Santa Cruz Harbor liveaboards face housing uncertainty after devastating swell

For some local residents who found refuge from the region’s housing crisis by living aboard boats in the Santa Cruz Harbor, last week’s devastating ocean swell has upended their lives, leaving many without basic utilities and searching for temporary shelter.

Full-time harbor residents, known as “liveaboards,” are grappling with the aftermath of the destructive waves on Dec. 23, which caused at least $26 million in damage to the harbor, destroyed more than a dozen boats and left residents without power, water or a safe place to sleep. Many are staying with friends, in hotels or enduring cold nights in their powerless boats while waiting for repairs and the restoration of utilities.

“It’s no different than having a town burned down or having a wildfire blow through a small community and level half the homes in it,” said Koy Wilson, a Mountain View firefighter who has lived on his 44-foot boat for the past four years. “There’s a lot of damaged boats here. There’s a lot of sunk boats. There’s a lot of people that are commercial fishermen – this is their livelihood – and their boats are shot. Everyone’s still getting home from the holidays and figuring it out.”

About 50 people live in the harbor in total, including about 31 in the north harbor, according to Santa Cruz Port District Director Holland MacLaurie. Among all the boats in the harbor – including commercial, recreational and liveaboard boats – more than 15 were destroyed. At least one liveaboard’s boat sank. 

The destruction is particularly severe in the north harbor, where sunken boats and mangled docks remained visible this week. During a recent visit, workers were towing large debris while divers worked to raise submerged items from the harbor floor. 

While officials have gradually restored access to the harbor — first reopening docks in the south harbor last Tuesday, followed by partial reopenings and power restoration in the north harbor since last Wednesday — many boat residents remain displaced. 

In the north harbor, residents say Dock X-2 most likely will have to be completely replaced, leaving Wilson and other liveaboards who docked there uncertain about where they’ll be able to permanently keep their vessels.

“The infrastructure of the harbor broke apart,” Wilson said. “It would be one thing if this was just damaged boats, but it’s going to take years to rebuild all that.”

Wilson, who estimates his boat sustained anywhere between $10,000 ane $30,000 in damage, is staying in a friend’s spare room, while other boat residents have scattered to hotels, friends’ homes or are enduring cold nights in their cars or powerless vessels.

Liveaboards say a common misconception persists that those with boats at the harbor are all wealthy residents who can afford to recover from a disaster. The reality at the docks tells a different story, one they say has been overshadowed by the attention paid to the partial collapse of the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf.

Wilson and others told Lookout they’ve heard onlookers walking by the harbor scoff at the sight of damaged boats. “We’ve heard people going by say, ‘That’s a wealthy people’s problem,’ ‘That’s what insurance is for,'” Wilson said. “I’m just like, ‘You just have no idea what you’re talking about.’ None of us [who live] down here are wealthy. Most people are retired and on Social Security, or have a single income, or have some kind of small little side-hustle business.”

For Wilson and others, boat life represented not just a fulfilling life by the ocean, but an affordable alternative to the region’s steep housing costs. When the rent on his apartment near the harbor jumped from $1,800 to $3,800 over a period of 10 years, Wilson used money he had saved for a down payment on a house to purchase his $150,000 boat instead. He now pays about $1,100 monthly in slip fees. 

Like many other harbor residents, Jamie Aron and her husband, Bill Davidson, say they live in the harbor because they love the water and also couldn’t afford to keep renting or to buy a home that wasn’t in a fire or flood zone.

“The harbor was a way for us to stay in town and a way for us to have a unique adventurous experience,” said Aron.

Aron works in interior design and Davidson works part-time for TowBoatUS Santa Cruz and part-time for Flux Acupuncture. The couple has lived aboard a 45-foot West Bay motor yacht since spring 2023.

“It’s a great, quirky community of people,” Aron said. “It’s a really tight-knit community of people. We have each other’s backs.” 

Aron and Davidson got lucky; they moved their vessel from Dock X-2 to face the incoming swells head-on, rather than have their home remain wedged between two boats taking waves on their sides.

When the swells arrived, the waves exceeded all expectations. “The sound was insane,” Aron said. “It was like the ocean was going through labor.” She watched as her former neighbors’ boats sustained heavy damage. One vessel sank.

The couple’s boat emerged relatively unscathed, with only a broken antenna, an estimated $100 repair. After spending Monday night at Aron’s mother’s home in Live Oak, they endured Tuesday without power on their boat in the north harbor. By Christmas morning, after opening presents with their children, they had secured a temporary spot in the south harbor.

Now Aron is helping others navigate the aftermath. Given a list of 31 north harbor residents by officials, she has contacted more than 20. All of them said they needed help with housing and many were struggling financially with the cost of staying in hotels.

​​Don Adams spent Tuesday afternoon assessing the extensive damage to his home — a 42-foot boat built in 1976 that he’s lived on for the past five years.

“It was worse than the tsunami,” he said of the storm. “The boats were just getting crushed to pieces.”

His vessel sustained a range of damages, including broken propellers and railings. He estimates the repairs are going to cost around $70,000, but he’s motivated to get the boat fixed. 

“This is my home. I spent a lot of money saving for this,” Adams said as his boat sat on a drydock between H&H Fresh Fish Co. and Johnny’s Harborside restaurant, one of 10 vessels lifted out of the water for repairs. “This is my dream. It’s going to float.”

Adams, who owns Mr. Poopy plumbing, hasn’t taken service requests since last Monday’s storm, focusing instead on repairing his boat. “It’s killing me,” he said, before changing his mind. “It’s not killing me. It’s just what it is.”

Relief efforts are underway for displaced harbor residents through Community Foundation Santa Cruz County, which has expanded its wharf workers relief fund to include boat dwellers affected by the disaster.

The foundation has partnered with nonprofit Community Bridges to provide $500 Visa gift cards to eligible recipients, including both wharf employees and harbor residents who can no longer occupy their boats. “We are setting up a system as fast as we can,” Susan True, the foundation’s CEO, wrote via email. “We have not yet raised enough money to meet all the needs.”

She said all the recipients must earn no more than 80% of the area median income. Recipients who work on the wharf must be full-time wharf employees or part-time workers there who work multiple jobs to make ends meet. The aid program has faced temporary delays because of holiday staffing shortages, True noted, adding that “it may take a few more days to create a smooth system.”

Monte Ash, who lives aboard his boat with his wife, spent the past week pulling debris from the waters he’s called home for a decade. 

As the owner of TowBoatUS Santa Cruz, a marine salvage and repair service akin to AAA for boats, he’s witnessed firsthand the harbor’s transformation from safe haven to disaster zone.

“I think things will come back, but the harbor took a big hit, and it probably won’t be the same even when they get it fully rebuilt,” he said. “There’s just always going to be that thing, that little nagging thing in the backs of people’s heads that says, that this a dangerous place.”

– Kevin Painchaud contributed to this report.

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