Little impact in push to retain housing rules

Marin residents have long treasured and defended their local control.

Tough zoning restrictions passed by Marin politicians have helped prevent this county from becoming the North Bay version of the South Bay. Or prevented San Rafael from a northern edition of Walnut Creek.

It is a choice Marin residents made, underscored by electing leaders who promised slow or no growth.

That has prevailed until Sacramento decided to take over land-use decisions. Facing a statewide housing crisis, state lawmakers passed laws that set ambitious quotas for local construction of housing.

State officials have determined that there's going to be a lot more housing — in everybody's backyard.

That's why local municipalities have been busy rewriting their zoning laws, trying to impose what local control they have left to meet their quotas.

Across Marin, those quotas are supposed to lay the foundation for a 12% increase in housing over the next decade. This county hasn't seen that type of growth in decades.

Marin's real estate prices are still high and so are local governmental fees. Those factors could chill state-mandated opportunities to build that much housing, especially affordable housing.

At the same time, the local political pressure that has over the years kept local growth at a crawl relative to other Bay Area counties is not waning. However, it's being applied to local politicians who find themselves in the middle of state orders to make room for more housing and those who don't want any more in their backyards.

The latest sign of this is the outcry that county supervisors are circumventing Marin's longstanding “community plan” process in determining developable sites and how much housing they can accommodate.

Over the years, a number of communities have been able to convince supervisors to draft local plans. Today, the county has 24 community plans, which are not only much more specific than the county's general plan, but typically lead to tougher restrictions.

State lawmakers have been busy unraveling those local restrictions, rewriting land-use rules and expediting approval processes. Those municipalities that drag their feet in complying with the new rules, face the possibility — written into legislation — that would further reduce local control in determining the siting, size and scope of proposed housing plans.

Armed with petitions signed by residents, they are demanding that the county should restore and enforce restrictions in those community plans. If not, they should go through the community-based process to rewrite those plans.

The deadlines set by state lawmakers didn't give local supervisors and council members time to reopen those processes.

That inconsistent approach and the inconsistencies between the community plans and revised zonings prompted the county Planning Commission not to recommend approval of the revised housing plan.

County planning staff have advised supervisors that the state's housing push requires counties and cities to remove barriers to building new housing, especially those that might perpetuate patterns of racial exclusion.

Marin's restrictive zoning laws have been a target of critics who say they have severely limited the building of housing needed to foster greater racial and economic equity.

Critics of the county's zoning changes and process leading to those revisions are citing legal issues that might have to be decided in court.

But the foundation for the changes is the state Legislature. By chewing out their local supervisors, those critics are not changing many minds in Sacramento.

It is going to take a state ballot measure or political pressure on state lawmakers to affect change.

Right now, there's no sign of lawmakers having any interest in backpedaling from the housing mandates.