Uncertainly Over Homeless Encampment Forces Cancelation Of Sausalito's Art Festival

SAUSALITO (CBS SF) -- A year after the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to cancel the Sausalito Art Festival, organizers announced the annual festival of music, food and art has been cancelled for 2021 because uncertainty over the future of a large homeless encampment.

City officials currently are debating moving the encampment from downtown's Dunphy Park to Marinship Park -- the site of the annual Labor Day weekend event.

"In December of last year, one man erected a tent to live in on the Sausalito waterfront next to Dunphy Park," festival organizers said on their webpage. "Since then an entire encampment of homeless people has developed. Thereafter, the Sausalito City Council has been trying to relocate the homeless encampment from its central and prominent location near Dunphy Park to the less visible area of Marinship Park."

The festival organizers said it was a difficult decision.

"This situation is extremely difficult for everyone involved," they wrote. "After spending the last year to reimagine the 68th Sausalito Art Festival, we very much looked forward to bringing the Festival back to the community of artists, locals and visitors. We were confident that we could meet the requirements imposed on us by the Feds and State in regards to COVID restrictions, but the pandemic has created a chain reaction of events that we could not anticipate."

"It impacted the homeless, which impacted the parks, which impacted the city, which impacted the Festival. There clearly is no winner here but with help, we'll all be in a better place next year and the Festival will return."