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Sausalito is a small village just north of SAn Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge. During the early part of this century, it was a ferry stop for vacationing saN Franciscans on their way to somewhere else. During prohibition sauce, Alito's principal industries were rum running in prostitution.

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Today, this community of 7000 is a more or less typical Marin County suburb and its primary business is tourism, but there's another Sausalito and it's down here on the waterfront during World War two, this was a busy shipyard afterwards it became a haven for commercial fishermen

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and a hardy breed of artists, individualists and scoundrels. Most living houseboats parked on the mudflats along the shore of Richardson's Bay. Over the years, the houseboat people have survived the attempts of various government agencies to rouse them, but the value of this waterfront property has become

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enormous and many fear that this unique community may no longer be able to resist the power of money. No one knows just how many, how spoke people there are Estimates range from a few 100 to over 1000. Some occupy relatively expensive houseboats equipped with all the

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modern conveniences, but many others live in homemade shelters built on sunken barges where the rotting remains of old ships permanently marooned in the mud. It's a rustic lifestyle without many of the amenities of modern living. Many do not have electricity, practically none are hooked up to

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sewage lines for decades, State County and municipal authorities have tried to bring order and sanitation to the waterfront and for decades, the houseboat people have been resisting most of them like the waterfront. The way it is. Well, it's a difference of life. It's a very free

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way of life. Very comfortable, warm as the boat rocks on the water. It's sort of womb like it's a very pacifying feeling. People more or less usually stated themselves in this area. Nice loose area, no hassles. It's all private property. So police can't come in. Not

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often. We have our own police department. We think we can take care of our own. There are some people of considerable means and there are a number of people who are genuinely poor, but by the large people are here because they like it here and the

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level at which they live is the level they want to live at. I sort of characterize it as a community of the voluntary poor. The people who live at Gate five call it the South 40. It straddles the boundary between Sausalito and the unincorporated area of

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the waterfront that stretches north to Richardson's Bay Bridge. The South 40 is perhaps the most legendary of the houseboat communities philosopher Alan Watts and the artist Varda. Both lived here, but they are dead now and the owner of the property and elusive Portuguese named Don Marquez

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is now under court order to clean out the rotting hulks and peers. The South 40 is about to be redeveloped. We've been attacked from a number of directions and of course the the one that is latched onto immediately is has to do with the fact that

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of course the boats dump their sewage directly in the bay. And very early on the county put their engineers to work to show that we were disastrously polluting Richardson Bay. What their engineers found was that the pollution that we generate is imperceptible by comparison with that

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generated by Mill Valley. And we're in city and the other cities that dump under peak loads large quantities of raw sewage into the bay. It is the on the knees that the people outside have in looking on this community, which in which they do not see

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the order to which they are accustomed kind of drift e benign disorder. Here will go. Everything will be in straight lines, the boats, orderly procession along the piers and the feeling and the character of the community will be utterly changed and probably most of the people

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now living here will go elsewhere. But it will be computer programmers and airline stewardesses, that's what will be here. Steven. Siskind is an ambitious urban planner turned developer from Los Angeles. A few years ago, he sailed up from his home in marina del mar and along

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with some texas. Financiers acquired the Schoonmaker property. Since then, Siskind and his partners have spent a fortune promoting a $32 million development scheme that would turn that section of the Sausalito waterfront into a complex of luxury hotels, apartments and shops, priests, the crush of tourism rather

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than relieve it. Well, tourism is, there's no such thing as monolithic tourism. You and I are tourists, for instance, if we go someplace else and spend a week enjoying somebody else's city, that's different than will be the kind of tourists who will stay longer and spend

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more money. Well, that's a very important factor and maybe that's a very harsh way of looking at it because but the theory of spending spending money is to a certain extent one way of controlling rampant tourism and there's another thing that's important here is that the

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city believe it or not has a very ambivalent attitude towards tourism. The citizens of Sausalito are indeed ambivalent about tourism. On the one hand, the hordes of visitors have created horrible traffic problems and generally disrupted community life. But on the other hand, the tourists spend a

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lot of money and the business people along Bridgeway Avenue are inclined to think development of the waterfront will mean more tourists and more money. Ray Roy is a director of the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce. He also owns four shops in the village fair, a former parking

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garage and moonshine warehouse that is today. The town's biggest tourist attraction in Sausalito. The officials uh Sausalito policy has been to support the use of houseboats and other water oriented uses. On the waterfront. But very few of those projects, projects are off the ground, but many

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others are not as convinced that large scale tourist development is what Sausalito wants or needs along its waterfront. Among them is Sausalito as Mayor Everett Henneman himself a professional planner with the san Francisco housing authority, pressure from big money, isn't there? No question about that? No

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question about that, how is it affecting the city? To a point where I think we all have become neurotic and trying to find out what in the hell we should approve, what we should not approve. And I think for that reason, I think we should have

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a precise plan of the entire waterfront spelling out what's amount of the directions are approved by everybody involved. It is a very difficult process and I'm sure we will not be able to to um please everybody, but the majority of the citizens and I think most

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of us inside isolated would like to see this area maintained as a residential area, but a lifestyle conflict though. Well, I think it is uh and it's valid for some of those people to say you're trying to change my lifestyle, but then all of us are

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subjected to this change in our lifestyle. They legislated the medal of safety and health as it affect other people. But I am who am I to tell another person no, you cannot live in the house, you cannot live in a communal manner, that's their business, not

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mine. If that kind of living town affect other people, then I think the council has to step in, but we cannot legislate living styles, but whether or not major developments like the Schoonmaker project ever get built, the waterfront in and around Sausalito has already begun to

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change for many years. Houseboats have been moored here at campus harbor just north of town, but soon a new road will be completed through here and those houseboats will be moved to a new facility on the other side of the road to many. It will be

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more than just a change of location. Development. Are you doing here? What's it gonna look like when it's finished? It's going to be more like a subdivision, you know, the house instead of being on dry land in the water when it is properly controlled. It can

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be very beneficial to the whole harbor area, which is, you know, progress must take its place I guess. Will you stay? I think so. It's hard to say really, but I think so. This is still the best place we've been living down here for 20 Goddamn

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years, right? In no way they're gonna push us out of here now, how you, how we've been able to hang on stall, right. If we're going to have to do things, you know, tomorrow, we're going to find out a way that we can take care of

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it the next day, we may have to make some adjustments. I suppose the people on the hill will too, but it seems so far that we've been able to make them and I think we'll continue to on either coast in any city in this whole country

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where there is the hospital community as beautiful and as together as this place is, so you're here to stay. I ain't moving, ain't planning no trips.