Houseboat residents are sheltering in place on their docks, holding float-up concerts in the middle of the water and boating out onto the San Francisco Bay. Here's how they're living through the pandemic.

Raylene Gorum

• When the San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order became active, residents kicked off what has become a 2-month — and counting — confinement period to their homes.
• For residents who have made houseboats their home, the living is easy, albeit small.
• Costs are lower, the company is superb, and the sweeping San Francisco Bay is their backyard. 
• Here's how two houseboat residents have made the sea life work for them — and how they're handling the pandemic's impact on their lives.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

When the San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order went into effect on March 17, houseboat resident Amy Heiden thought one thing: "We have the best-possible-case scenario," she told Business Insider.

She lives on a houseboat with her partner just northeast of San Francisco and has spent the last two months living life as usual, for the most part.

So has Raylene Gorum, a resident in a Sausalito houseboat community just north of San Francisco.

"You get community, you get stars, you get this fresh air, you get decks and parties, which is great, except that you can't want to have space or things," Gorum told Business Insider. "Those are the two limitations."

Living on a boat may come with small confines, but that also means having the beautiful bay as a backyard, which can come in handy when the pandemic and stay-at-home order-induced cabin fever begins to creep in.

Here's how houseboat residents are faring during the pandemic — from holding socially distanced float-up concerts on kayaks in the middle of the water to excursions out into the bay — as thousands continue to shelter in place.

She works at SF Jazz, a not-for-profit organization coordinating events at a music venue in San Francisco's Hayes Valley neighborhood. She would usually take the Emery Go-Round shuttle and then BART into the city until offices closed.

As many workers have pivoted to remote work, they've also had to carve out workspaces in their homes, a challenge for Heiden who said she didn't have a lot of extra space to set up a home office on her boat. But she made do.

"We kind of immediately thought if we have to shelter in place, this is the place that we're happy to be sheltering," Heiden said. 

She told Business Insider that she's always been a lover of the water. But it's also "a nice alternative way to have a lifestyle in the Bay Area."

People have turned to living full-time on houseboats as "liveaboards" in recent years specifically to escape the soaring housing costs that come with the Bay Area, as The Wall Street Journal reported in May 2019.

But houseboat communities also have a place in the region's long history, especially in Sausalito where artists, writers, and musicians have long flocked in search of an alternative lifestyle as SF Gate reports.

When the shelter-in-place order was issued first in the region, officials announced that residents would be allowed to swim in the ocean. You'll find some doing just that in areas around the bay, including Aquatic Park near Fisherman's Wharf.

Boats are also allowed to go out, as long as occupants are from the same household.

They've been out like that twice since all of this started. She said they would be going out more if not for their engine, which is in less than optimal condition.

She even has some live-aboard friends who are boating and anchoring out for a night or two in designated areas and then returning to their slips.

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SEE ALSO: Photos show how San Francisco is housing its homeless in socially distant tent camps