Big state push for housing initiatives
Marin lawmaker has bond measure plan
State Sen. Mike McGuire, whose district includes Marin, said he will partner with Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins to get a statewide bond measure on the ballot to raise money for affordable housing.
“My major priority is getting an affordable housing bond passed in 2021,” said McGuire, D-Healdsburg. “The pandemic has made our affordable housing crisis even worse. Between 2015 and 2025, California will need 1.5 million affordable rental housing units just to keep up with demand.”
The effort is just one of the legislative initiatives on housing expected in the new year.
In December, Senate leaders submitted six bills that would make it easier to build homes and smaller apartments, and to subdivide large residential lots into two parcels. Many of the bills are reintroductions of measures that won support during the last session, but got stalled in a legislative calendar shortened by the pandemic and intraparty political disputes.
“The theme headed into 2021 is, ‘Let’s try this one more time,’” said David Garcia, policy director at the Terner Center for Housing
Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley.
Not everyone is enthusiastic about the possible passage of the bills.
“I am really alarmed about what is coming down the pike again this year,” said Susan Kirsch of Mill Valley, founder and former president of Livable California. “In the last four years, they’ve passed 64 housing bills. There is a continued push to have more housing and less local control.”
Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-Greenbrae, wrote in an email, “The North Bay will do its part to help solve the crisis, but state housing legislation must recognize that the types of housing that may work in downtown Los Angeles may not work in suburban or rural Marin County.”
Earlier this month, the Marin County Community Development Agency approved a five- story, 74-apartment complex on a 1.1-acre lot in Marin City without review by the county’s planning commission or environmental analysis under the California Environmental Quality Act.
It was the first development proposal submitted to Marin County since Senate Bill 35, a new law intended to streamline housing development to address the housing shortage, took effect at the beginning of 2018.
The developer of that project, AMG & Associates LLC of Encino, is also seeking to build a six-story building at 1020 Fourth St. in Novato that would include commercial space on the first floor and 227 apartments on the upper floors.
New streamlining bills submitted for 2021 include: SB 9, which would permit duplexes and lot splits in single-family residential zones to be allowed by right; and SB 10, introduced by Sen. Scott Wiener, D- San Francisco, which would permit cities to adopt an ordinance to zone any parcel for up to 10 residences if it is classified as an urban infill site or considered rich in transit or jobs.
Kirsch said, “Scott Weiner’s new bill, SB 10, a rewrite of SB 902, will allow cities to zone for up to a 10-unit complex in a single-family neighborhood. You’ve got to be kidding.”
Kirsch likens the streamlining of housing development that is taking place to the financial deregulation of the 1980s that paved the way for corporate raiders to purchase companies and strip them of their wealth.
She says streamlining opens the door for real estate developers to profit while leaving communities to foot the cost of denser populations.
“There are still going to be issues of parking, streets, sewers, safety services, schools services, parks and libraries,” Kirsch said.
Ultimately, she said, she fears that corporate interests will purchase more and more single- family homes and replace them with multi-family units.
“We will lose the middle class that has shared home ownership,” Kirsch said, “and become a nation of renters with the diminishing 1% controlling more and more of the wealth.”
McGuire does not share Kirsch’s concerns regarding SB 10.
“It’s not a mandate,” McGuire said. “It would be utilized only if the city council or board of supervisors chooses to do so. It would be a tool that city councils and boards of supervisors would have to advance infill housing within their city limits.”
“Developers will still have to pay hookup fees associated with water and sewer,” McGuire added. “Same with SB 9.”
McGuire said the affordable housing bond he will be working on this year will raise sorely needed development funds for projects such as Homeward Bound’s effort to build a 50-home affordable housing project on Hamilton Parkway, next to Homeward Bound’s Next Key and New Beginnings housing.
McGuire said about $7 million has been raised for the project, which has an estimated cost of $25 million.
“There is a significant gap between where we are now and the dollars needed to start construction,” McGuire said. “The biggest challenge that Marin County cities have is the lack of affordable housing funding.”