Sleepless in Seattle: Will house-barge lifestyle slip away?

Drive along Lake Union and Portage Bay, or visit any number of the city's marinas, and you'll see a unique Seattle feature: people living in photogenic floating homes such as portrayed in "Sleepless in Seattle," and others who live aboard boats and in homes usually built atop barges.

"I get up in the morning, go sit in my little back porch and feed the ducks, watch the beavers, see the downtown skyline. When the boat moves, I get rocked to sleep. It's beautiful," said Barbara Engram, 73, a retired landscape designer whose house barge is moored at the Gas Works Park Marina.

But if proposed city regulations were to be rigidly enforced, that idyllic life and homeowners' financial security could be affected.

"This is my retirement. I don't have a lot of money," Engram said. "If the value of my property tanks, the quality of my life would take a serious downhill turn."

The boat and barge dwellers are particularly worried that proposed changes to the city's Shoreline Master Program could make them hostage to fee increases by marinas, destroy the value of their investments and maybe even leave them stranded without a place to anchor their homes.

To the casual observer, a house barge pretty much looks like a floating home, but it's not.

The barges have a motor and steering mechanism and are classified as boats, even though it'd be quite surprising to see one cruising around. As a boat, they don't have to be hooked up to a sewer line like a floating home.

The proposed changes would cap at 25 percent the number of slips that marinas could rent to liveaboards of all kinds.

The regulations would define a liveaboard as a vessel with someone living on it for four or more days in any seven-day period.

The proposed changes would grandfather in liveaboards at marinas exceeding the 25 percent cap, if they didn't move from that slip. Typically, a 40-foot liveaboard vessel would pay slip rent and fees of about $650 a month, said Kevin Bagley, head of the Lake Union Liveaboard Association.

But if the vessel owner terminates the lease with a marina, the proposed regulations say the slip could not be filled by a new liveaboard if the marina is at the 25 percent threshold.

What about the rent?

"Let's say you are in a disagreement with a marina owner. It really gives them absolute power. They can raise your rent unreasonably," said Patti Bishop, owner of a software-design firm who has lived in a Fremont houseboat (as house-barge owners prefer to call their residences) for six years.

"You can't move somewhere else unless that place is under 25 percent. And there won't be a place like that on the lake anymore."

Bishop was among numerous liveaboard owners who emailed Maggie Glowacki, the senior land-use planner with the city's Department of Planning and Development, who is in charge of drafting the new regulations.

The city says the changes were mandated by the state's Department of Ecology to update shoreline regulations, and says the state wants to limit residential use over water.

The result was a draft of regulations that went on for 207 pages. There was so much reaction, not only from liveaboards, but others affected — such as a Duwamish Waterway concrete plant that worried that industry would be regulated out of there — that the city extended the written-comment period from March 21 to May 31.

The city says it plans to release a revised version of the regulations in July for additional public comment.

Glowacki declined to be interviewed.

"Unfortunately, Maggie is currently unavailable for an interview, as she's working on the revised draft of the Shoreline Management Program," says an email from Bryan Stevens, customer-service manager and industrial-permit liaison for the department.

Stevens did say in the email, "House barges are the biggest concern, as they can appear to be no different than a floating home, but can be classified as a vessel and are therefore not required to have sewer or gray-water connections. This is a problem because appliances such as dishwashers and washing machines discharge directly into the water." Although there's no provision for gray water, sewage must be pumped out of a holding tank and can't be discarded into the water.

The city says new house barges were prohibited in 1990. It says 34 house barges are registered with the county assessor.

But there are more.

The Lake Union Liveaboard Association says its membership of 100 is split 50-50 between house barges and boats. The group says there is no accurate count on liveaboard boats and house barges in the city.

Then there is Gas Works Park Marina, with 70 slips organized as a condominium and each slip owned outright, with the majority occupied by house barges. Some owners have two slips — one for their houseboat and one they rent out.

One man wrote Glowacki that if, because of new regulations, he cannot sell the slip he rents out, "I will lose about $120,000."

The city says post-1990 house barges are using a loophole in the regulations by passing off a barge as a boat even though it "clearly isn't intended for navigation." The new regulations would tighten up the definition.

"Living a nightmare"

Shelli Beaver owns a slip and a house barge at Gas Works Park Marina.

She says she paid $300,000 in 2007, during the housing boom, for a 550-square-foot house barge with an upper loft for a bedroom. She lives there with a dog and two cats.

"I have been living a nightmare," Beaver said of the proposed 25 percent cap and being in limbo about how it would affect her.

"My mortgage slip and houseboat are really all I have to show for 25 years of working as an epidemiologist for the federal government, and I can't believe it could all be taken away from me in the blink of an eye," Beaver said.

In an email to Glowacki, Beaver says the marina "is a unique community of slip owners that have decided to forgo the typical land-based house with oft-times impersonal neighborhoods and invest in a liveaboard lifestyle that provides for close neighborhood relationships, a tranquil water setting, and closeness to nature that invigorates the soul."

As far as concerns with gray water, Beaver said she would be "happy to install an onboard gray-water collection system on my boat to prevent any release of gray water in the lake."

The boat owners, too, have rallied to fight what they consider onerous provisions, such as the 25 percent cap, in the proposed regulations.

Gail Luhn, a Seattle attorney, is president of the Shilshole Liveaboard Association, which represents residents of 300 liveaboard boats at Shilshole Bay Marina. Luhn and her partner, Dwight Kruger, a Microsoft test manager, live on an 80-foot boat.

She also worries that a 25 percent cap of liveaboards at marinas could result in "excessive rates" for slip rentals. In any case, she says, Shilshole Bay Marina, with 1,411 berths, is at 21 percent liveaboards. She says the marketplace should be allowed to set the number of liveaboards by applying "best management practices." For example, she says, if phosphates, bleaches and other harmful substances were banned, any gray water would have minimal environmental impact.

The Port of Seattle, which owns the Shilshole marina, says it has a wait list of 91 liveaboard vessels that, depending on size, will wait a month to a year for a berth.

"The city wants to micromanage marina business in response to a problem that's not demonstrated by any good science," Luhn said. "There is no demonstrated ecological impairment from gray-water discharge from recreational vessels."

At Shilshole, she says, she can watch tides twice a day from her boat, and she believes they flush out a considerable amount of gray water.

"I'm talking about common sense," Luhn said.

She talks about the joys of living on the Infinity.

"You walk to the end of the dock, and you're in the middle of nature, in the middle of some of the most wonderful scenery in all of Seattle," Luhn said.

And the lifestyle that's been depicted in movies and TV shows about Seattle?

"My personal opinion is that the city would be happy to see us go away."

Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237

or elacitis@seattletimes.com