The grudge match spilled ashore during the pandemic, when more than a dozen anchor-outs said in interviews or lawsuits that their boats were seized and they were left homeless. Many then squared off with the city that moved to corral them and other unhoused people at one park encampment.

What followed was a nearly two-year odyssey that made the wealthy ex-bohemian suburb an unlikely epicenter of California’s homeless crisis — and fueled a debate about the degree to which local authorities may have driven people to tents in the first place.