Marin County evicted a man living in a bus on Binford Road in Novato and seized the vehicle he called home. The yearslong saga cost the county almost $100,000 and included numerous cleanups and court battles.
It ended as a lose-lose for both parties.
The reason? Sean Derning couldn’t keep his site clean, the county said. Since 2023, Marin has conducted 16 cleanups of Derning’s area, where property overflowed from his bus parked on Binford Road in unincorporated Marin County at a sanctioned RV homeless encampment.
Some might call Derning a collector or tinkerer. Others could use a harsher term—hoarder.
“I’ve been trying for two years to clean it up,” Derning said. “This was not handled properly from the get-go. The initial cleanup that they did, they gave no consideration to my contracting business. I was not able to get any solid footing since then.”
Derning says the cleanups cost him his livelihood. County workers seized tools he used for work as a building contractor, according to Derning and his supporters.
For many years, until 2020, he held a contractor’s license and ran his own business. It’s unclear what brought Derning to Binford Road in 2022. But the fact is that owning more stuff than what fits in a bus set in motion a cascade of events that has left him with an uncertain future.
In 2024, when Marin started the cleanups and property seizures on Binford Road, Derning joined two other residents in filing a restraining order against the county. The judge ruled against them.
The cleanups continued, with Derning’s site targeted more than any other on Binford Road “because of the constant accumulation of trash, debris, and personal property in the County’s right-of-way,” the county wrote in a court filing.
Eventually, officials decided they had tried hard enough. On Dec. 4, a sheriff’s deputy posted a notice on Derning’s bus stating that if the vehicle wasn’t removed, it would be towed for code violations. The bus had been parked in the spot for more than 72 hours and didn’t have a current registration, just like most of the 31 RVs on Binford Road.
Four days later, Derning filed for a temporary restraining order in federal court to prevent the county from seizing his bus. He lost.
On the morning of Jan. 22, a small army of county employees and vendors gathered on Binford Road to sift through Sean Derning’s belongings and separate personal property from waste. Anything not taken away by Derning or discarded went to a storage facility for at least the next 90 days, paid for by the county.
At approximately 3pm, a tow truck hooked up to Derning’s converted bus and took it away from the RV encampment. And just like that, a man’s home was gone.
Until the 11th hour on Thursday, Derning, 47, didn’t know his next stop. On the county’s dime, he checked into a Novato motel for a seven-day stay.
Derning maintains that the county offered no relocation assistance prior to the eviction date. Jason Weber, interim assistant county executive, noted privacy issues regarding providing specific information but did say that he disagrees with Derning’s perspective.
Lack of information from the county has been a sticking point for Derning and his advocates.
According to Derning, his PTSD and anxiety impair his ability to process information and communicate. In emails reviewed by the Pacific Sun, a homeless activist, Robbie Powelson, made several requests to the county for Derning to receive disability accommodation, including having officials communicate with his designated representative.
Derning confirmed that he has long wanted a supporter to help him understand what the county requires and what it will provide.
“If the county had come to us beforehand, we could have worked with Sean and prevented the need for the tow and this spectacle,” homeless advocate Jason Sarris said during Thursday’s events.
A spectacle indeed. There were 13 vehicles, a large tow truck, two tow truck operators, junk haulers, county officials, sheriff’s deputies, a Department of Public Works representative and workers from the county’s hazardous materials team.
No word yet from the county on what the eviction cost, but one must wonder who made the decision to spend $100,000 on repeatedly cleaning up Derning’s site and storing his property. The funds could have gone toward housing and providing mental health services.
“I think everybody will agree that that’s not the best way to spend $100,000,” Marin County Supervisor Eric Lucan said. “But my understanding is that amount was spent over a very long period of time. I don’t think anybody anticipated that that’s what the end result would be. Certainly, if anybody knew that going into it, that would have warranted a different conversation.”
Determining whether the large expenditure and eviction were avoidable is now a moot point. However, in the future, Derning will have a representative to assist him. He completed paperwork last week that allows his case manager to communicate with advocate Powelson.
Before his eviction, Derning was part of a community of 45 people who reside on Binford Road in an assortment of RVs and other vehicles, as well as a few tents. A stretch of this two-lane road—sandwiched between a marsh on the east and Highway 101 on the west—has served as a vehicle homeless encampment for years.
Initially, the camp was an informal gathering of vehicles, but the population swelled during the pandemic. The county then began paying more attention to the area and sought funding to assist the residents.
In 2023, Marin secured $1.6 million over three years from California’s Encampment Resolution Fund for the Binford Road camp and the following year received another award for $3.72 million.
Marin provides a variety of services for the residents, including porta-potties, trash pickup and RV sewage pump outs. Most importantly, residents receive case management that leads to housing assistance.
Fifty former Binford Road residents have been housed through the county’s efforts, with 40 people currently on a pathway to housing. Marin says its goal is to resolve the encampment by June 30, 2027.
Derning may still benefit from Binford Road’s housing program because his case manager will follow him wherever he temporarily lands. Currently, the case manager and Powelson are meeting with him to figure out next steps, including possibly moving into a shelter.
While it appears that the county and its case management vendor will work to keep a roof over Derning’s head, he has suffered immense losses. He no longer has his bus, most of his worldly possessions and the community he cherished at Binford Road.
“It’s hard,” Derning said. “I’m not going to have any power, so I’ll need to adapt. I won’t have anything. I wasn’t necessarily ready for this.”
