Progress on the Bolinas downtown affordable housing project leapt ahead this week as its developers, the Bolinas Community Land Trust, secured more than half a million dollars in urgently needed county funding.
As recently as last month, the nine-unit complex planned for 31 Wharf Road was in jeopardy as its funding came up roughly $1 million short. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors approved an infusion of $625,000 from Measure W community housing funds, by far the largest allocation of monies yet from the hotel and vacation rental tax.
“The short-term rental tax really can have an effect on our affordable housing,” said Arianne Dar, the land trust’s executive director. “To be able to push this project over the top is really important. It’s been a huge weight off my shoulders.”
In recent months, the trust has tweaked the project plans in an effort to close funding gaps. The building will now house nine rather than eight units, and two units will be available to those making up to 50 percent of the area’s median income, rather than just 30 percent. Residents won’t park in an underground garage, but in an outdoor parking lot on the hillside behind the building, linked to Wharf Road by a simple two-way driveway, rather than a circular one. One downstairs unit will also be made accessible in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The Wharf Road property, currently a 100,000-square-foot vacant lot next to Smiley’s Schooner Saloon, is one of two approved affordable housing projects poised to relieve some of the urgent housing needs in West Marin’s coastal villages. The other, the 50-unit Coast Guard project in Point Reyes Station, will rehabilitate existing structures. It hasn’t received any Measure W funding.
The Bolinas project received more than $4 million from an anonymous donor who helped the land trust buy the property in 2019. Originally, the donor planned to fund the whole thing. But as the predicted costs climbed to nearly $14 million last year, the donor backed out of fully funding the project, and B.C.L.T. had to search for an array of other public and private monies. The total projected cost has since shrunk to about $10.5 million.
The county initially told the trust it would need to use project-based Section 8 housing vouchers, which would have barred undocumented people from renting the units unless they were part of mixed-status families. Later, the land trust learned there were no such vouchers available at all. The project was suddenly in danger, Ms. Dar said, with a million-dollar deficit threatening the funding that several groups had already committed, including $725,000 from the Marin Community Foundation.
“We’ve been juggling all these different potential funders, none of whom want to commit their funding until they know everyone else has committed their funding,” she said. “The donors were saying: ‘We’ll give you this money if you show us you have all your other money.’”
The project was also delayed last spring when a neighbor appealed it to the Board of Supervisors, then the California Coastal Commission, over a complaint about the plan for a circular driveway exit. The existing two-way driveway is on B.C.L.T. land, but the homeowner next door, Roland Crotts, said his family historically used it to access their property. After agreeing to negotiate, Mr. Crotts dropped the appeal before a coastal commission hearing last September, and the B.C.L.T. decided to scrap the circular driveway in favor of a two-way driveway adjacent to Smiley’s.
The trust is also getting more than $2.3 million from Clearinghouse Community Development Financial Institution, which gives loans to housing nonprofits. When Ms. Dar contacted Clearinghouse to discuss the trust’s deficit, the lender agreed to drop some costs and lock in interest rates. Next, the B.C.L.T. asked the county to open up two of the project’s units to renters making 50 percent of local median income, which is still considered between very low-income and low-income. The trust also boosted its own future rent for the office space in the building.
The remaining deficit was just $175,000, and on April 28, the land trust asked the county to cover the difference. The trust was already slated to get $450,000 from Measure W, and this week, the supervisors approved an increase up to $625,000. The B.C.L.T. plans to break ground by September with its contractor, Oliver and Company, the Richmond-based firm that built the Bolinas Community Health Center and firehouse. The project is set to be finished in the first quarter of 2024.
Ms. Dar credits the flexibility and local focus of Measure W with rescuing the project from financial peril. Since West Marin voters passed the measure in 2018, the transient occupancy tax has generated more than $2 million in housing funds, and financed six other B.C.L.T. efforts, though none as generously as the downtown project. Before this project, the largest single use of Measure W funds was $200,000 allotted to the Community Land Trust of West Marin to purchase a retained life estate from Point Reyes Station homeowner Bobbi Loeb.
The county lauded both trusts’ purchases as great uses of the tax dollars.
“Having Measure W as a dedicated funding source for community housing in West Marin is an incredible asset,” county planner Molly Kron said. “These are dollars that otherwise would have been hard fought to find elsewhere.”