Marin County is preparing to change rules for accessory living units to comply with state legislation that takes effect in 2017, an effort that will allow larger second units and create a pathway for financial assistance for landlords seeking to create junior units. The development code changes, which attempt to remedy a housing crisis plaguing both the county and the state, will be voted on early next year.
Planning commissioners hammered out the specifics for Marin at a commission workshop earlier this month, discussing just how large second units—now capped at 750 square feet—should be and whether to maintain owner occupancy requirements currently in place in the vast majority of the county.
But at least for now, the code changes will not apply in the coastal zone, a fact that has tripped up plans for the Community Land Trust Association of West Marin to offer financial assistance to homeowners who want to create junior units inside their homes.
Marin’s housing crunch has been the subject of numerous public workshops as well as new rules and programs enacted in 2016, like a prohibition on discriminating against Section 8 voucher holders and financial assistance for landlords looking to rent affordably. A group of state bills passed in September—A.B. 2299, S.B. 1069 and A.B. 2406—to tackle the statewide housing shortage includes both mandatory and voluntary aspects for local governments. Though the rules for second units are mandatory, rules for junior second units, which don’t have full kitchens but instead a wet bar and a separate entrance, are optional.
The state bill triggering changes for second units, A.B. 2299, provides modest wiggle room for local jurisdictions to tailor the rules as they see fit, but many crucial aspects are mandatory. If local governments do not have rules that comply, the state law will preempt them. In addition, local governments can make their rules less restrictive than the state law, but they cannot make them more restrictive.
For instance, the state legislation allows second units—now called accessory dwelling units—up to 1,200 square feet or half the size of the main house, whichever is smaller. The county could make that rule more lenient by universally allowing up to 1,200 square feet, an option county planter Jeremy Tejirian proposed at the workshop.
But planning commissioners largely supported the more restrictive language for accessory dwelling units, with one commissioner musing that 1,200 square feet “seems mighty generous.”
Wade Holland, the commissioner who represents West Marin and is retiring from the body in February, was one of the few who advocated for the universal 1,200-square-foot limit for second units. He argued that, given the cost of construction, the economies of scale don’t work: the county’s current limit of 750 square feet makes it infeasible to rent the unit affordably.
“You cannot economically build at that size,” he said. “The costs are too high. If you get up to 1,200 square feet you can build a big enough unit where, maybe, you are getting to the point where it’s an affordable item.”
But Commissioner Don Dickerson disagreed, arguing that smaller homes and properties should have smaller second dwellings, and that smaller units bring more affordable rents.
The other major issue that commissioners contended with revolved around whether property owners should be required to live on site when a property has a second unit, a decision the state bill delegated to local governments.
As it stands now, only two communities in Marin do not have an owner occupancy requirement in that scenario: Inverness and Bolinas. Those exceptions stem from when rules for second units were first established in the 1980s, likely reflecting community desires at the time.
Mr. Holland suggested doing away with the owner occupancy requirement in the code amendment. He said it has worked well in Inverness, where properties may have one home serving as a vacation place and the second unit rented to locals who often act as caretakers for the property. (He also added that short-term rentals may “muddy the waters” on the issue.)
But other commissioners favored maintaining an owner occupancy requirement for properties with a second unit.
Part of the logic is that without an owner occupancy requirement, the property essentially becomes a duplex that could lure investment firms interested in turning it into an upscale development to max out its value, said Rachel Ginnis, executive director of Lilypad Homes, a nonprofit that has advocated for the new state rules. Requiring owner occupancy ensures that someone living on the property is keenly invested in the neighborhood.
The Planning Commission also weighed in on how to alter the code for junior accessory dwelling units. Unlike many other local governments, Marin has let homeowners install wet bars without special permits or requirements for a separate entrance. Homeowners could rent those spaces to tenants, but they have never been labeled as junior living units in county development code.
But to encourage the creation of more housing, the state passed A.B. 2406 in September, defining junior accessory units as areas inside a home with a wet bar and a separate entrance that max out at 500 square feet. It does not require local governments to allow junior units, but rather serves as a model ordinance for those that do. It also prohibits local governments from imposing parking restrictions that could hinder homeowners from creating such units.
As a result of the bill, if the county changes its code to define areas with wet bars as junior units, homeowners would be able to access financing, like loans, from groups such as CLAM to build them. But if the county labels all areas with wet bars as junior units, it could unintentionally penalize homeowners who already have wet bars, since they will no longer conform with county code. To resolve that issue, Mr. Tejirian proposed making it voluntary for homeowners who have wet bars to label such areas junior units.
A bigger challenge now is figuring out how to apply the new code language in the coastal zone.
CLAM received a grant this year from the Marin Housing Authority to help homeowners create more housing units, said executive director Kim Thompson. The grant covers many kinds of assistance, such as helping homeowners bring their second units up to code, facilitating rental agreements and assisting with tenant screening.
But one of the grant’s major purposes was to encourage homeowners to create junior dwelling units, such as by offering a $35,000 loan with no interest. Earlier this year, the nonprofit hosted a packed workshop at the Point Reyes Library on creating such units.
Yet even though wet bar areas are allowed in homes in the coastal zone, CLAM cannot help people finance the junior units if they are not labeled that way in county code, a disheartening twist.
“We have $35,000 loans, except in the coastal zone, where really need it. We have plenty of West Marin homes with attics and basement the could become [junior units]… Hearing about this trip-up is disappointing for us,” Ms. Thompson said, though she added that other kinds of assistance are still available.
Mr. Holland, too, expressed frustration that the rule doesn’t yet apply on the coast. “Because that’s where the big pressure is,” he said. “They’ve got the money sitting there. But they have to have the mechanism, which is a [junior accessory dwelling unit]… If it’s a wet bar, it won’t count.”
When the change may come to the coastal zone is unclear, as typically new rules in the zone—which encompasses much of West Marin—undergo a separate process involving approval by the California Coastal Commission. “We’re going to need to have discussions with the coastal commission regarding this [legislation],” Mr. Tejirian said.