Small, independant living units, on water ? - Possible ?

Yeah, and he couldn't answer it, putting paid to his claim of some sort of 'right'.

As long as I pay my $72 per annum I have the 'right' to my mooring out the front of my house.

As long as I pay my local Govt rates I have the 'right' to own my property and possibly even live on it.

Etc.

The USA local Government has the legal 'right' to compulsorily acquire land if in their opinion it is not being used to its full economic potential.

Glass boats anyone?

PDW

 

I think that some here automatically assumed this thread was going to be an advice column for anarchists. I don't think that they are going to find much joy here. Freeloading is most definitely not the motivation for most alternative life styles. But being able to choose to whom, how, and when one contributes is a reasonable goal. So is paying fair rates and not wanting to be stiffed the way some towns stiff tourists.

A basic requirement to living small is to share bulky capital goods and infrastructure. Most communities have patchwork utility systems that have some quirky fee structures that have nothing whatsoever to do with actual costs or promoting efficiency. Laundry is is huge expense for sewer services. Electrical peak demand isn't fairly priced to most households. When people join together in a community and exploit these fee irregularities, that isn't freeloading, it is just an unintended consequence, and perhaps a wakeup call as well - like when the feds said that utilities have to buy back generated power from anybody that has grid-tied generation.

So independent living on the water is either expensive or tends to be somewhat sketchy from a legal point of view; but co-operative living beside a town can be very cheap, and can be a good deal for all concerned. Towns have every reason to expect to recoup the cost of public services they provide. Tourist towns often stick it to tourists and the locals are often the beneficiaries of subsidized services. It's a bit strange to hear this freeloader compliant from those locals who are most subsidized, but those are who I hear it from most often.

Some popular infrastructure for living small -

Libraries. Beaufort and most other towns require residency to get a library card, and you need one to get a book, video, use the internet, etc. Visitors can buy a one week pass. There are also pay as you go systems for noncard holders.

Parks. Almost all parks have access fees. The few public spaces that are there specifically to draw tourists are usually policed very well. You aren't going to last ten minutes in Beaufort's public waterfront park if you look like you swam ashore. There are about a dozen full time employees who take care of about 1/2 a mile strip of park.

Public restrooms. This requires a bit of community planning. Living small definitely means shared shower and restroom and laundry facilities - preferably ashore. Kitchens are nice also. There was "dormitory style" housing for about half the employees at Evergades NP and the kitchen was a fine public space. We had a housing manager that handled all aspects of employee housing. A similar position would be needed for a floating community. 150 people would amount to a full time job for someone.

Trash removal. Living small doesn't generate much household trash. We generate about 8 cuyd/week at the rv park when full - maybe 300 people. But that isn't a trivial expense either.

Dinghies. The biggest nuisance by far to all concerned. I haven't any real solution other than operate them like shopping carts. 150 boats don't need 150 hard dinghies. We all have a dingy big enough to do a worst case job - we don't need that. Waterfront privileges could come with a dinghy. Or you can pay to store your own. I think the marina at Charleston charges about $15/day for holding your dingy.

Cars and parking. Another general nuisance that most folks on the hook would prefer to share with others. The dingy guy could keep ten cars as well. Beaufort is $8 per day on the waterfront or $50/mo a block away.

So a town hosting a floating community needs to facilitate the use of it's infrastructure by providing or accommodating some unusual features. There are costs for doing this, and they can charge fees to recoup them. The trick is to have one responsible entity to deal with it. The freeloaders are going to exploit the lack of a system, not a properly run one. The key for living small is to realize that things still cost the same (or maybe more), you just utilize them in a more cost effective manner.

As I mentioned in my first post, Beaufort thinks it can provide all the services, including parking, for $200/mo. We'll see how it goes. That's not too different from lot rent at a cheap rv park or mobile home park.

 

"We'll see how it goes. That's not too different from lot rent at a cheap rv park or mobile home park."

Does this mean you will now have Marina Trash as well as Trailer Trash ?

 

I think they use a term like that over at Sailing Anarchy for live-aboard persons.............. kinda weird!

Jeff.

 

A couple of times another important point of the topic rears its ugly head - neighbors !

Theoretically, on a boat you can move elsewhere - practically, what with jobs, co-dependance, limited other options, it may not be that easy.

I know you can always swim over and put a hole in another boat, but if the neighbors are that bad, they will probably do that first.

From experience I have found that its not poverty that makes bad neighbours, but cheaper living environments tend to have a higher 'hard to get on with' ratio.

One of the big factors that a community has to get right is the policing and enforcement angle. You dont want acts of random vigilantes.

 

Some of the expensive spots have the same, a mate was a health & building inspector, plenty of calls from the exxy areas, maybe it's a matter of extremes, & the average just get on.
Jeff.

 

Did it bother you that I refused to play your game.
I just dont like dogs humping my leg, thats all .

 

In the end after peoples home were taken, the deal with Phizer fell through and the town got nothing , except a chunk of water front land. They could have bought a piece of farm land 5 miles inshore for a lot less, but then it wouldn't be waterfront. I wonder what John Locke's take on it would be .

 

It's amusing to see all the talk about communities. I live off grid and on boats to not be part of any community and to travel.
Also, one has to be creative and adept at blending in to successfully live the drifter life. It's definitely more expensive than regular living, but it's a life I'd never trade for big fancy houses with picket fences or whatever.

Those bums in CA and boat bums though... they should run them out of town. We should run them out of town! Disrespectful people like that ruin it for the rest of us. Give travelers a bad name. If you're doibg it right nobody knows you are doing it at all.

We also pay the following:

*Federal Income Tax
*State and local income tax
*Registration and documentation
*Buy all the same things as everyone else at the stores in town
*Very expensive power generating equipment. Far more money put into the economy than peopke who live on grid and pay electric bills.
*Internet
*Cell phones
*Car and car insurance
*Boat insurance
*VAT or excise or use tax, higher than property tax - 10% or so.
*Fuel or sails totaling 10' of $1000's for traveling
*Health care
etc... etc..

And that's for someone living at anchor!!
In a marina you can add rent.

So anyone who suggests travelers are using your public facilities without paying taxes is way off base.

 

Evidently , so does Russia .

 

You already have trailer trash and marina trash. Its a question of how different communities regard economic status. Since I choose to live in these places, I can say that there is no reason they can't be safe, attractive, and healthy places. I've spent 30 years making them so. It has nothing to do with crime. If there is crime, it is because it is being tolerated by the rich. Some communities put up with it and some don't. A persistent problem with misfits indicates a sketchy business community more than anything else. Businesses have the power to get stuff like this enforced. Its just that simple. Many people think that putting up a fence is the way to go - segregate the community along economic lines. They won't like boaters much. But there are plenty of VERY egalitarian communities left in the US. These don't make much of economic status. The old joke in Key Largo was that it was the only town where you could walk into a bar and talk to the judge, your dentist, your electrician, your kids teacher, and the guy who tiled your floor. But the jokes on them - you can do that in towns in every state in the US. Trailer trash is a term that reveals how the middle class regards the lower class. It says nothing about the health of the community, only about the attitude of a threatened economic minority towards those whom they fear becoming. They just need to deal with their fears. The people who use the term are the same ones that collect three guys off the corner at Lowes and show up at a job and bill them out as electrician's assistants, then drop them back off at Lowes at the end of the day. And they wonder why they are always struggling and their communities are going to pot.

It is only very very recently that households have ceased to be the main productive asset of a family in the US. We have had a bedroom community town model for about one generation, and it is proving to be a model that does not deal with slow growth or change very well - too much capital tied up in nonproductive assets. Living small can avoid this trap IF it can provide some means of community level productivity. A new bunch of floating bedrooms - and nothing else - doesn't help this situation. It makes it worse. You have to have enough productive capital to go along with it. I believe poor communities need far less capital than middle class ones to provide the same stability to a community.

 

If you are living a "drifter" lifestyle, how do you pay state and local income taxes? As you drift from harbor to harbor and thus state to state do you change legal residency and then file taxes in a new location? If you move during a fiscal year do you then split and pro-rate your income taxes between two or more states? Or did you misspeak and were actually referring to sales taxes. If that is the case then you are most definitely not paying your way. A big part of what makes a location a community are its schools and in America those are supported by property tax revenues. While you may not have school age kids or you may homeschool, you still benefit from the local schools: how do you think the clerks in the stores learned how to read, count, make change?

 

I thought this was "Small, independant living units, on water ? - Possible ?".

Oh no, that's down the hall. This is "oppressive argument"

 

Your state and local taxes are deducted automatically by your employer. So yes, if you change jobs, you change tax locations. The laws are not different just because you travel.

Different story if you are self employed. Then, just like anyone else who say, snowbirds to FL for the winter to stay in their second home, you pay taxes in your home jurisdiction. The place where you have residency. It surprises me that someone so land based doesn't understand tax law at all. Whty don't you know this basic stuff?

Ah, i knew i was forgetting one! Yes, sales taxes are also paid. Your school argument is invalid. If I own a $20,000 trailer, I'm freeloading with probably several kids and not paying into your public school system. As a traveler, I have no kids enrolled in your sub standard educational system. So, the local and state taxes I pay are paying for your kids to go to school and you are freeloading off me, actually. Maybe only people with kids shpuld be paying for schools.

 

I cannot recall when I last paid payroll taxes, my accountant deals with such matters for me since I am self-employed (commercial landlord). And yes, you are indeed correct on this, my mistake and I stand corrected.

Regarding your trailer resident, if he rents a space to park it his landlord pays property taxes that reflect the value of that land. A vacant lot pays less than a trailer park. So while he does not directly pay, property taxes that reflect his presence are paid in his behalf.

How can you call our local school sub-standard when we have won the national Academic Decathalon 3 times in 20 years. A neighboring school in the same town won this years award and has also won in previous years. Making such an assumption simply shows your bias and not your knowledge, as does your statement that those who live in mobile homes are freeloaders with large families. I detect a strong smell of class based condescension.

BTW I have no children and have paid to educate the children of others for many decades and am proud to continue doing so. As a much wiser man than I once said "I am proud to pay taxes as it buys me civilization". I take great pride in being a first generation citizen and strongly feel that universal free schooling is what made my country great.