Marin Nimbies Target Habitat Homes

MARIN COUNTY
Habitat for Humanity faces fight in wealthy community
- Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, January 25, 2007

A group of residents in the pricey Marin County community of Strawberry are mobilizing against an affordable housing plan by the renowned charity Habitat for Humanity, saying it would blight their neighborhood.

The group is convinced that the plan to build four three-bedroom units of low-income housing in their neighborhood would result in increased traffic and parking congestion and lower property values.

About three dozen residents who live near the proposed construction site -- 16.5 acres just west of the Tiburon city limits -- are attempting to raise $100,000 for legal fees to challenge the project, which still must be approved by the county Planning Commission.

"Habitat for Humanity goes into blighted neighborhoods and fixes them up. Here they are going into an enhanced neighborhood and blighting it," said Bill Duane, a 58-year-old resident of Bay Vista Drive, near the proposed site. "I'm not against low-cost housing, but this is social engineering. The county does not have the right to choose my neighbors."

Such a ruckus is not unusual in Marin, where homeowners have been notoriously hostile to development, especially the kind that threatens to lower the value of their property. But the charity made famous by former President Jimmy Carter would seem an unconventional target.

About 100 Strawberry residents packed a recent Strawberry Design Review Board meeting. They said they support, and in some cases have participated in, the charity's work, but do not believe the development will fit into their neighborhood, where most homes are worth between $1 million and $2 million.

"The homes are of a certain type and would not fit in. The placement of these homes would really stand out," said Alan Krepack, 54, a management consultant who has lived on Bay Vista Drive for 18 years. "There are other places in the county where low-cost housing would be more appropriate."

Habitat officials said they were surprised by the vehemence of the opposition.

"I think NIMBYism is a convenient term and it may well fit in this case, but it is also fear of the unknown," said Phillip Kilbridge, executive director of Habitat's San Francisco chapter.

The project, at the intersection of Eagle Rock and Knoll roads and Bay Vista Drive, originally did not include any low-cost housing. The San Francisco developer, Pan Pacific Ocean Inc., wanted to divide the property into seven parcels and build three large homes to be sold on the open market. But the county requires developers that create two or more market-rate residences to also include some affordable housing.

After learning about the affordable housing requirement, the developer contacted Habitat for Humanity, a nondenominational Christian charity that has built homes for the poor in 88 countries and in more than 1,600 U.S. cities.

The plan now is to build four additional units, each a little over 1,400 square feet, with single-car garages. The buildings would be designed to look like two separate Craftsman-style homes, and each unit would be affordable to a family of four with an annual income of $56,000 or less. Each future homeowner would be required to put in 500 hours of "sweat equity" helping build their home.

"We believe that our model for developing homeownership with sweat equity is perfect for Marin County," Kilbridge said. "I would hope we would be able to partner with the neighbors so we can build a development that all parties would appreciate."

No development would be the best alternative, said several neighbors, but if it must be done, then it should at least comply with county guidelines, which require only one unit of affordable housing, not four.

"I'm perfectly willing to go along if the proposal complies with the guidelines, but it doesn't," said Dan Veto, 41, who lives on Bay Vista Drive. "I would be concerned if they were proposing to build four market-rate homes at that intersection. It's a very, very busy intersection."

Veto and others said the development would exacerbate traffic and parking problems in the neighborhood and destroy a valuable stretch of open space.

"They are getting rid of the last connection to open space that we have here," Duane said. "There are 50 different species of wildlife in this property."

It has long been the goal of county administrators and politicians to increase the amount of affordable housing in Marin, where the median price of a home is about $850,000. The high cost of housing, say housing officials, has left teachers, firefighters, police officers and other relatively low-wage workers with no place to live in the county.

"The need for workforce housing in Marin is very great," said Johanna Patri, principal planner for the Marin County Community Development Agency. "We support affordable housing."

But Patri said it has been exceedingly difficult to find any place to squeeze in low-cost housing outside of the predominantly African American enclave of Marin City and the largely Latino neighborhood of San Rafael known as the Canal area.

The reception in Marin has been so hostile that a county chapter of Habitat for Humanity disbanded in the late 1990s because the volunteers could not get any low-income housing projects off the ground, Kilbridge said.

"The argument that affordable housing lowers property values is a specious argument," Kilbridge said. "It doesn't hold water."

He said it is "a shame" that residents would raise $100,000 in an attempt to keep less fortunate families out of their neighborhood.

"Do you know how many nails that could buy?" Kilbridge asked. "To us that's a lot of money that could be of such incredible use to the community."

Residents say the Strawberry area already has enough affordable housing. Seven affordable housing units have been developed there in the past 10 years, including five rental units for employees in the nearby Strawberry shopping center.

"The idea that everybody is entitled to an affordable house wherever they want one is not valid," Duane said. "I would like to live in Cannes. I would like to live in Palm Beach. Everybody's got wishes, but that's not the way life is."

ABAG Numbers

HAG sent this letter to the Assocciation of Bay Area Governments ("ABAG") recently concerning their Regional Houisng Needs ("RHNA") allocation process.

Re: Draft Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) Methodology

Dear Executive Board,

The Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group is a voluntary grass roots organization which promotes affordable housing development, and increased housing opportunities for persons with special needs such as seniors, persons with disabilities, farmworkers and homeless persons. We are writing to comment on the draft RHNA methodology recommended by the Housing Methodology Committee (HMC) and ABAG Staff.

The process is underway to determine the regional housing needs allocations ("RHNA") for various jurisdictions within the area served by ABAG. We have reviewed the preliminary RHNA figures for Sonoma, Napa and Marin Counties, and are very concerned by what we see.

The big ABAG cities -- San Jose, Oakland, San Francisco -- are allocated huge increases in their RHNA numbers for the 2009-2016 planning period. These cities are being given approximately double their previous (1999-2009) housing needs allocation. Sonoma County, on the other hand, is tentatively allocated a substantial reduction in RHNA, even though job growth and population growth in the county is not predicted to drop by comparison with the previous planning period.

The unincorporated areas of Sonoma County are seeing a huge cut -- going from 6,799 total RHNA units for the 1999-2009 planning period down to 1,320 total units in the draft allocation for the 2009-2016 planning period. Similar cuts are in the works for Napa County. Marin County has always had low RHNA numbers.

This is troubling for several reasons. There is very little developable land in Oakland, San Francisco or San Jose. There is no basis to expect those cities can or will substantially increase production of housing -- particularly housing affordable to lower income households.. So the units just aren't going to get built... no matter how high their RHNA numbers are set. On the other hand, there's a fair amount of vacant land available for higher density development in areas of Sonoma, Marin and Napa Counties that are already served by water/sewer. These counties can and should provide housing with a range of affordabilities to accommodate expected job growth and population growth over the 2009-2017 planning period.

"Smart Growth" means that for every new job in Marin, Sonoma and Napa Counties, there should be new housing built that is affordable to the employee filling that job. People working in Marin should be able to live there, and not have to commute from Oakland. Farmworkers in the expanding Napa vineyards should not have to commute an hour over the mountains from Lakeport to get to their jobs. Sonoma County teachers should be able to live in Sonoma County.

ABAG, like all the COGS, gives little jurisdictions a disproportionately large say in how the RHNA pie is cut up. The little jurisdictions and unincorporated areas are the most resistant to development of affordable housing, so they've apparently pushed as much of it as possible off somewhere else. The high priced towns -- Sonoma, Tiburon, Calistoga, Sebastopol, St. Helena, Mill Valley -- should not be allowed by ABAG and HCD to duck providing housing affordable to low and moderate income households. They generally have an abundance of sites, good schools, and other infrastructure. They should get RHNA allocations which recognize their capacity to absorb at least the same amount of growth as the region in general.

People who work in Sonoma, Napa and Marin County -- whether the jobs are new ones or old ones -- should be able to live in those counties in housing they can afford. They shouldn't have to live in Oakland or San Jose. But these new numbers carry the message that local governments in Sonoma, Napa and Marin don't have to provide more housing for lower income households; rents will go up; people will be forced to commute long distances or live in overcrowded or substandard conditions.

We believe that ABAG's tentative numbers will, if finalized, seriously limit the production of housing affordable to lower income households in the region. Most jurisdictions meet or exceed their share of need for above moderate income housing. Adjusting the RHNA up or down doesn't have a significant impact on development of single family detached housing units for that income group. But building housing for lower income households requires appropriately zoned sites served by infrastructure, schools and transportation. These sites are already in scarce supply. Most non-profit developers believe that the most serious constraint on affordable housing development is, in fact, the lack of appropriately zoned sites. By lowering the RHNA for jurisdictions in Sonoma, Napa and Marin Counties, ABAG is making a determination that they don't need as many sites as they are now providing, even though they are not now providing enough sites. There is simply no evidence on which ABAG can legitimately base such a reduction in RHNA.

The draft RHNA numbers we have seen include an overall reduction of more than 60% for Napa County; 50% for Sonoma County, and 40% for Marin County. Sebastopol's RHNA is reduced by 70%; Windsor by 50%. These numbers are wholly unsupported by any evidence of a decline in job growth or population growth in these areas. We believe these reductions are both arbitrary and capricious and exceed ABAG's legal authority to adopt.

Similarly, the draft RHNA numbers include huge increases -- approximately 100% -- for Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose. But there is no basis for ABAG to determine that these increases reflect anticipated population growth in these cities, and no basis for ABAG to find that there is anywhere near the amount of sites available in these cities to accommodate these levels. These increases will not likely result in any greater rate of housing development in these cities -- particularly with respect to housing affordable to lower income households. Doubling the RHNA numbers for these large cities is, of course, a convenient way of reducing the numbers for jurisdictions in Sonoma, Napa and Marin Counties -- jurisdictions which have long been resistant to providing adequate affordable housing for their workforce, their disabled, their farmworkers and other low income households.

There's another strange twist to this sorry ABAG saga... two years ago at the very start of the planning for the 2007 RHNA cycle, ABAG complained that the state hadn't provided adequate funding to do proper housing needs surveys. In response, Cathy Creswell at the Department of Housing and Community Development sent ABAG a letter which purported to grant ABAG an extension of two more years to do its next RHNA allocations. This extension letter violated state law which required the new RHNA determinations to be completed prior to the start of the planning period -- 2007. But more importantly, these new draft RHNA numbers only cover the planning period starting in 2009. The numbers make no mention of the housing needs which were accruing during the 2-year Creswell extension. ABAG and HCD have unlawfully and arbitrarily determined that no regional housing needs were accruing in the years 2007, 2008 and 2009.

The failure to include regional housing needs for the two-year period of the extension -- almost a third of the entire planning period -- doesn't affect housing starts for above moderate income housing. But it does have a substantial harmful effect on the availability of sites affordable to lower income households. Those sites have to be carefully selected, rezoned, and made accessible to infrastructure.

The failure to include needs numbers for this two-year period -- in addition to being arbitrary and in excess of ABAG's jurisdictional authority -- would appear to violate Government Code Section 65008, which prohibits state and local governments from discriminating against development of housing affordable to lower income households.

We would respectfully request that ABAG begin again the RHNA allocation process, and allocate substantial additional regional housing needs to areas like Sonoma, Napa and Marin Counties and jurisdictions within those counties; and allocate smaller housing needs to Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose in a way that will realistically reflect the capacities of those cities to actually build the housing units.