Harbor department gives Juneau live-aboards an ultimatum: Move out, or move on

Harbormaster David Borg doesn’t want your boat. He already has too many.

As he walked through Aurora Harbor on Thursday, he pointed to three boats bearing bright orange CBJ impound stickers.

“I don’t want to be in the business of impounding boats. It costs a lot of money, and it costs a lot of heartache,” he said.

This summer, there’s likely to be a lot more.

In August, Borg started a campaign to clear city harbors of inoperable boats. City code requires boats to leave the harbor three times every year, but until now, that code hasn’t been enforced since computerized tracking started in 2010.

Juneau’s harbor office has identified 39 boats that haven’t moved in years. Late last year, the first few were been given orders: Show your boat is seaworthy, able to move under its own power, or you’ll be forced out.

Two boats have proven their seaworthiness. Three have been impounded.

One is fighting back.

Jerramy McNeil talks freely about his past. He’s served time in Alaska’s prisons for felonies. He’s had run-ins with harbor officials before. A trained sailor, he had a boat until he was sent to prison and could no longer pay the harbor fees.

After his release, he got married. He and his new wife bought a boat as their home. McNeil sold the travel trailer he had been living in. Things were looking up.

“We took everything and gambled on this boat,” he said by phone.

Then came Borg’s letter.

It said the pair had 72 hours to get their boat moving, or they’d be forced to leave.

It wasn’t a complete surprise — when it was listed on Craigslist, the seller said the boat had to move the harbor — but the timing was.

“If you give me due process, then I can address the problems that you’re bringing up,” McNeil said. “But when you give me no time to make the appropriate adjustments to this, what am I supposed to do?”

McNeil put an outboard kicker engine on the boat, and took it out of the harbor for sea trials, obeying the letter of the code.

McNeil says that should be enough. Borg says it isn’t.

The two have had extensive arguments.

What matters is the end result. When McNeil left the boat in the harbor so he could replace its generator, the boat was impounded. When he tried to board it again, breaking down a door in the process, he was arrested for criminal trespassing.

Now, he and his wife are couchsurfing. Their boat is locked up. Even his belongings have been impounded.

“They’ve taken my home from me. They’ve put us out in the middle of the winter,” McNeil said.

McNeil is the first of what may be many complainants. Starting in August, the City and Borough of Juneau Docks and Harbors Department will begin renovating several floats in Aurora Harbor. In the process, the department will temporarily displace some of the harbor’s longtime residents.

Last year, city housing officer Scott Ciambor told the Empire that Juneau’s harbors, and boat living, have become alternative housing for some who can’t afford to rent in the capital city — a place with one of the highest housing costs in the state.

In November, the city reported 162 “live-aboard” boats in its four principal harbors. Aurora had the most: 88 live-aboards housing more than 100 people.

In many cases, including McNeil’s, boat housing is the last resort. Without it, McNeil said, he and his wife are homeless.

“We live on this boat. This is my home,” McNeil said.

Borg isn’t heartless. He said he knows there are consequences to the harbor department’s push, but his first priority is laid out in city code. It’s to maintain facilities for commerce and “transportation on the water.”

He’s aware that a comparison could be drawn between the harbor’s moves and those of the Juneau Assembly to evict the homeless from downtown doorways. Here, he says, the situation is different.

“We’ve got to make the harbors available for guys like this,” he said Thursday while pointing to a fishing boat selling shrimp.

A boat that can’t move doesn’t count as transportation, Borg said. There are exceptions for houseboats, but a boat has to be able to move.

“Where years ago, they could just crash on a boat, that’s changing. You can still do that, but the vessel still has to qualify,” Borg said.

When Douglas Harbor was renovated, the city made a sweep: If boats wanted to stay, they had to prove they could move under their own power. The same process is coming to Aurora.

City code doesn’t specify that a boat has to have a particular kind of engine— Borg’s seen sailboats come into harbor under sail power — and McNeil says his use of a kicker is completely appropriate and abides by the rules.

“It’s my boat. It’s our boat. Not his. He doesn’t get to make decisions like that. It’s a free country,” McNeil said.

It might be a free country, Borg said, but boat owners and harbormasters have collective responsibility. If an underpowered boat were to hit another boat while moving, Borg might be held liable if he failed to act. If a boat sank in its slip, it might damage the floats that other boats rely upon.

That’s why harbor staff walk the docks every morning to check on each boat. It’s for the same reason that he’s impounded McNeil’s boat and why he’ll soon ask others to prove their boats seaworthy.

“I think it’s my responsibility to ensure that vessel operators are at least basically equipped for safe maneuvering in and out of the harbor,” Borg said.

McNeil has appealed the impound of his boat, and Borg said Thursday that he has suggested a handful of steps that would let McNeil and his wife get their boat back. In the meantime, they’re still homeless.

“The ball’s in his court now,” Borg said.

For those who will be displaced by this summer’s renovations, the ballgame is about to begin.