For many months, the house at 6956 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard sat on Zillow. The 2,000-square-foot home in Forest Knolls had been purchased in 2023 for $850,000 by the Two Valleys Community Land Trust with the hope of creating a few much-needed units of affordable housing. But after more than a year of wrangling with county septic regulations, the project quietly fizzled. Now, the land trust has found a new path forward. In December, it formed a partnership with the Marin Housing Authority, and this week, the authority approved a plan to accept $800,000 in county grants, originally awarded to the land trust, to rehabilitate the property. The county will provide an additional $500,000 grant to the housing authority, which will in turn lend those funds to the land trust as a five-year loan with a 2 percent simple interest rate. The Two Valleys Community Land Trust will thus retain and manage the property, while the housing authority will serve as the financial intermediary for the duration of the loan. “This project is only possible because of that 2 percent loan,” said Hal Russek, the land trust’s executive director. When the trust first purchased the house—a deteriorating three-bedroom built in 1924—the goal was to create three separate units without expanding the building’s footprint. A one-bedroom accessory dwelling unit would be built on the lower level, with a studio and a three-bedroom apartment upstairs. But the plan hit a wall when county Environmental Health Services determined the septic system could support no more than three bedrooms—not the five needed to make the project financially viable. The limitations stemmed from the home’s proximvity to a seasonal creek and restrictions under the San Geronimo Valley’s stream conservation ordinance. The new plan is simpler: convert the home into three one-bedroom units, all priced below market rate and affordable to renters earning up to 80 percent of area medium income. “I think of this as a win, win, win, win,” said Jeff Kelly, the homeownership program manager at the Marin Housing Authority. “This is a win for Two Valleys Community Land Trust, which now is going to be able to see this project succeed. It’s a win for Marin Housing because our below market rate program is going to be strengthened. It’s a win for the community because now the watershed is being protected, a source of blight is being remediated, and there’s going to be a new permanent source of affordable housing in West Marin.”