San Rafael homeless housing plan OK’d
The San Rafael City Council has approved a nonprofit’s plan to build a four-story homeless resource center in the Canal neighborhood with a 60-bed emergency shelter and 32 low-income apartments.
The council voted unanimously on Monday in favor of Homeward Bound’s proposal for 190 Mill St., where the organization currently operates a one-story homeless shelter with capacity for 55 beds.
“This has been a project that we’ve been talking about for a number of years and I’m so happy to see it finally coming to fruition,” said Councilman John Gamblin.
Homeward Bound plans to demolish the existing building on the site, where it has sheltered the homeless since 1986. The new building will include 18 parking spaces on the ground floor, an emergency shelter on the second floor and apartments on the top two floors.
The organization has said it plans to offer the apartments to people who are transitioning out homelessness and into housing. The site will be staffed at all times with workers providing support services for tenants who might otherwise struggle living on their own, according to Homeward Bound. Tenants will be allowed to live in the apartments indefinitely, the organization said.
Some Canal neighborhood residents have criticized Homeward Bound’s plan, saying the area is already the most densely-populated neighborhood in San Rafael, and that adding new apartment units will worsen parking issues in the community.
But others have said they support the plan to build the facility at the Mill Street site because the property is already home to an emergency shelter.
“Given the challenges of finding appropriate locations in Marin, it makes sense to build up where we already have a footprint,” Howard Schwartz, a San Rafael resident and a director for the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Marin, which operates a soup kitchen in the city, told the council.
Schwartz spoke to the council on Monday by calling in to a hotline the city set up for public participation in the meeting. Because of the statewide shelter-in-place order aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19, the city banned the public from attending the meeting in person, but it streamed a live video recording of the proceedings
and accepted comments from the public in writing or over the phone.
The council agreed Monday to change the zoning designation of Homeward Bound’s property from industrial to residential, and approved a permit that allows the organization to run the larger shelter on the site.
By changing the property’s zoning designation, the city has allowed Homeward Bound to take advantage of Assembly Bill 2162, a 2018 law aimed at speeding
up the development of housing for the homeless on sites designated for multifamily residential use.
Most major construction projects must be reviewed by San Rafael’s Design Review Board, which makes recommendations on design elements such as architecture, mass, bulk, color and landscaping. But the bill allows Homeward Bound to skip the design review process for the facility, which can be a timeconsuming step in gaining
the city’s approval for new housing developments.
“This is a critical need,” Homeward Bound’s executive director, Mary Kay Sweeney, told the council. “And it’s only going to get more critical as time goes on.”
According to Sweeney, Homeward Bound has raised $10.5 million through grants and private donations to pay for the new site, which is estimated to cost $15 million. The organization is seeking additional grants.