The county has allotted hundreds of thousands of dollars to help create more affordable housing—but how do homeowners actually access the funds?
A pair of workshops in Bolinas and Point Reyes Station over the next two months, and potentially a third in the San Geronimo Valley, will help answer that question and encourage more people to take advantage of locally available assistance, financial and otherwise. The workshops will include presentations on how to apply for assistance, both through the county and nonprofits.
“I think, up to this point it, has been hard to get the information to the people that need it,” said Frances McDormand, a board member of the Bolinas Community Land Trust who has helped to organize the workshops. “That’s why it’s so great there are so many organizations that are willing to collaborate on this.”
Last summer, supervisors approved over $400,000 for a suite of incentives to encourage landlords to rent affordably, a program formally rolled out in October. The program, which operates through the Marin Housing Authority, is largely focused on encouraging homeowners to rent to Section 8 voucher holders, of which only about 37 percent find landlords willing to accept the federal voucher.
But in West Marin, the county has partnered with the Community Land Trust Association of West Marin to offer the incentives to landlords who agree to certain terms, even if the tenants do not have Section 8 vouchers.
Ruth Lopez, the administrative coordinator and property manager at CLAM, said the nonprofit can facilitate financial incentives like loans if a homeowner rents to someone earning 60 percent or less of the county’s average median income. For a family of four—which in Marin would have a median income of $107,700—that 60-percent threshold sits at around $64,620. For a single person, it’s about $43,000.
The financial incentives are significant. They include a $35,000 loan to create an affordable unit and a $25,000 loan to rehabilitate an existing one. And those loans do not need to be paid back until the landlord ceases to rent to a qualifying tenant.
Other incentives include extra money for security deposits, compensation for losses due to damages or sudden vacancies, and a $3,000 loan for smaller-scale repairs as long as rents do not increase more then 3 percent a year for three years.
CLAM also offers tenant screening and selection assistance. “That part of being a landlord makes a lot of homeowners uncomfortable,” Ms. Lopez said.
So far, CLAM has helped one landlord with tenant selection and helped another secure extra money for a security deposit. The county set a goal for CLAM to assist 12 landlords during the two-year pilot program.
Previously, it has been unclear whether the loans could be used to create what are called junior accessory dwelling units—generally rooms within a home that have a separate entrance and a wet bar—in the coastal zone, due to ambiguity in the development code. Ms. Lopez said the loans could be used for such spaces without calling them junior units.
A San Rafael-based nonprofit call Lilypad Homes will also be present at the workshops to explain assistance they can provide. Thanks to a $200,000 grant from the Marin Community Foundation, the nonprofit evaluates properties and produces feasibility studies, including preliminary designs, on how homeowners can create another housing unit—essentially, a ready packet of information to hand a contractor for a cost estimate.
That work is essentially free, with the Marin Community Foundation grant covering the cost for low-income homeowners and any homeowner who rents affordably through CLAM.
Lilypad also helps homeowners through the permitting process and the county loan program.
That loan program, said Rachel Ginis, Lilypad’s executive director, is particularly helpful for “low-hanging fruit,” or existing spaces that can be converted to a separate living area. She framed it as a chance to create critically needed housing while developing a new income stream for homeowners—a win-win.
“The idea is to rapidly create housing that is as low cost as possible…It’s an amazing opportunity to create infill housing,” she said.
Lilypad has performed feasibility work for a few West Marin homes, but none have yet moved forward to apply for loans, she said.
Arianne Dar, executive director of the Bolinas Community Land Trust, is looking forward to informing Bolinas residents through the workshops. “We’re working to help get our community access to these funds,” she said.
The land trust is already at work to help one homeowner: it has raised roughly $15,000 for a family that wants to renovate a unit to rent affordably, but more money is needed to fix the foundation. Ms. Dar hopes the family can use a county loan for the big fix and the money from the land trust for other repairs.
Generally speaking, Ms. Dar said, the loans “might go a long way” toward updating septic systems in Bolinas, a major roadblock when it comes to creating second units.
For Ms. McDormand, attendance at the workshops—which will include nonprofit leaders, the Marin Housing Authority and Supervisor Dennis Rodoni—is a no-brainer.
“When you think of the people who are going to be in the same room offering information about the housing situation and offering solutions, why wouldn’t you want to be in that room? We all know what the problem is… We can actually help you.”