Which one of these floating structures do you think is a home, and which is a boat, and why?
A perennial favorite on the Floating Homes Tour every year in Sausalito, the Pirate is a former tugboat Once the home of irrepressible author and actor Sterling Hayden (Dr. Strangelove, Johnny Guitar, The Godfather), the Pirate is a houseboat with a notorious past as a party boat. Today it enjoys a more genteel life with current owner Barbara Duncan, an artist in her own right. Read more about it at http://buoyantlife.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=123:pirate&catid=65:saus-homes&Itemid=122 . In Sausalito it is considered a floating home.
The large house in the second photo is an elegant three story home owned by Russian immigrant, Svetlana Vasey, that would fit comfortably into any neighborhood in Redwood City if that's where it was located. Because the city has never been willing to provide sewage service, it is classified in Redwood City as a "watercraft" or boat. If Svetlana wants to sell it and move she has to find a cash buyer. (Unlike the owners of floating homes in Sausalito, she can't find a bank willing to lend money for "watercraft" homes at Docktown.)
The kicker is that Redwood City does not recognize a recent Supreme Court Decision that would almost certainly call it a Floating Home (excerpt below) because, according to the City's attorneys, "Redwood Creek is not under federal jurisdiction." Which means it is governed by Maritime law, not Floating Home Law which gives owners property rights."
Recent Supreme Court decision reversing a decision that a floating home was a boat:
"We believe that a reasonable observer, looking to the home’s physical characteristics and activities, would not consider it to be designed to any practical degree for carrying people or things on water..."
Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for a 7-2 majority on the US Supreme Court in LOZMAN v. CITY OF RIVIERA BEACH, FLORIDA, Decided January 15, 2013
