Marin County will soon consider an emergency measure that would ease approvals of temporary shelter for residents of ranches who will be forced out of their homes as part of a legal settlement over agriculture in the Point Reyes National Seashore. 

By invoking a state law designed to address homelessness emergencies, officials could swiftly approve interim housing solutions—such as R.V.s or tiny homes—that are prohibited under Marin’s building code, which does not allow housing without permanent foundations. 

The move could ease the crisis faced by roughly 90 ranch tenants, nearly all of them Latino, who must vacate their homes as historic agricultural operations in the seashore wind down. 

“We have a severe housing crisis that is even more pronounced in West Marin,” Marin County Executive Derek Johnson said. “We’re exploring all practical and legal ways to house local residents. We’re going to look at everything.”

Mr. Johnson, who joined the county in May, said he will instruct his staff to treat the housing crisis in the seashore as its top priority. Raissa de la Rosa, the interim assistant county executive, will be the point person on land-use and housing issues and a liaison for community organizations.

“We’re going to develop a cross-departmental team that deals with all the elements we’re facing with this settlement agreement between the National Park Service and the ranchers,” he said. “It’s not just a housing issue. There’s an economic piece, there’s a social piece, and then there’s the housing piece. We want to deal with this holistically.”

The Jan. 8 settlement, which resolves litigation against the park service brought by three environmental groups, will result in the departure of four dairies and eight ranches, and the closure of all the housing they provide. The park service has said it can only rent homes to its own employees. 

Though the county has the authority to ease zoning and building requirements on properties that it owns or leases, it doesn’t have immediate options for interim housing on private lands. But planning staff plan to invoke a state law that could provide the same flexibility to place interim housing on private property. 

They plan to present an emergency ordinance to the Board of Supervisors on March 11. 

The county paved the way for such an ordinance when it declared a shelter emergency in 2018. An emergency ordinance tailored to West Marin could allow the county to adopt an alternative building code that would make it possible to approve interim projects without undertaking some reviews required by the California Environmental Quality Act or getting approval from the California Coastal Commission.

Mr. Johnson, a Novato native, worked as city manager for six years in San Luis Obispo, which modified building and zoning rules to allow tiny homes that could be wheeled on and off a property as needed.

“You hook it up to utilities and put it within a certain setback on the property,” he said. “It’s on wheels, so two years from now, if whoever owns the tiny home wants to move it, they can move it. We’re going to explore that in addition to other strategies, but the first step is getting us the ability to enact this provision that gives us the flexibility we don’t have today.”

Until now, the county has focused its efforts exclusively on permanent housing solutions, which are expensive and time-consuming to develop, said Sarah Jones, the director of the Community Development Agency. But the closure of the ranches will be a “seismic disruption” that will require the county to add new strategies to its playbook, she said.

“There’s a need in the here and now, and there will certainly be a need once the ranches shut down,” Ms. Jones said. “We’ve got to get something into place. This is part of making that shift to more immediate problem solving.”

Even if only a handful of property owners take advantage of the ordinance, the measure could have significant impacts. “Even if we use it just once, that still makes a difference,” she said. “I think that having this alternative building code in place could be really meaningful.”

Under the terms of the legal settlement, the ranches will depart within 15 months, leaving little time to find housing solutions in a community where affordable rentals are extremely scarce. Ranchers had intervened in the suit, but those who rent homes in the park were not part of the negotiations. A lawyer working on their behalf is bringing their last-ditch effort to intervene to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, after a federal judge denied it earlier this month. 

While the clock ticks, the county and a coalition of donors, housing advocates and nonprofits are looking for short-term solutions that will allow residents to remain in the community. 

Two weeks ago, Mr. Johnson attended the town hall meeting on the ranching settlement, where residents shared intense criticism over what they viewed as an affront to West Marin’s cultural heritage. Dozens of speakers described how the deal, made behind closed doors and without public input, would damage the local economy and rend the community’s social fabric.

“That was a very emotional meeting last weekend in Point Reyes Station,” Mr. Johnson told the Light. “If you weren’t moved, you weren’t listening. You don’t have empathy bones in your body.”

At the Jan. 11 event, Supervisor Dennis Rodoni said the county must treat the situation with urgency. 

“This is really a local emergency and we need to address it that way,” he said. “We know that our schools will be impacted, we know that our economy will be impacted. We know that our communities will be impacted, and we have to figure out how to adapt and mitigate those impacts.”

As part of the settlement, the Nature Conservancy, a national conservation organization with deep pockets, will buy out the 12 ranches and dairies that agreed to depart. A planned $2.5 million fund to help ranch residents with the transition will be set aside, but the residents say that won’t be nearly enough to help them locate new housing. 

Mr. Johnson said the county plans to provide additional transition funds to those who were not parties to the settlement, but he did not say how much. 

The county will coordinate its efforts with local groups, including the West Marin Fund, the Marin Community Foundation, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, West Marin Community Services and the community land trusts in Bolinas, the San Geronimo Valley and Point Reyes Station.

Backed by a $150,000 grant from the Marin Community Foundation, the Community Land Trust Association of West Marin is conducting a study of potential locations for interim housing. CLAM began the study last fall, after the county declared rental housing at the Martinelli ranch in Point Reyes Station as unfit for habitation due to septic issues, putting some 50 tenants at risk of losing their homes. The study is identifying and evaluating as many viable sites in West Marin as possible, CLAM said.