The Marin County Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission will hold a rare joint meeting on Tuesday to adopt principles for complying with a state housing mandate.
The county must zone 3,569 new residences in its unincorporated areas by 2030 under the directive, called the Regional Housing Needs Allocation.
“The county faces a significant challenge in accommodating the Regional Housing Needs Allocation this cycle due to both the substantial increase in units and to the heightened regulations and specificity required of the sites, especially those identified to accommodate the lower income RHNA,” Leelee Thomas, a county planning official, wrote in her staff report for the joint meeting.
Every eight years, the state Department of Housing and Community Development projects how much new housing will be needed in the Bay Area to accommodate expected population and job growth.
The Association of Bay Area Governments then decides how many of those homes to assign to each county and municipality in the region. Local jurisdictions are required to adjust their zoning laws to make the creation of that amount of housing possible.
During the previous RHNA cycle, the county was required to zone for 185 homes, and the cycle before that called for 773.
The county appealed the new allocation on the grounds that it fails to recognize the amount of land in unincorporated Marin that is preserved for agricultural use and would require development in rural areas that lack access to transit and services. The mandate also ignores the challenges posed by drought, sea-level rise and increased wildfires, the county said.
ABAG rejected the appeal on Oct. 22.
In her staff report, Thomas asks supervisors and commissioners for their comment on a number of strategies that she says will be needed to comply with the housing allocation.
The strategies include rezoning some residential properties to increase density; rezoning some commercial areas to accommodate additional mixed-use, higher-density housing; increasing residential densities on sites containing religious institutions; establishing minimum densities in multifamily zones; and allowing residential development “by right.”
The state Department of Housing and Community Development reviews the housing elements of local governments’ general plans and certifies them if they comply with their RHNA allocations. In past cycles, however, local governments have routinely failed to get housing elements approved without suffering any consequences.
Now, under SB 35, which was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017, any municipality or county that fails to build the amount of housing assigned to it by the Association of Bay Area Governments is subject to a streamlined approval process for new housing projects.
According to state housing officials, only two Marin municipalities — Mill Valley and Corte Madera — have built enough housing to make them exempt from SB 35 during the current cycle.
“In the last five years, approximately 70 pieces of housing related legislation have been signed into law,” Thomas wrote in her staff report. “Among other things, these laws streamline residential development, permit increased densities when affordable units are included, reduce discretionary review and hold local governments accountable for producing a fair share of new housing development.”
Based on these changes, she wrote, “The county is facing a new paradigm and will need to approach residential development differently in order to have a certified housing element.”
On Nov. 3, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced he has created a 12-member team to enforce the RHNA allocation requirement and other new housing laws.
Alicia Murillo, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Housing and Community Development, said a local government’s failure to get its housing element certified could result in an initial monthly fine of $10,000 to $100,000. The fine could rise to $600,000 per month if compliance isn’t reached over a six-month period.
Susan Kirsch of Mill Valley, founder of Catalysts for Local Control, said Tuesday’s meeting is an opportunity for county supervisors to demonstrate leadership by coordinating with Marin cities to resist state mandates.
“Marin cities, like cities across the state, deserve better than the California Justice Department using heavy-handed lawsuits to coerce cities and the county to put their residents at risk by demanding irresponsible zoning to reach unreliable and unrealistic quotas,” Kirsch wrote in an email.
Still, Thomas makes clear in her staff report that the need for new housing in Marin is severe. In unincorporated Marin, 43% of renter households and 35% of owner households spend in excess of 30% of their income on housing.
County planners estimate that 30.4% of households in Marin have children and 23% of these households have incomes that fall below the federal poverty level.
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Marin officials set strategy session on housing mandate - Marin Independent Journal
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