The Coast Guard housing project marked a development milestone on Tuesday when Marin County agreed to transfer the property to Tamalko Homes L.P., the partnership between the Community Land Trust Association of West Marin and Eden Housing that aims to provide 54 units of affordable housing in Point Reyes Station. The transfer will strengthen Tamalko’s hand when it applies this spring for low-income housing tax credits to finance the final tranche of funding for the $55.4 million project. State and local funding is covering nearly half the cost; the tax credits would cover the rest. Under the transfer agreement approved by the Board of Supervisors this week, Tamalko will take possession of the area where the housing will be renovated, while the county will retain the portion of the 33.5-acre property where a wastewater system will be built. Because the system will be located close to three North Marin Water District wells, it will require extensive monitoring to ensure there is no contamination. The monitoring is expected to cost about $250,000 a year, with Tamalko—named for the Indigenous inhabitants of the region—paying the first $60,000 and the county paying the balance up to $190,000. That agreement will remain in place for five years, during which Tamalko will be required to seek funding to cover part of the monitoring costs or help North Marin identify funding to relocate its wells, which are used only as occasional backup due to chronic salinity intrusion. Replacing them has been on the water district’s to-do list for years. The district currently relies on a pair of wells built in recent years at the nearby Gallagher Ranch, only one of which produces a robust supply. Moving forward, the county will operate the wastewater system. “We’re getting to the nitty-gritty of what it takes to make housing work,” said Sarah Jones, director of Marin’s Community Development Agency. The county has already contributed nearly $14 million in Marin County Housing Trust Fund and Measure W monies. Last year, the project won an additional $11 million from the Joe Serna, Jr. Farmworker Housing Grant Program, which will allow a portion of the units to be set aside for households whose members work in agricultural production or are retired from agricultural work. The project will include a mix of one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom apartments for extremely low-income and low-income households, whose incomes would range from $58,000 a year to $116,000 a year for a family of four. Marin purchased the property from the federal government in 2018, three years after it was decommissioned. The site was constructed in 1974 for housing and communications for the Coast Guard; it never had a wastewater system, with sewage regularly trucked away.