Marin County has settled on a set of programs intended to make housing more abundant, affordable and fair in coming years. Since the start of the year, the county has held public meetings on the Housing Element as it worked through the thorny details of meeting state housing mandates and rectifying a severe shortage of affordable homes.
Now, the public and elected officials can review a full draft of the element, along with the corresponding Safety Element.
At a hearing last week, supervisors, planning commissioners and community members responded to the 675-page document, the most ambitious effort in decades to dismantle the significant barriers to housing in unincorporated Marin.
“The array of programs that you have brought to us to address the housing needs we have is really impressive,” Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters told county staff last Tuesday.
The most incendiary aspect of the process has been the housing sites list, an inventory of 109 parcels that the county will rezone to accommodate more than 2,600 new units. (Marin must plan for 3,569 new units within the next eight years.)
The county’s last effort at a sites inventory in 2014 yielded just one development, and it’s unlikely that the new zoning exercise will turn out to be a to-do list for housing developers. Several of the selected landowners in West Marin have no plans to use their parcels for housing, and coastal development regulations still stand in the way.
But the heart of the draft Housing Element is the slate of 33 programs intended to give teeth to the county’s housing commitments. The first two are perhaps the most concrete and imminent. In Program 1, the county will rezone 109 parcels totaling 1,455 acres across Marin by January 2023, including 18 parcels currently zoned for agriculture.
This large-scale rezoning is the result of state mandates that already survived an appeal by the county last year. But it continues to alarm some West Marin locals, who feel the community plans and environmental values of coastal villages are being thrown by the wayside.
“This is scary stuff,” said Ken Levin, president of the Point Reyes Station Village Association. “We have serious concerns that the historic environmental protections for which Marin County is so well known are threatened by this document.”
He said community plans shouldn’t be viewed as impediments to housing, and he argued county planners could look to more creative solutions that won’t strain West Marin’s limited rural infrastructure.
Program 2 is the adoption of a state law that weakens county control over certain housing developments. If a landowner wants to develop affordable housing at any parcel that was already suggested during the county’s two previous housing cycles, it must be approved “by right” and is exempt from environmental review.
The by-right program is meant to streamline affordable housing at the “recycled” sites Marin has been eyeing for more than a decade; it allows only an objective design review before approval, except in the coastal zone, where developers still need to meet the county’s Local Coastal Program guidelines. One example of a recycled site is the Grandi building in Point Reyes Station, where the county’s suggestion of 25 affordable housing units continues to be unlikely: owner Ken Wilson plans to turn the place into a hotel. Marin is considering expanding streamlined approvals for any project with more than 20 percent affordable units.
The 31 other programs span a wide array of methods for promoting housing development and keeping existing housing affordable. Among dozens of specific policy actions, the county plans to permit an average of 35 accessory dwelling units each year, establish minimum densities for projects in multi-unit zoning areas by the end of next year, rework the development code to allow slightly taller buildings, remove parking requirements for many residential developments and expand tenant protections and rent stabilization.
Several programs were of specific interest to West Marin, though some were just imprecise plans. For example, the county aims to develop formal standards for multi-unit development in areas that use septic systems. And next year, the Community Development Agency will study alternatives to the individual septic systems that have long fettered new housing projects on the coast and in the San Geronimo Valley. Pre-manufactured “packaged” sewage plants, community septic systems and incinerator toilets will be on the list of considerations.
Program 15 of the element looks at housing for farmworkers and hospitality workers, the contingents who staff West Marin’s commercial engines but seldom make enough money to afford stable housing in the area. The county’s stated goal is to increase housing stock for these workforces by 20 percent in the next eight years. Developers can set aside affordable units for agricultural workers, as the Community Land Trust Association of West Marin is doing in its 50-unit Coast Guard development. But they are prevented by federal housing law from giving preference to locals because doing so could further segregate a county with a history of exclusion.
The program suggests potentially requiring hospitality employers to provide housing for seasonal workers or contribute to a fund that could help them pay rent.
Planning Commissioner Don Dickenson said public agencies also have a responsibility to provide workforce housing, particularly in West Marin.
“The National Park Service is the largest landowner in the county, a significant employer in the county and creates housing needs for their employees,” he said. The county’s workforce housing program should include working with the park to make sure it can house park employees and ranch workers within its borders, Commissioner Dickenson suggested.
On Tuesday, supervisors extended West Marin’s short-term rental ordinance for two years, barring all new registrations of vacation rentals until May 2024.
Tourist-serving coastal towns struggle to house permanent residents because, though long-term rents are expensive enough, vacation rentals can fetch up to $1,000 a night. In communities like Marshall and Stinson Beach, 20 percent or more of the housing stock is occupied by vacation rentals, and 57 percent of homes in West Marin are not primary residences, county staff found.
The ordinance saw widespread support from community housing groups like the Bolinas Community Land Trust, and some pushed for a more permanent change. It could eventually be taken further, according to the Housing Element’s Program 18, with steps like a permanent cap on short-term rentals by percentage, a prohibition on such rentals in multi-unit buildings or even a full-on ban. Supervisor Dennis Rodoni said it should be a given that any properties the county rezones by the end of 2022 should not be eligible for short-term rentals. Another program will entail the county studying the efficacy of a tax on vacant homes in 2024.
Spurred by the Housing Element process, the county is also updating its Safety Element, the planning document for hazards like wildfires and flooding, for the first time.
The document establishes new goals of climate resiliency and equity, and accommodates wildfire programs that have expanded since the creation of the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority in 2020, including a comprehensive evacuation route mapping project.
Another new Safety Element program is a property rating system that will disclose environmental hazards to potential buyers and renters. Homes in high wildfire severity zones, or in areas at increasing risk of flooding and inundation, would get lower ratings that could be improved by mitigation strategies like home hardening.
The county will release a draft environmental impact report for the Housing and Safety Elements in mid-July, and members of the public will have another opportunity to comment at a Board of Supervisors hearing on Aug. 23.