As BC’s Housing Crisis Deepens, Safe Anchorages Are Disappearing

Across coastal British Columbia, governments have steadily restricted the places where people may anchor, moor, and live aboard vessels. The cumulative effect has been displacement, greater housing insecurity, and the loss of a practical form of coastal housing.

For decades, protected harbours around British Columbia provided refuge for travelling boaters, working vessels, people maintaining boats between voyages, and people who made their homes on the water.

Many of those harbours have become considerably less welcoming.

False Creek, the Gorge Waterway, Deep Cove, Port Moody, Ladysmith Harbour, Mannion Bay, and Nanaimo Harbour have each introduced permits, time limits, designated anchorage boundaries, licensing requirements, or enforcement programs that reduced long-term access.

Every location has its own history. Some interventions responded to abandoned vessels. Others addressed sewage, navigation, shoreline access, eelgrass protection, or complaints from waterfront residents. Several were reasonable responses to specific problems.

Taken together, however, they reveal a larger policy failure. British Columbia has been removing low-cost places to live on the water while experiencing one of the most severe housing affordability crises in Canada.

The regulatory ratchet

The process usually begins with legitimate concerns about a few vessels. Governments then introduce rules applying to an entire harbour or class of boaters.

Registration requirements are followed by time limits. Time limits are followed by designated anchorage areas. Municipal water-lot tenures provide additional zoning authority. Enforcement campaigns remove vessels that cannot relocate quickly.

The results can be permanent even when the original problem was temporary.

False Creek

False Creek once supported a substantial community of anchored vessels. Today, anyone anchoring overnight or for more than eight daytime hours requires a City of Vancouver permit.

Boaters may remain for no more than 14 days in a 30-day period between April and September, or 21 days in a 40-day period during the winter. Dinghy access is restricted to designated public wharves, generally with a three-hour limit. (City of Vancouver)

These rules preserve short visits while making False Creek largely unavailable as long-term refuge or housing.

I previously wrote that Vancouver should provide properly serviced liveaboard spaces in municipal marinas as part of its response to the housing crisis. The city currently regulates people away from the water without creating enough lawful alternatives for those who already live there. (morganeoger.ca)

The Gorge Waterway

Victoria created the Gorge Waterway Park zoning district in 2014 and amended it in 2016. The bylaw prohibits anchoring or mooring for more than 48 consecutive hours or 72 hours within 30 days.

In 2018, the BC Supreme Court upheld the restrictions in City of Victoria v. Zimmerman. Some of the affected boaters had lived or moored in the Gorge for decades. The court confirmed that local zoning powers could regulate long-term moorage on provincially owned seabed within municipal boundaries. (BC Supreme Court)

The judgment also recognized an important limit. Municipal zoning cannot simply eliminate temporary moorage directly connected to active navigation.

That distinction matters. Temporary anchoring, storing an unattended vessel, occupying a permanent mooring, and living aboard are different activities. Public policy frequently treats them as one problem.

Deep Cove and Port Moody

The District of North Vancouver adopted its Wharf and Anchor Regulation Bylaw in 2021. Deep Cove boaters must use designated municipal anchor buoys, with a maximum stay of 72 hours in any calendar month. Vessels must be insured and registered, and liveaboard activity is restricted to the permitted short stay. (District of North Vancouver)

Port Moody uses a designated anchorage area and permit system. Anchoring outside the designated area is prohibited. Overnight users require a permit and may remain for no more than 21 nights in 40 days. Registration, insurance, and daily fees are required. (City of Port Moody)

These systems are designed around transient recreational use. They offer little accommodation for people who need seasonal refuge, are repairing a vessel, work locally from the water, or live aboard.

Ladysmith’s Dogpatch

Ladysmith Harbour’s Dogpatch supported an informal marine community for many years.

In October 2015, the Town of Ladysmith served notices on more than 50 vessels after amending its zoning rules to limit moorage in the affected water lot to seven days. Owners were ordered to leave by November 15 and warned that unauthorized vessels, floats, docks, and mooring buoys could be removed. (Town of Ladysmith)

Some boats were abandoned or in poor condition. Others were occupied, maintained homes. A broad enforcement approach displaced both.

This pattern has repeatedly allowed the most visible problem vessels to define public policy for everyone living aboard.

Mannion Bay and Nanaimo

Bowen Island’s Mannion Bay now requires vessel identification, proof of ownership, local contact information, and liability insurance. Mooring-buoy owners pay an annual municipal fee and must comply with restrictions on liveaboard use. Part of the bay is also marked as a voluntary no-anchor zone to protect eelgrass. (Bowen Island Municipality)

In Nanaimo Harbour, port procedures restrict anchoring to designated areas and generally limit a vessel to 14 days within any 30-day period. (Nanaimo Port Authority)

Again, each rule can be defended individually. Their cumulative effect is a network of harbours where a person may visit briefly but cannot establish a stable, lawful home.

A housing resource hiding in plain sight

In earlier articles, I argued that liveaboard housing should be included in British Columbia’s housing policy.

A safe and seaworthy boat is already a privately financed dwelling. It requires no new land subdivision, concrete foundation, or high-rise construction. Managed liveaboard moorage could provide homes near employment and community services while allowing some residents to leave conventional apartments available for others. (morganeoger.ca)

Liveaboards will never accommodate everyone. They could accommodate thousands of people across a coastal province with extensive protected waterways, existing marinas, and a large recreational and commercial marine sector.

The potential extends beyond affordability. Liveaboard residents support boatyards, mechanics, marine suppliers, water taxis, and local businesses. Occupied vessels also place experienced people on the water who can identify dragging anchors, fires, pollution, sinking boats, and unsafe conditions.

These benefits require infrastructure and enforceable standards. Liveaboard vessels should be seaworthy, identifiable, and insured. Communities need pump-out facilities, waste collection, safe shore access, fire planning, and mechanisms to remove vessels that become hazardous.

Canada already has legislation addressing wrecked, abandoned, and hazardous vessels. Owners can be ordered to repair, move, or dispose of vessels that threaten navigation or the environment. Abandoning a vessel is illegal. (Transport Canada)

Enforcement can therefore focus on conduct, safety, and vessel condition. A person’s presence aboard should not itself be treated as evidence that a vessel is a problem.

Environmental protection and housing can coexist

Eelgrass beds, shellfish areas, and sensitive shorelines need protection. Raw sewage must stay out of coastal waters. Derelict vessels should be removed before they sink.

Those objectives support managed liveaboard communities.

Municipalities and First Nations could establish serviced mooring fields outside sensitive habitat. Annual inspections could verify seaworthiness, sanitation equipment, registration, and insurance. Fees could fund pump-out services, environmental monitoring, and emergency facilities.

A regulated mooring field provides greater environmental control than continually displacing people into remote coves without services or reliable shore access.

Displacement also carries safety consequences. When protected urban anchorages close, boaters move farther from employment, transit, medical care, and repair facilities. Some relocate into more exposed waters. Others abandon vessels they can no longer afford to store.

The relationship to housing affordability

British Columbia’s housing crisis is usually discussed in terms of apartments, houses, shelters, and supportive housing. Coastal housing policy rarely recognizes that a small but meaningful number of people already provide their own homes on the water.

These residents do not require governments to build a complete dwelling. Their vessels already exist. The public infrastructure required to support them consists primarily of lawful moorage, safe shore access, sewage and waste services, fire protection, and reasonable regulatory oversight.

That makes liveaboard housing unusually cost-effective.

It can also reduce pressure elsewhere in the housing system. A person living safely aboard a privately owned vessel is not competing for a rental apartment, occupying a shelter bed, or waiting for a subsidized housing unit.

This does not mean every vessel is suitable for residential use. Boats used as homes should meet credible safety, environmental, and maintenance standards. Owners who abandon vessels or discharge sewage should face enforcement.

The core policy question is whether responsible liveaboards should have any lawful place to exist.

Increasingly, the answer from coastal governments has been no.

A provincial framework is needed

British Columbia needs a coherent liveaboard housing policy rather than a harbour-by-harbour cycle of complaint, restriction, and displacement.

Such a framework should:

Recognize qualifying liveaboard vessels as a legitimate form of housing.
Create serviced liveaboard moorage in suitable urban and rural locations.
Establish consistent standards for seaworthiness, sewage, waste, insurance, and fire safety.
Distinguish occupied homes from abandoned, hazardous, and commercially stored vessels.
Require governments to assess housing displacement before eliminating established liveaboard communities.
Respect Indigenous rights, title, and marine stewardship through government-to-government planning.
Support municipalities, First Nations, port authorities, and marina operators in creating regulated liveaboard moorage.
Protect temporary anchoring associated with navigation while regulating permanent occupation through clear and proportionate rules.

CMHC estimates that Canadian housing construction must increase dramatically to restore affordability. Vancouver’s average asking rent for a two-bedroom apartment reached approximately $3,170 during the first quarter of 2025. (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation)

Every viable housing option should therefore be considered.

British Columbia’s liveaboards are already housed. Many maintain their own vessels, pay their own costs, and ask primarily for lawful places to stay. Creating managed moorage would cost far less per household than constructing equivalent urban housing.

For thirty years, coastal governments have progressively closed or restricted the anchorages where these households could exist. The people and boats did not disappear. They moved to the next harbour, became more precarious, or entered an already strained land-based housing market.

British Columbia needs more homes.

Some of those homes can float.