For Marin’s Affordable Housing Advocates and Opponents, a Complex Bag of Mixed News

Though common ground is often hard to find for advocates and opponents of affordable housing in Marin, a pair of marathon meetings this week may have served up one possibility: confusion over whether to celebrate or renounce the seemingly contradicting decisions that came out of each.

One day later, the Marin County Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed to remove the Tam Junction, Almonte and Manzanita sections of unincorporated Marin, as well as Marinwood, from the Hwy. 101 Corridor PDA, or “planned development area,”a voluntary designation under the Association of Bay Area Government’s regional Plan Bay Area that calls for higher-density development in those areas in an effort to align new housing development with projected jobs and population growth in the nine-county Bay Area.

Both meetings drew dozens of the same people, primarily residents and representatives of the areas that were both included in the PDA and identified as possible locations for higher-density residential development and expressed their opposition to it.

While the decisions at each meeting seemed contradictory, neither was the last word on the matter. The commission’s approval of the Housing Element is expected to go to the supervisors next month for adoption – and subsequently formalize 30-unit-per-acre zoning that could eventually lead to 221 units on St. Vincent's-Silveira, for instance.

The removal of the aforementioned areas from Marin’s PDA doesn’t change zoning and has no immediate impact on those areas, according to Brian Crawford, the head of the county’s Community Development Agency.

“They may have a good block party in celebrating the removal,” Crawford joked.

Other areas can be added or removed from the PDA down the road, county officials said, a detail that likely reduced the anxiety among Strawberry residents, who turned out in force to oppose Strawberry’s inclusion in both the PDA and as an identified site for possible high-density residential development – specifically nearly 74 acres near the Golden Gate Baptist Seminary.

“We are for the appropriate development of Strawberry – we are not for 30 units per acre,” added Strawberry resident Doug Carlucci, who cited development’s potential impact on traffic and local school class sizes.

Crawford and Diane Steinhauser, the director of theTransportation Authority of Marin, acknowledged that while removal of Tam Valley from the PDA wouldn’t impact current funding for bicycle and pedestrian improvements in that area, it could impact future funding.

“There is no doubt that MTC (Metropolitan Transportation Commission) and ABAG want to support the idea of development around transit facilities in PDAs,” Steinhauser said. “They want to reward those who consider that kind of development. So these areas wouldn’t be eligible in the future for PDA funds.”

Several attendees urged the boards to not let possible loss of future transit funding dictate their decisions.

“Marin’s character is not for sale,” said attorney Riley Hurd, who was representing a pair of Strawberry neighborhood organizations.

Adding to the complexity of the issue, zoning designations dictate how many units can possibly be built on specific properties, regardless of their inclusion in the county Housing Element and/or a PDA or not. For instance, the site of the former Chevron station at 209 Flamingo Rd. in Tam Junction is already zoned for 30 units per acre, so these decisions don’t impact development rights on the 0.563-acre site, county officials said.

But many Tam Valley residents spoke at both of this week’s meetings, saying that Tam Junction in general can’t accommodate any additional development because of its potential impact on traffic, public safety and the environment.

Supervisors Susan Adams and Kate Sears called for the board to remove Marinwood and Tam Valley/Almonte/Manzanita from the PDA, respectively, and the board unanimously agreed. Both gave caveats to their support for removing the areas from the PDA.

Repeating the adage that government officials have said throughout the process, Supervisor Susan Adams, who is facing a recall effort from affordable housing opponents in north San Rafael, said inclusion in the Housing Element or in a PDA does not give a developer any additional rights.

“Just because areas are included does not mean that the ground gets broken the next day,” Adams said. “There is still the specific plan-focused public process.”

Sears added that residents of her Southern Marin district needed to keep in mind the trade-offs at stake, noting that a number of improvements, particularly around the Tiburon Wye bus pad at Hwy. 101, require money. She also urged Strawberry residents to consider the tradeoffs as they enter the “beginning of the conversation” about their concerns about residential development around the seminary.

Supervisor Steve Kinsey emphasized that because Marin is projected to handle just about 1 percent of the future growth in the Bay Area, its residents must accept the tradeoffs that come with it.

“Communities that voluntarily assist with the increased population – and it’s not that people are moving here, it’s that the people who live here are growing at a rate that is faster than the rate we are dying – deserve the extra transportation dollars that come with it,” he said.

The supervisors are expected to take up the county Housing Element in late August or early September.