A sort of “California Forever” type situation has been brewing in the small Mendocino County town of Point Arena, where a sitting member of city council has bought up about 20 properties through a web of LLCs and chased out long-term tenants.

The Mendocino County city of Point Arena, some 150 miles north of San Francisco, has a population of less than 500 people. And it’s gone through a few boom-and-bust cycles. Once a port town that was leveled by the 1906 earthquake, destroyed by a fire some 20 years later, it rebounded with the 1970s-era popularity of a hippie commune-retreat place known as Oz Farm, and a very bustling illegal marijuana trade for a few decades after that. That marijuana trade has collapsed with legalization, and now Point Arena is best known for the Point Arena Lighthouse seen below, which continues to be a tourist attraction.

But now Point Arena is making some news again, as the Chronicle reports on a series of LLCs that are on a buying spree of Point Arena properties, in a story not unlike the billionaires buying up land for their “California Forever” project, or the mystery buyer who bought up a bunch of Upper Fillmore buildings and was identified by the Chronicle as being tech investor Neil Mehta. In this case, the differently named but affiliated LLCs “gained ownership, control or established an affiliation with” about 20 properties in a town of less than two square miles that doesn’t have many properties in the first place.

The Chron’s reporting identifies the buyer using these LLCs as Point Arena City Councilmember Jeff Hansen, and cites a number of examples of Hansen raising rents by the maximum allowable 10% per year, and displacing many tenants. Hansen reportedly also bought buildings containing an apparel shop, a salon, a diner, a cannabis dispensary, and a general store — all of which shut down after Hansen bought them.

“The whole town’s being bought up and there’s no dialogue about it,” one local business owner told the Chronicle, declining to identify themselves for fear of retribution. “A lot of us have no frigging clue what’s happening.”

Hansen was originally quite well-liked for buying Point Arena’s defunct and dilapidated Sea Shell Inn and renovating it into the very nice and functional Wildflower Hotel. But the Chronicle reports that many locals have grown distrustful as the businesses in his purchased properties seem to always not get their lease renewed, and close down. They report on one former apparel boutique that is now “a ‘pop-up estate sale’ with sporadic hours, owned by the family of one of Hansen’s associates,” plus other properties where Hansen is not the owner on paper, but somehow is still the one collecting rent.

And there were certainly waves made when a restaurant called Amber’s Diner closed earlier this year, and the owner excoriated Hansen in a Facebook post. “We closed because of Jeff,” the post declares. “Dictating hours, Forcing certain conditions on us, bad decisions, and business practices. That was the entire reason. I know he will try and paint a different picture and us as bad people but the rumors are simply not true.”

That owner happened to live in one of Hansen’s rental properties, and Hansen allegedly showed up at another restaurant where that owner worked to publicly announce he was evicting that owner, doing this in front of tables full of diners.

And it’s apparently hurting Point Arena’s bottom line to have so many properties sit vacant. The Chron says that Point Arena’s sales tax revenue went down by 37% last year, forcing the city to pass a sales tax increase this past November.

​​“I know that Jeff Hansen is a controversial figure,” Point Arena City Manager Peggy Ducey told the Chronicle. “But his purchasing of properties, there’s nothing the city can do about that. I’ve had some very frank conversations with Jeff, and we’re gonna continue to have those — but I cannot infringe on his legal rights."

There are certainly conflict-of-interest factors at play with a sitting city councilmember being one of the largest property owners in town. But that arrangement appears likely to continue in Point Arena, as Hansen ran unopposed for reelection this past November. He only received 58 votes.

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Image: City of Point Arena via LinkedIn