Setting design guide key for new housing
Marin officials are working on local land-use design standards that would set the stage for greater densities in areas where multifamily dwellings have long been off limits.
The county’s work on these guidelines should help provide a greater level of local control over the Sacramento-empowered housing laws that seek to erode counties’ and cities’ longstanding right to make their own planning decisions. Without well-defined standards in place, local municipalities are sitting ducks for developers.
Marin cities need to take similar proactive measures.
State lawmakers see local control as a significant hurdle to building the housing California needs. That means important issues such as height, traffic and parking can be largely sidestepped in a process that can also bypass public review. It’s a bright green light for developers, while ignoring the impacts on those who will have to live with what’s built.
Zoning is supposed to prevent haphazard land-use planning. But Marin has, for too long, imposed zoning that is not only restrictive, but exclusionary. All too often the zoning on the books was less of a guarantee for approval of a project that fit what was supposed to be allowed. Local zoning became a starting point and projects, if they had any chance for political approvals, usually were whittled away, along with a developers’ interest in following through with building plans.
It was a frequent political gambit across Marin that often led property owners to give up on their development plans and eventually sell the site for public open space.
The focus has been on where development couldn’t take place, rather than on where it can.
Sacramento lawmakers are reversing that approach.
When it has come to affordable housing, Marin has created jobs for workers, but little local housing that those workers can afford. That lopsided consequence needs to be corrected.
The shortage of affordable housing has been cited repeatedly in the dialogue over social and racial equity in Marin.
Sure, most Marin cities have up-to-date housing plans aimed at meeting state-mandated regional quotas, but given state lawmakers’ push to build more housing by raising quotas to seemingly impossible numbers, these documents need to be models of specificity.
There’s no question that single-family zoning has become Sacramento’s primary target.
There is also no question of the possibility that, through careful design and planning, multifamily housing can complement neighborhoods.
At the same time, concerns such as parking, fire safety, traffic, impacts on neighboring properties and protection of environmentally important areas need to be among the considerations.
Well-defined and site-specific planning rules and reasonable design requirements may be the best defense to protect the small-town character that Marin residents appreciate. Such rules have to pass reasonable tests. They can’t be restrictive zoning in disguise of another planning label.
As one statewide housing advocate said in a recent IJ story, the standards can’t be “back-door downzoning.”
A number of proposed design standards will soon be ready for public review and consideration by Marin municipalities that detail sites that can accommodate greater densities and reasonable design considerations. The overall goal will be to increase those densities and the number of units.
Those standards need to be clear to developers, local decision makers and the public, neighbors and environmental organizations.
The state has changed the rules, undermining local protections — zoning restrictions and wide-open and delay-laden public planning processes — that have been part and parcel of Marin’s land-use policies.
In setting these standards, Marin municipalities need to be crystal clear when it comes to specific sites and their ramifications and goals. What’s in print in local planning guidelines matters more now than ever.