested and willing to pay for her own sewer installation. In addition, there are a number of us that would be interested in discussing an option for condominium style slips which would then allow us to pool our resources to further improve the community including the docks. Even more importantly there are significant sources of federal funds available through for example the Department of Boating and Waterways available for these type of projects. Just locally marine based organizations, such as Westpoint and the Bair Island Aquatic Center, have been able to leverage those type of funds to build state of the art facilities like the ones we at Docktown would also like to see.

As discussion on the future of the Inner Harbor area progresses it is important that the residents of the greater Redwood City community understand that supporting Docktown will not cost them any money but will instead only gain them additional direct water access as well as a potentially state of the art, sea level rise resistant floating community.