Mendocino County Supervisors weigh housing amnesty, composting toilets

FORT BRAGG, CA., 9/15/26 — A cabin demoted to a storage shed. Three shipping containers that cost more than $3,500 to permit.

Coast residents brought stories like those to the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. Supervisors took two 5-0 votes: one to work up a broader amnesty for unpermitted homes, the other to study waterless composting toilets.

Each vote created a two-member ad hoc committee. Supervisors John Haschak and Ted Williams will work on housing options, including amnesty that goes beyond state law, and bring the issue back to the board Oct. 20. Williams and Board Chair Bernie Norvell will take on composting toilet proposals with residents, the county’s Environmental Health department and Santa Cruz County.

“We’ve talked about it a lot, but it’s really time to take some action and bring these forward,” Haschak said.

Housing amnesty up first

The amnesty discussion started with a report from Planning and Building Services on Assembly Bill 2533, a state law that took effect Jan. 1, 2025. It covers accessory dwelling units and junior ADUs built without permits before 2020. A county can’t deny a permit for one of those units just because it was unpermitted or doesn’t meet current building code, though it can still refuse a unit it finds unsafe, according to the planning department’s Sept. 9 memo to the board.

The county is taking applications under the law but still needs to update its ADU web page, publish a health and safety checklist and set up an inspection process, the memo says. The county ran its own amnesty program from Nov. 1, 2023 through Dec. 31, 2024.

Code enforcement has had about 14 cases in the last five years that could fall under the state law, a department representative told the board.

Most of the people who spoke wanted the county to go further.

Toni Orans said Orans and a land partner were reported by a former tenant after an eviction. Their cabin was declared a storage shed under what Orans called a requirement for full code compliance and was gutted. Orans asked the board to pause code enforcement except for serious hazards.

John Risk, treasurer of the Meadow Farm Community Land Trust east of Fort Bragg, said permitting three shipping containers that had sat on the farm for 10 years cost more than $3,500. In June, supervisors waived those building permit penalty fees, Risk said.

Geri Morisky, of the Grassroots Institute’s housing work group, said a petition for a community-designed amnesty program has 500 signatures. Morisky showed photos of an ADU that Morisky said was gutted after a neighbor’s complaint, at a cost of $40,000 in permit fees.

Fort Bragg City Councilmember Tess Albin-Smith asked the county to bring back its own amnesty program, since the state law doesn’t cover single-unit homes. Most of the eight written comments on the item asked for a community-designed amnesty or a pause in code enforcement.

Part of the issue is the housing crunch. Tim Bosma of Harvest Market said good employees have been unable to stay because they couldn’t find a place to live.

Doug Nunn said four owners on Albion Ridge Road spent almost four years working with county staff to bring four homes up to code and recently got final approval on a shared septic system.

“It worked, finally,” Nunn said.

Haschak said code enforcement is supposed to put health and safety first. The board will review code enforcement priorities Oct. 6, Interim Chief Executive Officer Sara Pierce said.

And then there’s septic

Supervisor Williams asked the board to support research into a small, voluntary composting toilet pilot for rural parts of the county. The request doesn’t create a program or spend county money, and any pilot would have to come back to the board.

On difficult sites, a basic septic system can cost about $15,000, and one with added treatment more than $40,000, according to 2019 county estimates cited in Williams’ presentation.

“When you look at the cost of a parcel and infrastructure and then building, we’re coming up on million-dollar shacks,” Williams said.

“Even though there hasn’t been a county sanctioned program, we all know there are composting toilets in the county,” Williams said.

Williams’ presentation describes a Santa Cruz County pilot, capped at 25 participants, that composted waste at Watsonville’s wastewater treatment plant. Alisa Keesey, program director for the nonprofit GiveLove, told the board by Zoom that she designed and ran that pilot, which began after the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fire.

Amy Wynn, principal planner at Wynn Coastal Planning & Biology in Fort Bragg, said clients are often told they can’t add a bedroom or an ADU because there isn’t room for a septic system. Risk offered the land trust’s farm as a pilot site. All six written comments on the item backed the study.

Marlayna Duley, the county’s environmental health director, told the board that county rules already allow such systems. But state requirements mean a property must still have a workable septic design on record, Duley said.

“Just because state law hasn’t envisioned these types of systems doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be pushing to have the state give some allowance,” Williams countered.