Tighter regulations on short-term vacation rentals and less red tape for second units were the focus of community talks Tuesday on how Marin County ought to resolve its debilitating lack of affordable housing, a shortage that has spurred widespread fears among West Marin residents that their time here is running out.
Single-family home prices have jumped by over 30 percent since 2009, according to county figures. And 60 percent of the nearly 400 new homes issued building permits from 2007 to 2014 were set at market-rate values, compared to the mere 15 percent of homes reserved for owners with low or moderate incomes.
Meanwhile, the county’s growing elderly members are struggling to keep homes they’ve had for decades, and the county’s younger population is fleeing Marin for more affordable shores elsewhere in other states and, even, in other countries.
“I am Marshall’s under-50 crowd,” quipped Charles Schultz, of Marshall, during the meeting. “Just me. I control, like, one-tenth of the vote in Marshall.”
This week supervisors held the second of three public workshops aimed at airing public and elected official’s views for shoring up the affordable-housing stock. No action was taken by supervisors, though they discussed a wide range of strategies on acquiring and preserving existing housing and policies to construct new housing.
Possible ideas include the county purchasing market-rate housing for preservation as affordable units; increasing incentives for landlords to maintain affordable housing; reinstituting a second-unit amnesty program that would lighten the financial and regulatory burden for homeowners interested in legitimizing their second units; permitting small-sized second units, or “junior” units; funding “tiny home” communities geared toward people in danger of becoming homeless; and revising county code and zoning designations to make more multi-family, communal-living options available and legal.
In all, the county has $6 million in its budget earmarked for affordable-housing projects.
Many residents in West Marin have blamed the surge of vacation rentals—in the vein of the Airbnb model—as the leading cause of their county’s affordable-housing depletion. And joking aside, Mr. Schultz went on to hit upon a point that many residents in Marshall and other parts of West Marin have long discussed: how to make the switch from profitable, short-term rentals to more affordable, permanent housing.
“West Marin’s very proud of its culture,” Mr. Schultz said. “In order to have that sort of dynamism, you need to have cheap rent. It’s time to think about how to raise revenues.”
He added that one home in Marshall is being rented out for $4,000 per month.
One way to raise revenue, according to multiple residents present at the meeting, would be to strengthen the county’s ability to collect transient occupancy taxes, a funding method that is required for anyone who rents short-term but which, they said, is so tenuously enforced that many renters slip through the cracks. Others want the county to take that idea a step further by instituting an ordinance that would lay out the rules for how short-term rentals could operate, such as by defining how many days a year a home could be rented short-term.
“We need the [Board of Supervisors’] leadership now to solve this crisis of affordable housing,” said Albert Straus, who runs Straus Family Creamery in Marshall. “I am asking that the board put stronger limits on short-term rentals in the county.”
But Supervisor Steve Kinsey offered sobering words on the difficulty of convincing the California Coastal Commission to crack down on short-term rentals, which he labeled as a “Herculean task.” His advice hinted at the challenges West Marin might face from state-level pushback, given that Mr. Kinsey is the commission’s current chair. But he added that short-term rental regulation is a plan the county should pursue.
“By it’s very nature, it can’t be a short-term [solution],” he said. “But we shouldn’t lose sight of it. It’s an absolutely fundamental piece for stabilizing our communities.”
Brian Crawford, who heads the county’s Community Development Agency, suggested that a more immediate approach could be to restrict the conversion of second units into short-term rentals—a line of thinking parallel to Mr. Straus’s call for a short-term rental ordinance.
Mr. Kinsey supported that idea and also advocated for the county to loosen its regulations and lower costs for creating second units. He noted that the county requires over $3,000 in fees for second units, as well as many other code restrictions that have made legitimizing a second unit through the county a daunting prospect for homeowners.
“If we’re really looking at second units as a way of supplementing our housing supply, especially on the more affordable side, an investment on the part of our board for offsetting the fees that we require for second units could be a good use of our funds,” he said.
The final public workshop on affordable housing will be held on Dec. 15 at 5 p.m. at the Marin County Civic Center.