Point Reyes Light - October 21, 2004
Hearing set on Point Reyes housing project
By Jim Kravets
Point Reyes Station resident Laury Porter was hardly alone this week when he decried EAH’s announcement that all seven "affordable" cottages in its Point Reyes Station project will now be sold at full market prices."I feel somebody owes us an apology, a big apology," Porter said.
To compensate for a loss of $1.2 million in subsidies from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s "Project-Based Section 8 vouchers," the seven cottages will now be sold at market price to subsidize rents in the project’s 27 affordable rental units.
County planning commissioners at 3:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 25, are scheduled to vote on allowing the change. If they endorse it during a public hearing, the Board of Supervisors will hold its own hearing next month and make a final decision.
EAH’s Oct. 4 news devastated hundreds of candidates who saw the cottages as their only chance to afford a home in West Marin where rapidly rising real estate prices keep home ownership out of reach for many families. The homes were to be offered to eligible applicants on a lottery basis.
"I’ve been working for six years, seven days-per-week without a vacation to buy one of these homes, and now it’s for nothing," Madelyn Sobel of Point Reyes Station said in exasperation. "Nobody can afford to buy a home here, so there’s a mass exodus. Everyone is moving up to Oregon, but I don’t want to leave here. I don’t want to go to Oregon and eat spotted owl."
"It was a great joy to me when the community approved [the project]," Charlie Morgan of Dillon Beach recalled, "but now it’s depressing because it probably means I’ll never be able to buy a house in this area. This is my community. I’ve lived here for 30 years, and I resent the fact that I can’t have a home here.
"The project offered hope, a foot in the door. Now the joke’s on everybody. Nobody’s getting what they want. The people who wanted a house don’t have that, and the people who didn’t want the project at all don’t have that."
The change in the cottages’ pricing, some residents said, is a violation of the conditions EAH used to get community approval of the project.
"We do not support the requested changes," directors of the Point Reyes Village Association wrote the county Planning Division on Oct. 15.
"The permits were issued after much controversy in the community. Many peo-ple reluctantly approved the project because of the overall benefit of providing affordable housing for local residents and workers and only after important changes had been made in the number, location, and design of the housing units and the other project components.
"Converting the seven affordable homes to market-rate homes is a serious breach of the agreements with the community and is inconsistent with the project contemplated in the Community Plan."
Priority for locals is the main problem
At the time West Marin residents endorsed the affordable-housing project, they stressed that local residents and workers should receive priority for the cottages and rental apartments.
"The cruel irony," Supervisor Steve Kinsey noted this week, "is that West Marin brought HUD’s increased scrutiny on the project in demanding that locals should have preference for the housing. Preference is akin to discrimination in the eyes of government funding."
HUD, which administers the Section 8 rent-subsidy program, in June said the Marin Housing Authority had failed to meet several HUD requirements when it allotted 10 vouchers to the Point Reyes Project. The Housing Authority subsequently requested those requirements be waived.
Glimmer of hope
So far, there’s been no reply from HUD, but Supervisor Kinsey on Monday told The Light he believes HUD is "ready to issue a waiver." If that occurs, some of the cottages could still be sold at affordable prices, Kinsey said.
But even if HUD approves the waivers and Section 8 subsidies are reinstated, the amount of money available through the vouchers is now closer to $600,000 than the $1.2 million figure in EAH’s original budget.
HUD reduced its subsidies because rental prices have come down throughout the Bay Area, the acting deputy director for Marin Housing, Maurice Wolohan, said.
HUD is also unhappy that there is no shuttlebus to transport residents from Point Reyes Station to hospitals and certain other public facilities in East Marin. Apparently two medical clinics in town aren’t enough to satisfy HUD’s requirements.
Pt. Reyes project’s problems typical of projects in Marin
The difficulties EAH faces in Point Reyes Station are also crippling two other affordable-housing projects in Marin.
In the past, Marin residents’ opposition to affordable-housing projects in Marin primarily took the form of NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard). Now the problem is chiefly financial, "and it’s only going to get harder, not easier to get funding," Supervisor Kinsey said.
Kinsey contends the community’s ire at EAH is "a bitter denial of the harsh realities of financing affordable projects these days, especially in low-density areas like Point Reyes."
With 27 out of 34 total housing units — nearly 80 percent — of the Point Reyes Station project still affordable, EAH and the county insist much good will still come from the project.
"Let’s be realistic," Kinsey said, "so much of what we set out to do in life hap-pens like that. People who are against this are looking at a three-quarters-full glass and calling it one-quarter empty. The number of projects in the county with more than 75 percent affordability are few and far between."