A recent op-ed by Donna Simmons noted that West Marin has a workforce housing crisis. Ranch hands, restaurant staff, teachers, firefighters, and paramedics can’t live near the jobs they’re doing. Where she goes wrong is treating 108 Arenal, the Stinson Beach Post Office project, as part of the problem. It isn’t. It’s part of the solution, and Call Marin Home—formerly the Marin Environmental Housing Collaborative—has endorsed it. This six-unit project exceeds the county’s affordable housing requirements, improves the environmental condition of the site, and rebuilds the town’s post office on privately owned land.
This housing is needed. Marin has long had the lowest rate of housing production in all except the most economically depressed portions of the state. And we are part of one of the most economically productive and wealthiest regions in the world. As wealth grows, demands for services also grow. The workforce that staffs local restaurants, schools, and fire stations gets priced out or displaced by vacation inventory.
Ms. Simmons underscores the challenges of vacation homes. More than half of West Marin’s residential parcels are second homes or vacation rentals, and short-term rental registrations nearly doubled between 2018 and 2023. That’s a genuine problem, and the county has put restrictions on rental homes, and should do more. But if we block the development at 108 Arenal, does that fix the problem? No. We just lose two deed-restricted units.
Ms. Simmons frames the project’s two affordable units as a fig leaf next to four market-rate ones. But those two homes are a third of the entire proposal—real households, plausibly some of the very workforce she’s writing about, who get to live in Stinson Beach instead of commuting. These two units increase Stinson Beach’s affordable housing inventory from 13 units to 15 units—a 15 percent increase—and without public funding that would stretch our affordable housing trust fund.
Marin’s lack of housing production is not due to a lack of land or high construction costs; San Francisco and Berkeley both build more housing than Marin. Our low rates of production are primarily due to strong community resistance to building. Many recent state laws, including the density bonus law, have been a reaction to local jurisdictions blocking the development we need to house our families. Housing affordability is a statewide crisis, and our legislature is responding by requiring all towns to do their part. These state laws are needed for projects to be approved, and virtually all multi-family developments in Marin use one of the many state streamlining laws.
The op-ed cites the former Coast Guard site conversion in Point Reyes as the model for affordable housing in West Marin. We strongly support this project. But we can’t solely rely on projects like it to address West Marin needs. Such acquisition models are slow and capital-intensive. The Coast Guard site was designated as surplus land in 2014 and is expected to be completed in 2028—a 14-year process. The total cost is expected to be roughly $1,000,000 per unit. Over $50 million in public and philanthropic funds have been committed to the project. There are no comparable sites available in Stinson Beach, where the proposal for 108 Arenal will provide two units for free and on a much shorter timeline.
No single approach gets West Marin to where it needs to be. We need land trusts patiently assembling permanently affordable homes, public agencies stepping in where they can, protections that keep existing tenants housed, and market-rate developments that bring deed-restricted units with them. Stinson Beach, and West Marin more broadly, gets fewer second homes and more working families when all these solutions are moving at once, not when they’re pitted against each other. The 108 Arenal project is one piece of that larger effort, and those who are serious about solving this crisis should be standing alongside it.
Jennifer Silva is the executive director of Call Marin Home. She lives in Sausalito.