A property in Point Reyes Station is the latest to be preserved as affordable housing by the Community Land Trust Association of West Marin. Earlier this month, CLAM finalized an arrangement with Cypress Road homeowner Bobbi Loeb through a retained life estate: Ms. Loeb, who is 81, deeded her house to the trust, which will convert it into three affordable units after she dies.
In the meantime, Ms. Loeb will get to stay put while CLAM pays for much-needed upkeep, in the trust’s first try at what it calls its age-in-place initiative.
Ms. Loeb sees the program as a remedy for the way West Marin’s exorbitant home prices have destabilized the community. “I’m very committed to Point Reyes, and I see this community changing,” Ms. Loeb said. “Young people can’t stay here anymore, older people are forced out of their homes, and really rich people are moving in who don’t have a real tie to the community.”
Ms. Loeb said she could have sold her house on the market for three times what CLAM paid, but her priority was living out the rest of her life in Point Reyes Station. If the house had sold at market rate, “I would have a lot of money,” she said, “but what would I do? Where would I go? This is a godsend to me because this is my community.”
A retained life estate, in which a homeowner sells the future ownership of the property, is not the traditional model for land trusts. Typically, the trust would split the deed on an existing home, buying the land underneath it in perpetuity and leasing the house itself at an affordable rate. CLAM purchased a house in Inverness under that model in 2017.
But increasing land costs coupled with the support of local homeowners who wanted to help have driven CLAM to come up with new tools for creating more affordable housing. The age-in-place initiative is the latest program.
“Trying to acquire property on the regular market is just not going to be feasible for us,” said Ruth Lopez, a program manager at CLAM who led the project. “[West Marin] is an older demographic, and we figured there may be a lot of seniors who are house rich and cash poor. So we began to wonder, how can we help seniors who might fall into that category stay in their homes, yet eventually bring these homes into the affordable housing portfolio?”
County officials have commended the project as a creative way to use funds from Measure W, which levied a tax on West Marin hotels and vacation rentals to pay for community housing and fire protection. In October, county supervisors granted $200,000 of Measure W funds to help purchase the home.
“The acquisition of property to preserve as affordable is a great use of Measure W funds, and the model is unique,” county planner Molly Kron said.
Since it was passed in 2018, Measure W has funded a variety of projects for the Bolinas Community Land Trust and the San Geronimo Valley Affordable Housing Association, as well as emergency rental assistance through West Marin Community Services. Ms. Loeb’s house is CLAM’s first use of the tax funds, though the group also plans to use them to develop the Coast Guard property in Point Reyes Station. That project will provide 50 affordable units, adding to 18 others that CLAM currently leases affordably in West Marin.
Along with Measure W, funding for Ms. Loeb’s home came partly from the Marin Community Foundation, Mechanics Bank and some individual donors. The project cost $700,000, of which $550,000 paid for the home while the rest covered the initial repairs estimate. The property consists of a two-bedroom main house, a detached room and an accessory dwelling unit.
Ms. Loeb, who taught preschool in Point Reyes Station for 15 years and is now retired, has been unable to afford to fix her termite-damaged roof or upgrade the property’s septic system. With CLAM covering the costs, termite tenting starts this month and roof repairs will come next. Finally, the trust will overhaul the septic system to accommodate the four bedrooms and secure a permit for the accessory dwelling unit. The trust says it will be seeking more donations to cover ongoing maintenance needs.
“These are the things that I haven’t been able to do,” Ms. Loeb said.
Ms. Loeb first came to northern California in the late ‘60s, and spent a decade as a renter, moving from place to place around Marin. In 1979, she and a friend bought the Cypress Road house, which had been a commune with goats and then a Berkeley psychiatrist’s second home. She’s lived there ever since, while teaching preschoolers and raising her own son and daughter. For years, she’s rented out two units at affordable rates. Her two tenants will be able to stay after the property changes hands to CLAM.