Marin towns targeted as agencies wage war on suburbs

The Bay Area regional agencies’ war on suburbia just went up a notch.

In its effort to address California’s “housing crisis,” the Association of Bay Area Governments, a subsidiary of the all-powerful Metropolitan Transportation Commission, just released a draft of its 2023-2031 Regional Housing Needs Allocation report.

The RHNA draft specifies the precise housing mandate by four housing price categories that each municipality and Bay Area county must include in their revised general plans. ABAG’s draft is camouflaged in innocuous bureaucratic language indicating that the proposed RHNA “methodology” will be finalized at a Jan. 21 video conference meeting. The reality is once that step is taken, the number of housing units each community must authorize is locked in cement.

Here’s the allocation of new housing units for each of Marin’s 11 municipalities and in the county’s unincorporated suburban neighborhoods and rural villages. It’s a mind-spinning 21 times the allocation for the current cycle.

Belvedere 162, Corte Madera 709, Fairfax 579, Larkspur 1,018, Mill Valley 835, Novato 2,166, Ross 118, San Anselmo 745, San Rafael 2,785, Sausalito 727, Tiburon 621 and unincorporated Marin 3,820. Sites for those 14,285 units must be provided in revised general plans and essentially allowed upon application for a building permit.

It’s another example of the regional agency’s push to take community planning away, not just from local governments but to eliminate popular control. To paraphrase Claremont Review contributing editor and author Christopher Caldwell when writing about the European Commission, the fundamental disposition of the Bay Area regional alphabet agencies is to favor technocratic expertise over representative government.

As in the past, RHNA allocations are an unfunded mandate. It’s up to local communities to tax themselves for more classrooms, water supply, transportation, roads, police, fire and expected community amenities for — presuming with children for an average three-per-household — another 42,000 Marinites.

Don’t blame our county supervisors. They oppose the RHNA methodology. Given ABAG/MTC’s backing by state government, without allying with similarly situated suburban jurisdictions, Marin’s pleas will be as effective as trying to hold back the tide.

ABAG’s RHNA process is determined by a combination of local government representatives and “stakeholders” using dubious housing needs presumptions. Those stakeholders include Joint Venture Silicon Valley, big businesses’ Bay Area Council, the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California, and the influential Building Industry Association of the Bay Area. There’s not a single federation of neighborhood associations on ABAG’s methodology panel.

Inexplicitly, the methodology ignores looming seismic changes in how and where urban and suburban people work, shop and commute.

RHNA is only partially about “very low income” and “low income” housing, the two categories generally considered “affordable.” Of the supposed 441,176 Bay Area “housing unit need” the draft sets aside only 40.8% for the two affordable categories.

Regionwide, fully 42.6% or 188,130 units, are for “above moderate income” folks. The

Bay Area is already over capacity and doesn’t need more homes for rich people. That’ll contribute to declining quality of life and higher taxes for current residents with few upsides other than for developers and the booming technology industry. It’s axiomatic: High-priced market-rate homes aren’t workforce housing.

Of Marin’s combined 14,285unit allocation, only 47.7% or 6,826 units are for very low and low income residents.

Clearly Marin will benefit from a more diverse community that provides additional workforce housing but yet, few Marinites believe our county needs more upper income homes.

Instead, Marin should urge compromise to forge a balanced approach. First, accept the proposed allocation for low and very low income targeted homes. Second, form a suburban political coalition to fight demands from big business, building trade unions and big- city politicians to jam more expensive and unneeded rich people housing into an already overburdened Bay Area.