MENDOCINO CO., 10/20/26 — Of the 38 people who tried to legalize a home under Mendocino County’s last amnesty, 12 made it all the way through.
John Risk of Meadow Farm read that number back to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. “12 permits finaled out of 38 housing applications is not a good score,” he said. “Your child, if he came home with that grade, you would find that disturbing.”
The board did not start a new amnesty. It voted 5-0 to go back through the old one first.
Supervisor Ted Williams’ motion directs county staff to pull the files on single-family homes that entered the last amnesty and never finished permitting. Williams and Supervisor John Haschak, the item’s sponsors, will review those files, invite the owners to meet with them, report back to the full board and then hold community meetings. Haschak seconded the motion.
“Behind the scenes, somebody would call this a half-baked agenda item,” Williams said. “There isn’t really a there there, right? What is the action that we’re calling for that’s going to solve it? You’re right. We don’t have an answer.”
What the last amnesty did
The county ran its amnesty from Nov. 1, 2023, through Dec. 31, 2024. It waived violation and penalty fees for work “not tied to a confirmed code enforcement case,” Gretchen McLaughlin, acting assistant director of Planning and Building Services, told the board.
It drew 135 applications, residential and commercial, and 81 got permits. Thirty-eight were for housing. Nineteen of those got permits, and 12 passed a final inspection.
Staff went back through the housing applications that never got a permit. Some had more than one problem, McLaughlin said. Nine were waiting on septic or site reports or a water district letter. Eight were incomplete. Two never got a sign-off from a fire district or Cal Fire. One was ready to issue, but the owner never paid the fees.
Richard Angley, who presented for Planning and Building Services, said many applicants thought turning in the paperwork was the end of it. They didn’t know they still had to schedule a final inspection.
What a permit costs
The presentation listed average costs from recent permits. For a Class K home, built under the county’s code for owner-built rural homes, the county’s own fee averaged $7,275.91. The total, which includes school and fire fees, comes to $12,062.67. For a new single-family house, the county fee averaged $11,902.06 and the total $23,941.21. Accessory units, including junior units carved out of an existing building, averaged $3,356.17 in county fees and $5,902.89 in all.
School fees usually start at 500 square feet, Angley said, and some districts still waive them.
A supervisor asked whether fees come to about 2% of construction cost. Angley said staff tell callers to plan on 3% to 4%.
Williams said the department pays for itself out of those fees. “I hear cries for reducing the fees,” he said. “I voted against fees, and then other years I voted for them because I recognize we can’t pay our people to do the work if we don’t have fees to support the department.”
“A neighbor or a former tenant files a complaint with our county, and then code enforcement goes out and writes it up, and then we tell the applicant or the violator, you can take out a Class K permit, and they see numbers like $12,000 or even $5,000,” Williams said. “A lot of these people don’t have $5,000. So then what? Now the county uses the limited budget we have to put liens on a property. Well, they still don’t have the $5,000 for the permit, and now they have a lien.”
“Our county is somewhere between poor and destitute,” he said.
Public comment
Eleven people spoke during public comment.
Sojourner Lee, who serves on the board of the Meadow Farm Community Land Trust, said she lived in a yurt for 10 years before she was told her home was “illegal and uninhabitable.” She also cited a lifelong Mendocino County resident who couldn’t afford housing elsewhere, saying he was displaced “amid these enforcement pressures.”
“He died soon after,” Lee said. “I found his body.”
Lee asked for four things: clear information on what state law already allows, keeping the Class K code, lower fees and simpler steps, and a five-year compliance period once immediate hazards are fixed.
Geri Morisky of the Grassroots Institute Housing Work Group said the group’s amnesty petition has 400 signatures. She asked the board to back the community-designed amnesty the group has proposed.
Barry Vogel said he came to the county in 1974 and opened a law practice. Among his first cases, he said, were 123 families who had built their own houses on their own land and been charged with misdemeanors. “The first four cases were found not guilty,” he said. He served on the state’s Class K committee under Gov. Jerry Brown in the late 1970s, he said.
“Are you aware that six presidents of the United States were born in log cabins,” Vogel asked, “and they did pretty well in life?”
Larry Miller asked who decided to send drones over people’s property. He said a friend was “droned” in April and then got a letter from the county.
Williams asked staff to answer. “We have no drones,” a planning and building staff member said. “We do not use drones for anything.” Sara Pierce, then the interim CEO, said the assessor’s office doesn’t use them either.
Miller asked whether it was a scam.
“I don’t think we know,” Williams said. “Maybe it was a neighbor, but the county doesn’t use drones. And I don’t want that to get out in the news. If it were true, fine, report it. When I heard that, I started checking internally. And we don’t have any budget for drones. We don’t have any record of using drones.”
Supervisor Madeline Cline said insurance companies use drones and other aerial imagery to check roofs.
The trust problem
Supervisor Maureen Mulheren said she appreciated the fee information. “There needs to be a compassionate and confidential process through which people would feel comfortable going into an amnesty program,” she said. “It feels like that got missed.”
People are afraid to come forward, Williams said, because they’ll be on record and can’t afford the fixes. He asked what the county could offer as a place to talk about specific cases without putting people at risk.
Angley said the department already does that. Amnesty applications that were never finished are sitting, he said. “We haven’t filed liens, we haven’t gone after people.”
People also come to the counter to ask what it would take to legalize something they built, he said. “Once they walk out the door, we turn the computer off and that’s gone,” Angley said. “We don’t proactively go after people who are coming in to try and legalize the structure.”
Haschak’s first motion would have set up a working group of supervisors, staff and community members to look at an amnesty and other changes. Cline asked why the board would form another ad hoc committee when Williams and Haschak already serve as one. Haschak said he meant the same one.
Pierce, whom the board named CEO later in the meeting, dropping the interim from her title, asked for a timeline because staff are stretched. A supervisor proposed at least two community meetings before the end of the year.
The board has three meetings left this year, Pierce said, and December’s is full.
Haschak’s term is ending, she said, so if the work runs past December, the board will need a different committee.
Am I understanding this, we’re more commercial buildings got approved than housing? I don’t understand why they were not all housing. You still have failed to explain that. It’s no wonder you have failed in your duties. Commercial buildings have a tendency to Pat the supervisors on the back and help them out in some way but approving housing permits don’t. Just goes to show you as far as I’m concerned where the board of supervisors actually see what’s more important to them. Maybe I’m wrong but I sure would like to know.
Sales tax (& TOT) is a huge motivator for the county to get commercial structures functional again. It’s what pays the bills and keeps the county afloat. Housing (by itself) doesn’t generate much tax revenue for the county and, more often than not, it cost the county money to maintain infrastructure leading to these distant rural houses which really may be dragging down on the county finances.
How about the rest of us? After our house burned down in 2017 the new building permit was just shy of 8000.00 and another 1000.00 for a temporary trailer permit. If you give them amnesty how about a refund for us who paid the fees. I have lived in Mendocino County for more than 50 years and each new group of supervisors is more spineless than their predecessors. People need to pay their fair to live here.
that ship sailed
genreations of freeloaders built homes
no taxes for schools
grew weed
no taxes
i hated it
totally demoralizing
no the vultures are picking the bones clean because the only folks left are the ones who want to be here and you can lien and go after responsible people
scum who came to get rich and bailed dont care amd gone now
so much winning
There are thousands of abandoned homes in Mendocino County. A lot of the early back to Landers are passing away at a pretty good rate now. These abandoned and often hoarder type properties fill the county on nearly every dirt road and unincorporated area.
Mendocino County actually owns several of them and is collecting no taxes because they’ve defaulted over after the owner’s death. These places have massive houses, often tons of vehicles, chemicals, rotting out buildings and so they sit. Many of them are unknown because they were built fully without permit although often times millions of dollars were spent building them. These properties also now are a good portion of the unpaid property taxes that are facing default sale.
Buyer beware these properties are often so grossly contaminated that they will kill your grandchildren’s children. Barrels of unknown chemicals sitting in the yard waiting for the real estate agent to discover them when the relatives that live in Florida I want to sell the place that’s been sitting there for the last 15 years vacant. There’s a lot more to all of it than any of the BOS or Ms Pierce are aware. Much more than what they’re aware of.