Three years ago, the city of Riviera Beach in Palm Beach County lost a court battle in the United States Supreme Court that changed how houseboats are defined under zoning laws.
Long time Riviera Beach resident Tommy Walker remembers the first time he heard the name of the man who won that Supreme Court case.
“Long long time ago, I think it was some stuff going on over at the old marina,” he says. “I heard his name over there somewhere.”
Walker runs a towing company in Riviera Beach, and he unsuccessfully ran for city council this year. He likes to keep tabs on local politics.
“Let’s see how we’ll put this...” Walker wonders aloud. “Fane is a resident of Riviera Beach, but he’s not in the mainstream.”
Fane Lozman is a veteran of the Marine Corps. He says he made millions trading commodities at the Chicago Board of Trade and then moved back to South Florida for a quieter life. He owns a boat salvage company, but devotes most of his time to his real passion.
“Once you live on a floating home it gets in your blood because, you know, if you want to go for a swim you just jump out your backdoor,” Lozman says. “You have your kayak, your speedboat, your jet ski, they’re right there to use, to get up close and personal with the water.”
Lozman owns a strip of land along the coast of Singer Island, an upscale community in Riviera Beach. He also owns several acres of water offshore in the Lake Worth Lagoon. In July, he tugged a new houseboat up from North Bay Village, near Miami.
This houseboat had replaced an older one that was seized by the city of Riviera Beach in 2009. The city claimed it violated local boating laws, then won it in an auction, and destroyed it, leaving Lozman no choice but to move to Miami Beach.
Following the demolition, he challenged the city, and the case made its way all the way up to the US Supreme Court. In 2013 the court ruled in Lozman’s favor, and stated that his houseboat was a in fact a home.
“It was worth it to fight it out in the Supreme Court. This floating home is a dwelling," he said. "It has all the rights and privileges that come with owning a house. And nobody can come take it away.”
He says that ruling changed everything. A sympathetic developer offered him a new plot of submerged land on Singer Island, and he bought the historic floating home. Lozman says it had supposedly been featured in the 1968 Frank Sinatra film, Lady in Cement.
He celebrated his victory by putting up a sign at the entrance to his new property: “Renegade: Fane Lozman, US Supreme Court winner.”
His newest home had still been in the process of renovations when, in an unexpected twist of fate, it sank last August and had to be demolished. So once again, Lozman is without a floating home, although he says he plans to buy a replacement soon.
“Once you go on a floating home, there’s no going back to living in a condo or apartment or a house, you know, with your neighbors all around you, no,” he said when we first metast July. “Here your neighbors are the fish swimming by. They don’t give you a hard time.”
Lozman has a long history of bad blood with some of his human neighbors in Riviera Beach. Ten years ago, he was arrested during a City Council meeting for refusing to leave the podium during a public comment period.
A tape of that fateful council meeting shows Lozman challenging a council member. “I’m not walking outside I haven’t finished my -” he begins to say, but is cut off. “Well, carry him out,” the council member says to a security guard.
Lozman was escorted out in handcuffs, and the charges were eventually dropped. However the animosity between him and the city government continued.
Bruce Guyton sat on the Riviera Beach city council from 2013 until 2016. “He and I went at it almost every meeting, because he thinks that he can bully everyone and I just wasn’t having it,” he says of Lozman.
Lozman, on his side, claims that it was his activism who contributed to Guyton being charged with violating the Sunshine Law, a second-degree misdemeanor, after the councilman lost his re-election bid this year.
Nevertheless, Tommy Walker, who recently lost his bid for city council too, says that for all Lozman’s faults, his heart is in the right place.
“Fane wants what Fane wants when Fane wants it,” he says with a laugh. “But you know, come to think of it, when it comes to things that are really really wrong, then he put his foot up. That eminent domain thing that they were trying to get passed, Fane came in and helped us out a lot with that.”
Walker is talking about a development plan to seize private homes on the poorer west side of Riviera Beach through eminent domain. That plan was derailed by Lozman’s activism back in 2006.
Before his new home sank, Lozman had been waiting for the city to give his property an address. He remains undeterred despite the tragedy - once he gets that and arranges the permits, he plans to develop a community of floating homes there called ‘Renegade.’
He says with rising sea levels, floating homes are the way of the future.
“Come back here in 25 years and see how many condos are still standing. The only people that are going to be living out here, I believe, are going to be floating home residents over here at Renegade,” he boasts.
Lozman says the sink has not changed these plans, and that he is more determined than ever to make his dreams a reality.
"All I think it's done is motivate me," he says with his characteristic resilience.
So far only six people have signed on to the project in Riviera Beach, but Fane Lozman believes with time, he’ll find plenty of like-minded floating home owners.
