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.