Jenny Silva: Housing Element Watchdog Check-in Agenda by Lucy

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- Which city(s) are you monitoring, and which chapter(s) if any are you coordinating with?

    - Marin unincorporated, Sausalito

- Do you know if your city committed to a rezoning?

    - Marin County and Sausalito committed to rezoning - Marin County already adopted the HE, 6/12 have certified HE as of now 

    - YIMBY Law is suing Sausalito already according to Jenny 

    - What is the deadline for this rezoning?

        - Sausalito: Will be on 2024 election ballot but have to date done nothing to put on ballot 

        - MC: done, met deadline

- What policies did your city commit to enacting? (If no, ask if any city-owned sites are on the site inventory.)

    -  Which ones are you most excited about?

        - Both MC and S committed to objective design standards

        - Not strict deadlines for policies proposed 

        - MC: commitments to rental registries, tenant protections 

- If rezonings or policies have been introduced, do you know what the timelines and local processes are for passing? What progress has been made?

    - Objective design - committed, no deadline 

    - Tenant protections, committed, no deadline (that Jenny knows of) 

- When are the upcoming public hearings or housing element updates?

    - Tenant protections in MC: many upcoming meetings, Jenny will send me dates after

The Marin County Board of Supervisors met to adopt the housing element and submit the revisions to the state. Most of the Marin pro-housing community was in support of this housing element. The NIMBY planning commission did not recommend adoption? The nicest thing about the meeting was probably 30 people got up to say that we need housing in Marin. 

The planning commission was planning to recommend approval of the latest draft of the Housing Element. On 1/24 the Board of Supervisors will be voting on whether to adopt the Housing Element. It's interesting because the Planning Commission is very NIMBY and they want the Housing Element to be weakened. However, this will make it more difficult for the Board of Supervisors to approve the Housing Element on 1/24. At this point, the County staff have worked so hard to appease the Planning Commission that the current housing element is not compliant. Catholic Charities, which owns the largest property and has been wanting to develop for 30 years, wrote in to say the proposed zoning would make development infeasible. They note that any requirement for more than 20% affordable housing requires funding, and Marin County is not offering funding. So, I don't think this Housing Element is near compliant. But, the Planning Commission action will increase the likelihood of the Builder's Remedy being applied. 

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I have more details in the tweets I shared during the meeting: https://twitter.com/jrskis/status/1611137096231817222

- TL;DR there wasn't anything super material that happened in the meeting.  There was an update presented on the Housing Element and a motion to take the report.

- There was a member of Mill Valley's "Local Control" group who came and said the city should sue the state instead of complying with the Housing Element exercise, SMH.

- Maybe only two more commenters around housing, kind of nitpicky, not super material.

- I spoke in favor of the exercise, though challenged them to maybe think more deeply about the realisticness of some of the sites selected for development capacity (e.g. one site, a former bank, is actually capped by height restrictions that I'm told would not allow a project to pencil out for developers; another location is a thriving Ace hardware that I suspect isn't going anywhere anytime soon).

- The committee made the report that historically the inventory they've supplied maybe wasn't super "realistic" in retrospect, especially since lots identified in previous cycles had seen almost no development.

- There was definitely some "Straussian" hedging where the council and housing committee said that they "have to do this, it's not up to them" to kind of keep NIMBY's at bay, I suspect, and that their "hands are tied, the rules around the % of extra capacity they have to identify is much higher than it used to be."

- There was some public comment that there wasn't enough "low income housing included" and a tangential philosophical about what affordable even means.... council didn't bite.

- Mayor Kate finished the segment by saying they are a strongly pro-housing city council and actually referred back to my public comment about up zoning in downtown/general plan and said they were in support of that kind of growth, sounded like reasonably supportive of our agenda.

This was a public meeting to receive input into the housing element. The city council asked a lot of questions about the consequences for not building. The tenor of the questions was that maybe they don't need to worry about the feasibility of the element. This may be important if sites don't improve. 

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I made these comments: ·     On site selection: The county has not adequately addressed the probability of sites being developed. It looks like they have a buffer of 61/3059 units - less than 2%. This is a problem for multiple reasons:

o  Unfortunately, the site inventory looks like it has many unlikely sites - there are many privately owned sites slated for a relatively low number of affordable units. For example, a Sloat nursery location is slated for 26 affordable units - this is 100% of the units. My understanding is that it is extremely difficult to get a 100% affordable unit project to pencil, especially if there are land costs involved. Is Sloat interested in converting its nursery to housing? Two Marin City Churches are on the inventory. Without confirmation of interest from the owners, we have to assume that a substantial percentage will not convert. This housing element doesn't do that. 

HCD is requiring jurisdictions to consider the probability of development. Marin County's is not good. Last cycle, only 1 of the identified sites was converted to housing. Marin County did not meet it's RHNA for affordable housing last cycle, and 80% of the affordable units produced were ADUs. Yet, it assumes that affordable 324 units will be produced on available land without changes. History shows this isn't realistic

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I wanted to say, but ran out of time to say this:

·     I'm glad to see the Housing Element address that community resistance has restricted housing. However, I'm skeptical that an education program will fix this. We should expand byright approval to cover more projects. To the extent that education is undertaken, it should focus on the benefits of housing density overall - not just affordable housing.

·     I support the increase in height limits. I would encourage broader increases in densities as well. 

·     It looks like a large % of units compared to the population are located in the Western, less populated areas. Unless there are a lot of commuters going into these communities, it seems like it will worsen traffic issues, not resolve them. 

·     Many of the affordable housing sites are a relatively low number of units (<50 units) that are listed as all affordable units. Economics for small, 100% affordable projects do not pencil out. We need to increase density to make the projects bigger or move to more mixed income projects.

Most of the participants (who are local to either Marin or Sausalito) are in support of more housing.

The county is making there plan, lots of community opposition!

I got there late, but still was able to participate in a small breakout work session. I mean — it’s unincorporated Marin so there was a lot of grumbling especially about things like sewage and environmental hazards. But, people were generally trying to identify sites, mostly small scale, talking about ADUs, church parking lots, nonprofit developers. But they seemed receptive when I spoke about need for a lot more housing, upzoning and density, especially near transit as needed for equity and to allow young people to stay. They are using that Balancing Act site so will also input there. 

TL;DR: Nothing of serious substance tonight. Lightly positive about the committee’s desire to support more housing in San Rafael, particularly in our downtown.

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The agenda of this meeting was to introduce the various members of the San Rafael Housing Element working committee, along with the outline of the process to come for the following months.

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Of note was the frequent emphasis that the number owed for the housing element for new housing targets was a FLOOR, not a range, and that we needed to make up for recent under development.

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Members of the committee were largely of the public servant/non-profit realm, so am a little worried about potential lack of surface area with challenges to market rate development.  There is one for-profit developer on the committee and maybe one other business-adjacent type member (but his focus tonight was on homeless status surveys and a short tryst on rent control).

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But in more heartening news, one member called for the committee to explicitly review the friction/barriers placed in front of housing development for future working committee meetings.

This was a presentation by the consultant on the Marin County Site Selection for the Housing Element. This is for unincorporated Marin County. Speakers have been heavily pro-housing. One speaker mentioned concerns about how septic systems will be handled with increased housing. the water crisis for West Marin was raised. One said Affirmatively Housing meant we should build in her neighborhood, rather than in Marin City. Several people mentioned that we need to actually build the housing, not just meet the RHNAs. One requested that ADUs not be considered, as most people building ADUs for guest quarters. 

Pretty uneventful. The usual comments that ABAG or HCD don't understand, there just isn't any developable land in Marin county! 

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There seemed to be Supervisors that support housing and the staff seemed really solid. Marin County has a CAC for the Housing Element process. 

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Future TODO: See if we can still get YIMBYs on the CAC and if we can't, make sure watchdogs attend the CAC meetings.