Floating Homes & Communities

Oh yes, lots of takes on the phenomonem. No need to limit the scope though, its all good

Thanks for your great comments eg
"......housing needs to become more multi-use and efficient......Home needs to be more than a place to store clothes and sleep......"

Couldnt agree more your your sentiments, very on the mark I think.

 

As always when a resource is desirable, the wealthier try to monopolize it, thus the floating condo syndrome. When I came to Sausalito in 1969 it was a chaotic jumble of wreck-laden mudflats covered with ferryboats, tugs, work barges and every other kind of commercial craft, left to die and resurrected by an army of disaffected youth.
Apartments in the Victorian splendor of an old ferry, a VW bus-camper stuck in a lifeboat hull, an old steam tug made into a palace, a three story house floating on styrofoam blocks (that capsized in the first storm) and on and on all connected with old floats, gang planks, skiff crossings and other adventures, populated with a vibrant, artistic, fascinating and ever-changing cast of extreme characters. Art, booze, drugs, rock and roll, girls and so much raw creativity in the houseboat vernacular, non-permitted architecture that it was breathtaking, truly.
Then came the county... SEWAGE, and the state... PERMITS... and it was over, dying with a whimper, replaced with lovely piers and a sanitary, expensive fleet of cement barge floating houses that you can buy for $300,000 and up, plus the $1500 per month moorage, plus insurance etc etc etc. So all the artists and hippies either got rich or left along with the life of the place. It was a unique time and I am glad I was part of it because I learned so very much about living on the water for virtually no money.
Rules for no-money boat living:
1. Have the smallest boat you can possibly tolerate.
2. Anchor out. For this it must be a legal, navigable, registered vessel.
3. Be very simple with few needs and expenses.
It's not the American way, but it works.
The next step up is having a bigger boat in a marina. Now marinas are funny places, full of boats that are seldom used. In the boatyard trade I heard it referred to as "acres of wasted wealth" and that is so true. If people could live in all those boats across the country, there'd be no homeless.
The movable, primary unit housing idea is very cool, and floating is logical, if you can handle the nautical components (tides, wind, hurricanes, bottom maintenance etc) and the bureaucratic hassles. If you're a 'real boat', you're viewed differently than if you're a houseboat, which is generally thought of by authority as a shantyboat populated with illiterate undesirable fringe types.
After a lot of years in various shantyboats as an undesirable, I built the boat in the photo as a "mobile nautical living unit" and lived on it for 30 years, sailing as much as I could, and LIVING my life.
I'd recommend it.

 

Well, as a liveaboard of 20 years, and as one who was 'chased' out of the UK because of lack of places to live or greedy developers charging ridiculous amounts for a mooring I would like to add a few thoughts.

From an environmental point of view there is much to be said for living on a boat. We live in much less space and use much less of everything, from water to electricity.

No one who lives on a boat would ever dream of leaving lights on or a tap running while they brushed their teeth! My little sailing boat (24 feet) uses just one 500 Watt heater to keep me warm in the winter. How many house dwellers can claim the same? I very much doubt I use more than 10 litres of water a day, a mere drop compared to those in a house. I don't even have a garden to water. My garden is everywhere all around me, wherever I happen to be.

With over 6.5 billion people on this planet it is high time we opened our minds to other ways to live. I appreciate that there are some issues that need addressing but once attitudes change and it becomes OK to live on a boat then these will naturally be taken care of.

We all need to consume less and reduce our carbon footprint and surely living on a boat can help to do that. I have a solar panel and in the summer that is all I need. If there were more people living sustainably like this, it would surely help.

Personally I love living on a boat and I cannot imagine being stuck in an immobile home but I am, and fear I always will be, in a minority. I say let people live in a Yurt, a boat, a tent, a tree house. Whatever. The worse thing that could possibly happen would be to insist that we all live in the same box like structure. We need more 'characters' in this world, not less.

As Spike Milligan Said. 'Everybody's got to be somewhere!'

 

The shore lines of the worlds navigable waters should be common ground . The industrialists the property developers and the rich are welcome to the rest.

 

There is quite a lot of space under the Eiffel tower that could be used for living and horse guards parade is not used any more along with a lot outside Buckingham Palace.

There is also quite a bit on the perimeter fence of Terminal 5 of Heathrow airport if we get short.

But what ever you do DONT fill Leeds and Bradford canal with floating ---homes ---what ever,-- or the fabulous Albert dock in Liverpool.

Does Prince Charles know about this, he hates this sort of destruction under the name of --development.

We have already just about demolished all the old Victorian Railway stations, they still have them In India. Is this what we have to do now --go to India to see what we once had. Hong kong recently started on this slippery slope be young architects destroying colonial buildings now to the regret of many.

Leave these places alone.

The web site of this thread suggests that the using of inner city water ways and docks develops inner city land and suggests this as an improvement yet all the pictures of the (high tech) caravans on floats are all in the country.

 

Some very good suggestions there Frosty, but most of the "high tech caravans" advertised on the web site are in places like Amsterdam and Ultrech - hardly "country".

 

I dont think you have looked at the pics, how do you know they are in Amsterdam, they have trees in the pics,--no buildings.

Holland is a land below sea level, their situation is completely different.

Holland may well have land that is too wet to live on.

But I don't know --the Dutch will do what the Dutch have to do.

The midlands of England experienced an Industrial revolution unkown anywhere in the world. The biggest looms the biggest steam engine to drive them, the biggest or most efficient water wheels all housed in buildings at the side if the water as it was transport for all the innovative inventions pouring from this area that the whole world has gained benefit from.

The Manchester ship canal dug by men in the 1800 to meet the Liverpool docks and the mighty Mersey. Robert Louis Stevenson and his steam engine "The Rocket" to haul goods to the water side.

There are many foundation , groups , museums fighting to keep these things working for all the world to see. Do we know float caravans on them for the benefit of a few.

Its nothing more than vandalism or graffiti.

 

As a fellow Canadian, it is a source of annoyance to me that the so-called public launching ramps can be very hard to find, I suspect the locals quietly remove them or move the signs or they will have no-parking signs for a few miles leading up to the ramp so either you must have a second driver to move your vehicle, or you have to just leave your boat for an hour or so until you find a parking spot and walk all the way back. That's assuming there's a place to moor the boat while you do that. waterside communities have all sorts of dirty tricks to keep what they consider theirs to themselves. The only places where you can be sure there is a ramp and an opportuity to use it is in a park or a municipal waterfornt.

Well, the old-timers were allowed to use the water for their benefit, why not modern folk? It can be policed and controlled. One problem is how to collect the money to do that; there is licensing of course ...

 

Umm - I looked at the trees, then read their location name below ???

 

Umm - when they built the canals and locks and built factories, they displaced lots of farmers who were using the land.
Before that, the armies of the overseas conquerers threw out the poor sheep herders who had cleared the land.
Before that, the sheep herders had chopped down acres of trees and shrubs that the stone age people had hunted in.
Before that, there was no-one.


Was it wrong of the Egyptians to take all the smooth stonework off the pyramids to build their houses ? ( the big underlying blocks were too heavy to move )



Each generation said "its nothing more than vandalism- and they should have left us, and it alone"

Is it a case of - "the winners of any contest for resources are in the right". So the 'winners' who built the canals and defaced the countryside with huge factories, must now give way to others who will use the now unused facilities for something new - and we will have "new winners" ?

Wow - as Charlie Brown said "The Philisophical ramifications alone are mind boggling "

 

Your right lets not learn anything and carry on destroying stuff. Lets always look back and say wish we had'nt done that.

--who's on American idle tonight anyway.

 

Simply expand down. Out of sight, out of mind. Submersibles perhaps made of concrete? I don't know, just an idea...

-Tom

 

I'm a little hesitant to weigh in here.......... but ............ with a small conning tower & cameras in your periscope & projectors to illuminate your screens, sorry, windows.... you'd barely even be there, sink your dinghy & bail when required, Regards from Jeff.

 

How long will it be before some desperate rich refugees form a 'mini floating country' on an oil rig platform or leased supertanker, and become a tax haven to support themselves ?

Might sell the idea to hollywood ......