FORT BRAGG, CA., 9/29/26 — Seniors who live across the street from a covered Mendocino Transit Authority bus stop at the Boatyard Shopping Center told the Fort Bragg City Council on Monday that many of them are afraid to use it.
People sleep at the stop, yell at passersby and leave garbage, the residents said, and some residents of Trailer Cove, the senior community next to Boatyard Drive, now drive to the shopping center rather than walk.
Tara Larson read the council a letter from her mother, Judy Hahn, during public comment on items not on the agenda. Residents of the park signed it, Larson said, and she handed the council a set of photos to document the letter.
“The problems have gotten much worse in the past year,” Hahn wrote. She lives across the street from the bus stop and sees problems there every day, she wrote. More people are sleeping at the stop, including overnight. “I often see public sexual displays and indecent exposure,” she wrote. “There is garbage all over the area, even on the roof of the bus stop.”
Residents who use canes or walkers have to step around garbage and sleeping people to reach the Boatyard Shopping Center, according to the letter. The letter described a man who was “under the influence of something” at the stop while students waited for a bus to school.
“The students couldn’t even use the bus stop to wait for their bus,” Hahn wrote. “They were waiting in the street.”
When people are asked to leave the stop, the letter said, they often cross the street and gather at the Trailer Cove gate. More than 75 senior citizens live in the park, according to the letter.
Hahn asked the city to patrol Boatyard Drive. “The unhoused who are making Boatyard Drive their home need to be removed from the area and face consequences if they continue to return,” she wrote. The photos were taken over one week, she wrote.
“I’ve called dispatch so many times, I’ve lost count,” she wrote.
Larson said the residents hope the council, the city, MTA and the Fort Bragg Police Department can work with them on a solution.
Harvest Market backs residents
Tim Bosma of Harvest Market, whose store is across the street from the park, spoke next in support. There are people without homes in Fort Bragg who need help and are looking for it, he said, but most of the people at the stop aren’t.
“I have called the police department numerous times, and their response is always to try and help people move along, but we need to have a more permanent solution,” Bosma said.
The stop shouldn’t be available for overnight stays, he said, and he offered to work with Trailer Cove so that people shifted from the shopping center don’t just settle across the street.
Later in the meeting, council member Lindy Peters said he would put the bus stop on the agenda of the council’s Public Safety Committee at its next meeting.
Peters was on the MTA board when the stop went in, he said. Very few bus stops have roofs, because the board knew even then that “putting a covered roof over a bus stop also invites people who aren’t necessarily waiting for the bus to hang out.”
The Boatyard stop got one anyway because it’s the major staging point for MTA’s inland trip, which riders take to connect to Santa Rosa, Peters said. They often carry suitcases on their way to the airport.
Peters said he worked in that area for 10 years, and that the problems there had seemed to ease somewhat over time. “It looks like it’s back,” he said.
Transit board meets Wednesday
Council member Tess Albin-Smith, who chairs the MTA board, said she would raise the stop at the board’s meeting Wednesday. Benches can be changed to make them harder to sleep on, she said, but “the problem is having cover.”
She said she sympathizes with people without homes who need that shelter, and that “somehow we have to work together with the police department.”
The bus stop isn’t on the MTA board’s posted agenda. The board meets at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 30, and its Fort Bragg meeting room is the conference room at 190 E. Spruce St., according to the agenda. The meeting includes a public comment period and an “unmet needs” item, where the board takes public input.