Houseboat Wars is a folk tale about an artist, a boat-builder, a musician, a troubadour, and a writer who set out to explore new ways of living in the world of the late 1960s. Each has a little streak of outlaw. They migrate to the waterfront of Sausalito, California, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco and set about creating their own idea of an idyllic life.

Guns and drugs drift in to their funky paradise. There is a public outcry to clean up the nautical slum. When the law comes huffing and puffing at their doors, they fight back mostly for the sheer fun of it. They also move a bit south to the more traditionally productive areas of the working waterfront.

They are not safe for long. Developers swoop into these boatyards with grandiose propositions to build hotels, condominiums, and substantially increase public coffers. Our youngsters take resistance lessons from the old-time citizen activists who know how to protect the character of their town.

When the developers gain control of the northern waterfront they stage full out agitprop theatre and invite the media. They lose the battle to stop the development but local citizens begin to see them as a group of creative energetic young people with a vision for enhancing Sausalito’s mythical status as an artists’ colony.

They form an association to negotiate with their landlord at Bob’s Boatyard and the Napa Street Pier.

They knock on doors up and down the hillsides tellling their story. They win a few supporters and all seems to be moving forward. Then, without warning the boatyard is destroyed in a pre-dawn bulldozer blitz.

They jump on the groundswell of civic shame following the destruction of Bob’s Boatyard. They form an action group with prominent townspeople to promote their vision of a waterfront zone revitalized by the artists and maritime crafts people who gave the city it’s unique character.

A developer successfully evicts one group from their shops and homes proclaiming them a public nuisance preventing affluent tenants from leasing waterfront offices. The City evicts the the other little group trying to rebuild around the destroyed boatyard. They realize that their weapon of choice must be a counter-suit. The County Court orders all parties to work together.

Years of learning how politics really works follow. Group members meet weekly with City committees. They stage celebrations of maritime heritage and invite the whole town. The City denies their first bid for an ocupancy permit, but after a few more years of demonstrating their worthiness and strengthening strategic alliances, the goal of a live-work community of artists and maritime workers on the waterfront seems close to fruition.

Then an environmental regulatory agency of the State sues each of the fifty members of the community and fines them each $5000 for every day they remain on the water. They fight back using all the lessons they have learned about public relations, civic engagement and counter-suits. But there’s one more lesson, the ultimate secret to preserving their community.

What is this secret? Did they learn it in time to save their homes?

These questions are important because variations of this story are going on in every coastal community and neighborhood targeted for redevelopment.