Two abandoned tiny homes sit in a BART parking lot. Their owner owes the agency over $150,000

By Rachel Swan | San Francisco Chronicle (TNS)

A BART commuter with a keen eye might notice the two unusual buildings at Castro Valley Station, tucked at the far end of a parking lot.

They have a farmhouse look, with brown utilitarian siding and black windows that reflect the overhanging trees. A white picket fence surrounds the prefab structures, which are nestled on a trailer with metal stairs that lead up to a wide deck. In better days, it was adorned with rattan mats, patio furniture and a teal beach umbrella.

The whole installation spans 16 parking spaces — asphalt that BART once advertised as prime Bay Area real estate.

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But the buildings have sat vacant for years, and a parcel that was supposed to generate revenue has instead become a source of vexation. The tenants apparently shut off communication with BART after racking up roughly $150,000 in unpaid bills. Officials aren’t sure what to do about it. And riders are baffled by the bizarre waste of space.

“Those sheds? They’re an eyesore,” said Castro Valley resident Mary Montgomery, who walked past the buildings on her way to the station Thursday morning. She began free-associating other possible uses for the property: clubhouse, equipment storage at a golf course, cots for homeless people to nap during the day.

Then Montgomery paused, as though struck by a thought. “Are they up for grabs?” she asked. “Maybe BART could have an auction.”

Emails released through a Public Records Act request convey the frustrations of BART staff who helped oversee the lease of those 16 parking spots to a company that later went out of business. The lessee, Spacial Homes, was a manufacturer of high-end accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, seeking to showcase its little cottages at the BART station so that people might purchase them for backyards.

When BART and the San Ramon-based ADU company signed their agreement in 2022, it seemed like a creative strategy to convert underused space into badly needed funding. BART, faced with drastic losses in ridership and fares during the pandemic, would collect $4,635 in monthly rent for a swath of pavement that would otherwise sit empty. Spacial Homes would get to display two of its models — a studio and a one-bedroom — in a location with decent foot traffic, where residents probably have disposable income.

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“Here was the opportunity of underutilized patron parking that could result in a win for all,” said Paul Voix, BART’s principal property development officer, touting the deal in a March 2022 news release. The agency’s marketing and real estate team had characterized the Spacial Homes dwellings as a form of transit-oriented development, wherein land that once housed cars is transformed into housing for people. They played it up in the news release headline: “BART rents portion of Castro Valley Station parking lot to company combating housing crisis through ADUs.”

Within a year, however, Spacial had ghosted the rail operator.

“When mortgage rates shot up, the private equity firm that owned our business decided to stop funding it,” Cory Halbardier, the tiny home company’s former CEO, said in an interview this week. Halbardier said the firm, Innovatus Capital Partners, asked him to move on in late 2022, months after he had initially scouted the Castro Valley station lot and approached BART with the idea to rent a few spaces.

The pitch was ambitious and well-intentioned, and seemed to benefit both parties, Halbardier said.

“I was looking at the whole Bay Area, just trying to find big, open (properties) like church parking lots or train stations,” Halbardier told the Chronicle. “And when I found Castro Valley it was so central. You could drive there in 45 minutes from Marin, Livermore, San Francisco.” He also liked the security of having a BART police station next to the lot, with officers who could cruise by the model homes and make sure people were not breaking in or squatting there.

Now the site still has a “no trespassing” sign on its white gate, where a few of the fence posts are bent. The roller shades are drawn. Fallen leaves litter the stairwell and the “Home Sweet Home” door mat. The phone number listed for booking tours of the site has been disconnected.

Whether BART will move the pair of ADUs any time soon is unclear. This spring, the Castro Valley lot was about 65% full, according to the agency’s parking occupancy data. Commuters are not necessarily vying for those 16 spaces.

In the meantime, though, BART’s real estate staff has tried to collect the rent they are due.

“Please get in touch with me ASAP,” BART property manager Patricia Schuchardt wrote to a Spacial Homes’ contract accountant, Robert Kester, on June 3, 2024. “We really need to figure out what to do next,” Schuchardt continued. “I really don’t want to have to go the legal route of termination and collections. I am getting more and more pressure to resolve this.”

As of April 1, 2025, the company owed $132,097.50 in unpaid rent and late fees, according to public records. After that, BART management stopped sending invoices and tried, unsuccessfully, to reach a resolution with the tenants. By now their debt has ballooned to about $150,000, according to a spokesperson.

Kester told the Chronicle he’s unsure how BART would get back rent at this point, because Spacial Homes has no employees and no bank account. He and Ravi Bhagavatula, a partner at Innovatus Capital, both insist that the transit agency had discussed purchasing the tiny homes, and that Spacial Homes’ lawyer even drafted a bill of sale that Kester believes was rejected by BART’s top brass.

Representatives of BART stressed that they have no interest in the homes. They are waiting for the company to retrieve the units and pay up.

“BART declined to purchase the units because we have no meaningful use for them,” spokesperson Alicia Trost said. “We continue to ask for our money. We don’t have any plan to remove their property and store it or break it down.”

Halbardier expressed regret and disappointment that a project he’d helped conceive had unraveled.

“I will just apologize for all of us that it’s a blight just sitting there,” he told the Chronicle. “Somebody needs to buy (the studios) and put them in a backyard, where they would be better suited.”

His next sentence came out in a tone that might have been sarcastic, had it not carried a twinge of desperation.

“You should approach BART,” he said. “And offer to buy” the property. “You would probably get a good deal.”

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