Housing needs can’t take over local control

In recent years, the development debate in Marin City has been over the best way to renovate Golden Gate Village, the 60-yearold publicly owned apartment complex.

Some community leaders have opposed plans advanced by the Marin Housing Authority, which is Golden Gate Village’s landlord, to build a new complex of apartments on open land near the public housing.

The authority says the new complex is needed to both help pay for the renovation, but also to provide housing for tenants who will have to move out temporarily while their units are being fixed up and upgraded.

Now, out of the blue and thanks to state lawmakers, a developer has the green light to build a five-story, 74-apartment building on the old Baptist church property.

Typically, such a large project would stir community consternation. Politically, when it comes to growth and development, the loudest local voices usually side with less rather than more.

But Sacramento, seeking answers to the state’s affordable housing crisis, has given developers a green light, a goahead to sidestep the public planning process if a municipality has failed to meet its regional housing quota.

That’s most of Marin, with the exception of Mill Valley and San Anselmo.

Those two might change when the state issues its new round of quotas.

The first project to take advantage of the planning shortcut is the Marin City apartments, an affordable housing project that Marin needs, but one that some Marin City voices complain is being built in their neighborhoods because other Marin communities wouldn’t allow it in theirs.

However, the site and process offered a rare combination of lower-priced real estate and sidestepping costly local planning processes that, when combined, made approval of affordable housing possible.

Residents’ gripes are understandable. And their concern about traffic, especially the limit of one way in and out of Marin City, is valid.

County planning staff is hoping that, by holding meetings between the developer and residents — even after approvals are already in hand — concerns can be addressed and worked out.

Some residents are talking about challenging the approval in court.

That likely would be the case in other Marin communities.

For residents of Marin City, the county-approved development reinforces the complaint raised by many that they need a more effective voice in determining the future of their community. They might have had something to say about the size and design of the development, but the state took them out of the planning process.

This is not a prime example of what was hoped to be achieved in state lawmakers’ approval of the housing law. It is a prime example of why follow-up legislation should be considered to restore Marin City and the public’s say in the local planning process.

Sacramento’s goal was to have local municipalities draft and approve plans that are realistic and achievable to meet their state housing quotas.

Given the example in Marin City and another proposal being reviewed by city staff in Novato, Marin cities are likely taking a closer look at their housing elements and sitespecific zoning rules to help make sure that they, not Sacramento, are making those decisions.

The process needs to be fair for property owners, developers and the community that will be living with what is built.

Marin’s state lawmakers — Assemblyman Marc Levine and Sen. Mike McGuire — need to work to fix this flaw — a repair that provides a better balance of local control and meeting California’s housing needs and goals without undercutting communities’ fair say in the location, size, scope and design of what gets built.