: Written by: Ruth Dusseault/Bay City News; Published: 09 July 2026

photo credit: George Alfaro/Bay City News
Resident Guadalupe Aparicio sits in a unit with
Chiquilin the cat at the newly opened housing project
on 100 6th St. in Point Reyes Station on July 8, 2026.

A year and a half after 150 ranch workers and families were displaced in a rural part of Marin County where housing is scarce, all 120 who chose to stay are now housed.

Getting there required a public shelter crisis, hundreds of hours of hard labor, organizational collaboration and nearly $11 million in private, public and philanthropic funds.

Those who made it happen celebrated Wednesday in the gray winds of West Marin at the opening of an interim tiny home community in Point Reyes Station.

The project was headed by the nonprofit Community Land Trust Association of West Marin, or CLAM. Residents have begun moving in while CLAM pursues plans for permanent affordable housing on the site over the next three to five years.

Currently there are 12 two-bedroom homes and two ADA-accessible one-bedroom units, each measuring about 400 square feet. The homes are equipped with rooftop solar panels and heat pumps, and residents will pay $1,250 per month for rent.

CLAM Executive Director Jarred Russell opened the ribbon cutting ceremony at Sixth and B streets, where 14 tiny homes on wheels now sit on a former vacant lot. It was one of 11 properties acquired or leased by CLAM to be renovated or rented for families, which had to leave their ranch homes by March 1.

Forty families were displaced for two reasons: The National Park Service closed a dozen ranches on the Point Reyes National Seashore as part of a 2025 legal settlement with environmental groups, and about 30 people from the mainland Martinelli Ranch were living in substandard conditions.

"Today, one quarter of those households can call Sixth and B Street home," Russell said. "This project happened because our community came together around one simple belief that our neighbors deserve the opportunity to remain in a community they helped build."

Attendees at the celebration included U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, Assemblymember Damon Connolly, and Marin County Supervisors Eric Lucan, Stephanie Moulton-Peters, Brian Colbert, Mary Sackett and Dennis Rodoni, who represents the district.

"Everyone deserves a safe, healthy, and dignified place to call home," Rodoni told the crowd.

The effort relied on a combination of public funding and private philanthropy. Marin County contributed nearly $2.5 million to purchase the property, to lease it to CLAM and to fund site improvements, while also approving a shelter crisis declaration in 2025 to speed construction.

Huffman secured $2 million in federal funding for the future permanent affordable housing development. The Marin Community Foundation provided $300,000 for staffing and project planning, committed an additional $1 million for CLAM and extended a $5 million low-interest bridge loan. The West Marin Fund awarded a grant of $175,000 and helped coordinate fundraising, and additional support came from West Marin Community Services.

"None of this would have happened with just the Marin Community Foundation alone, or the county alone or the federal government alone or the state government or the nonprofit partners," said Marin Community Foundation President and CEO Rhea Suh. "It required every single one of us to be actively at the table almost every single day, working, brainstorming, and developing solutions that may have sounded crazy at some time but actually became the solutions."

The Sixth and B project is part of a broader housing initiative that now includes 10 other properties throughout West Marin. The Cottages in Inverness will house about 10 families. A property on Hawthornden Way will accommodate up to nine people.

Additional units that were acquired or leased by CLAM include three homes, one accessory dwelling unit and two commercial properties in Point Reyes Station, a duplex in Forest Knolls, a three-bedroom home in Stinson Beach, a home in Tomales, two homes in Inverness Park as well as a former inn with 20 cottages in Inverness.

"Don't turn on the radio when you drive back home," Suh said before the ribbon was cut for the tiny homes. "Let this soak in as the moment of glory, of sustenance, of inspiration, because it's here, it's right in our own backyards."