High Housing Costs Chasing More Into Water

Lack of Property Taxes, Lower Fees Among Lures Of Boat Living in D.C., Md.

After years of watching home prices skyrocket out of his reach, Hank Clay has finally found affordable housing. The one-bedroom home costs him just $200 a month. It comes free of any property taxes.

And it floats.

For the past eight months, Clay, 55, has lived aboard a creaky, 27-foot sailboat on Chesapeake Bay that he shares with a parrot named Jorge. Although the vessel is cramped and frigid in the winter, docking it at Beacon Marina in Southern Maryland is a lot cheaper than his old $800-a-month rent for a tiny studio in Alexandria.

Pushed off land by soaring housing prices, Clay is one of a growing number of Washington area residents making their homes on barges and schooners from the District's Southwest waterfront to Chesapeake Bay inlets in Southern Maryland, marina managers say.

"I know this seems a little bit crazy," said Clay, who is trying to save money to start a business selling wireless Internet devices on eBay. "But it's very affordable."

Known in nautical circles as liveaboards, they include recent college graduates frustrated with high rents and retirees on fixed incomes who struggled to pay property taxes on their former houses. For some, it is the only way to stay off the streets.

"I've been homeless before, and I won't be homeless again," said Donald Littlepage, 44, a sheet-metal worker who moved aboard his boat after a second divorce.

Although there are no official statistics on the number of liveaboards, several area marinas reported a fourfold increase in the past decade. Jamie Phifer, the dock master at Beacon Marina in Solomons, said he had three liveaboards 10 years ago; today there are 14.

"The cost of houses are just outrageous around here," said Phifer, 45, who grew up near the marina at the southern tip of Calvert County, where houses sold for an average of $350,000 last year. That's 79 percent higher than in 2001 and too expensive for Phifer, who recently had to move into an apartment across the river in St. Mary's County. "There's a total lack of affordable housing," he said.

Christian Yingling, 25, realized as much when he decided to move out of his parents' home in Warrenton. Buying a house or condominium was out of his economic reach. And renting an apartment seemed like a pricey way to burn cash without building equity. So in late November, he decided to move aboard Sea Monkey, a green-and-white boat docked at the Gangplank Marina in Southwest Washington.

"At first my parents said, 'Are you crazy?' " said Yingling, who works as a computer trainer for the U.S. Department of Justice in Chantilly. "But when I actually showed them the number, they realized it made economic sense."

For his slip with a spectacular view of the Washington Monument, Yingling pays about $600 a month in dock fees to the marina and $300 toward his mortgage on the 40-foot boat, which he bought from a friend.