Strange times

Not sure where you are but it happens quite a bit here in Florida

Older boats are anchored by owners who don’t want to pay dockage and eventually become derelicts or just break loose at the first minor blow. Cost local and state authorities a lot of money to pick up and dispose. Here in Miami, a barge and crane cleans the trash every year or so. Owners are supposed to be responsible but rarely pay the cost.

He's talking about False Creek in Vancouver BC

It's been cleaned up a bit over the past year, but even today, the vast majority of the boats anchored in False Creek are essentially floating homeless encampments.

Off the top of my head, there are 3 groups of boats rafted up east of the Cambie Bridge that are total garbage, just waiting to sink. 2 of the groups are "owned" by guys who are running bicycle chop shops - they haul the stolen bikes out to the boats to take apart since it's harder for the police to get to them there. One of those guys is the same one that had a dying old Chris Craft 57 Connie that burned to the water (along with his girlfriend) a couple of years ago in Chemainus. One of the other rafts of crappy boats only broke up because the mother ship (and old wood tug named Brama) sank.

The groups of boats west of the Cambie Bridge are slightly better, there are some legit tourists/visitors that anchor there, but most of them are long term liveaboards who might leave for a couple days per month, but are otherwise always there, always breaking the anchoring rules. The Police sometimes try to deal with it, but it took years to get the worst guy into court and get a judgement that made it tough for him to come back.

So there's nothing "else going on" it's just people with little or no money, who would be living on the street or in shelters if they weren't on boats, and they mostly aren't capable of taking care of the boats so they regularly sink or blow ashore or burn. Over the past year, the Police and the City have made use of funds and support from Transport Canada to haul away and dispose of some of the worst boats but it's a slow, ongoing process and both the Police and the City staff involved have other things to do.

In addition to the sailboat on Kits Beach, and the one on the rocks next to the north end of the Burrard Bridge, in the same (not very intense) wind storm, a boat drifted into a marina and has been sitting there tied up for two weeks. That one looks to be in not-bad shape, but wherever it came from, the owner hasn't noticed it missing.

False creek?
There has been a few comments here regarding this topic.
Yes. It seems to be a sad place.
Last I read, there was some effort in clean up and enforcement.

@Capt Ralph Probably most of the comments about False Creek have been from me over the years, I used to be very slightly involved in the clean up, I've worked in the area for about 6 years and have been an avid boater based in the area for decades.

It's more than the occasional eye-sore boats, at it's peak during Covid, there were about 100 boats in the creek and 95+ were eyesore/derelict/sneakaboard/anchor-outs. Even after getting rid of about 20 of the worst ones, it's probably no more than 20% tourists/visitors.

And it's not just lately that they've been ending up in a bad state - every year at least a couple blow ashore in English Bay, a couple more drift ashore in False Creek, a couple sink or burn... every year for the past 6 that I've been there.