Lost at Sea: Poverty and Paradise Collide at the Edge of America

A deeply personal nine-year account of the lives of the "anchor-outs"--an unhoused community living off the California coast on abandoned boats--that explores the struggles and resilience of those surviving on the fringes of society.

In the wake of the financial crisis, the number of anchor-outs living in Richardson Bay more than doubles as their long-simmering feud with the wealthy residents of Marin County--one of the richest counties in the country--finally boils over. Many of the shoreline's well-heeled yacht club members and mansion owners blame their unhoused neighbors for rising crime on the waterfront. Meanwhile, local politicians accuse them of destroying the Bay Area's marine ecosystem and demand their eviction. When the pandemic breaks out, a slew of city and regional authorities heed the call: they seize and crush the anchor-outs' boats, arresting dissenters as they dismantle one of the nation's oldest unhoused communities.

Kloc's near-decade-long firsthand account of the joys, hardships, and eventual demise of the anchor-outs is in many ways the story of being poor in America. Examining the profit-driven policies that exacerbate the contemporary housing crisis, Lost at Sea weaves together tales of comradery and survival on the anchorage with the rich history of the region, from the creation of unspeakable wealth during the San Francisco Gold Rush era to the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906, when the first unhoused people dropped their anchors in Marin County.

Along the way, Kloc discovers the quiet beauty of the world the anchor-outs built: how they've learned to care for each other, band together to fend off real estate developers and NIMBY neighbors, and fight for a way of life that is entirely unrecognizable to those on shore. Lost at Sea explores the often overlooked world of poverty and homelessness that exists in even the wealthiest enclaves of America, where people who have fallen on hard times struggle to rebuild their lives among those who would rather just wish them away.

JOE KLOC is a reporter and senior editor at Harper's Magazine, where he was a finalist for the 2019 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. His work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, New York magazine, and the New York Review of Books.