STATE FUNDS HAVE BEEN AWARDED to a West Marin nonprofit to help rehabilitate the campus and buildings at the derelict Coast Guard facility in Point Reyes Station.

The Community Land Trust Association of West Marin announced last week it was awarded $11.5 million from the Joe Serna Jr. Farmworker Housing Grant, a program of the California Department of Housing and Community Development. The grant is aimed at the creation of multifamily housing for agricultural workers, with a priority for lower-income households. 

The Coast Guard facility in Point Reyes Station was built in 1974 to house officers and their families, but it was no longer in use by 2014. In 2019, Marin County purchased the 33-acre property from the Coast Guard for $4.3 million. By 2020, CLAM and the nonprofit developer Eden Housing proposed a joint rehabilitation project. 

A fallen fence at a unit from the former Coast Guard housing site in Point Reyes Station, Calif., on Monday, Oct. 20, 2025. Marin County, Community Land Trust Association of West Marin (CLAM), and Eden Housing are renovating the now-vacant housing site that formerly housed Coast Guard staff. (George Alfaro/Bay City News)

The total cost for the renovation is $55.4 million, which will be comprised of the Joe Serna grant, plus $12 million in grants awarded through the Marin County Board of Supervisors and affordable housing funding programs. The remainder will be filled with the sale of tax credits that the project team will apply for in early 2026. 

Some of the 54 units in the 13-building property will be set aside for families who work in agricultural production or who were displaced from ranches that will face closure in the spring because of a settlement between environmental groups and ranchers in the Point Reyes National Seashore.

According to a statement from CLAM, there are about 150 residents that qualify as low-income agricultural workers in West Marin at risk of homelessness. 

“This will also protect sensitive surrounding natural resources areas, improve infrastructure, and provide new resident amenities,” said County Executive Derek Johnson at Tuesday’s Marin County Board of Supervisors meeting. “We expect to complete this project in 2028, and it will mark the largest affordable housing project in West Marin and will be a step towards supporting local workers and sustaining our community’s diversity.” 

A window is broken and a backyard fence has fallen at a building belonging to the former Coast Guard housing site in Point Reyes Station, Calif., on Monday, Oct. 20, 2025. Marin County, Community Land Trust Association of West Marin (CLAM), and Eden Housing are renovating the now-vacant housing site that formerly housed Coast Guard staff. (George Alfaro/Bay City News)
Left: A satellite dish lays in the ruins of a backyard fence belonging to a unit at the former Coast Guard housing site in Point Reyes Station. Right: A broken screen door rests on two mattresses behind a unit at the former Coast Guard housing site in Point Reyes Station, Calif., on Monday, Oct. 20, 2025. (George Alfaro/Bay City News)

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.