The U.S. Census demographically describes West Marin as a community of about 10,000 mostly white people. But there is a hidden population of roughly 2,500 low-wage workers living silently in substandard conditions, in trailers and barns, suffering from poor health due to mold and lack of heat, drinking tainted water and using port-o-lets.  

These findings were revealed in a yearlong study, released at a community meeting Thursday. It was sponsored by the Marin Community Foundation, the County of Marin and the West Marin Fund. Beginning in 2023, a bilingual research team interviewed 150 people, representing the housing situations of over 363 family members, who live in or work in West Marin.  

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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.