Marin County planners have released a preliminary list of 150 potential housing sites to meet a state mandate to create more homes.
Planners estimate that 6,332 residences could be built at the sites in unincorporated neighborhoods.
“We’re starting with more units than we need,” said Leelee Thomas, a county planning official. “We’ve looked at every site we could think of, really.”
Every eight years, the state Department of Housing and Community Development projects how much new housing will be needed in the Bay Area to accommodate expected population and job growth. The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) then decides how many of those homes to assign to each county and municipality in the region.
Local jurisdictions are required to adjust their zoning laws to make the creation of that amount of housing possible.
Marin County was assigned to allow 3,569 new residences in unincorporated areas from 2023 to 2031, 19 times more than the previous cycle. Otherwise, the county becomes subject to a streamlined approval process for all new housing projects.
County planners, working with Berkeley-based planning consultant MIG, recently released a list of potential sites throughout the unincorporated areas.
At a teleconference meeting during which the list was released on Jan. 20, Jose Rodriguez, a project manager for MIG, said, “We want to use the community to whittle this number down.”
To that end, the county has installed a software tool on its website that eventually is supposed to allow residents to decide for themselves where to place the new housing sites. Not all 6,332 sites have been uploaded to the software, however.
The public can use the software to get an idea of how different methodologies for selecting the sites are likely to affect how many residences are located at each site.
At a joint meeting of the Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission on Dec. 7, officials endorsed five guiding principles for selecting sites: to ensure countywide distribution of residences; to address racial equity and historic patterns of segregation; to encourage infill and redevelopment opportunities; to consider environmental hazards; and to leverage surplus lands.
The software tool demonstrates the different distribution of residences at 17 key sites, depending on which of the first four principles the user selects as a criterion. The tool also allows users to change the number of residences assigned to each site under each of the scenarios, and it allows users to submit comments regarding sites and to make their own recommendations for new sites.
Don Dickenson, a county planning commissioner, said he was surprised the county released its list of housing sites prior to Tuesday’s joint meeting of the Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission. The meeting is for officials to discuss progress toward updating the safety element of the county’s general plan.
Dickenson said the safety element might identify areas where housing shouldn’t be developed because hazards such as flooding or high wildfire risk.
At the Dec. 7 meeting of the Board of Supervisors, Scott Davidson, an MIG planner, said it won’t be possible to select only sites that are free of such environmental hazards.
Dickenson said he considered it noteworthy that 1,800 of the potential home locations on the list, more than a quarter of the total, are on the 835-acre parcel owned by the St. Vincent’s School for Boys. Proposals for massive housing developments there have been the source of controversy in Marin for decades.
Dickenson also noted the list includes locations in Bowman Canyon. The land, just outside the Novato’s urban growth boundary, was identified as a priority conservation area by Marin County Parks’ strategic plan and Plan Bay Area.
“There are a lot of addresses in West Marin,” Dickenson said of the list. “I’m sure a number of them are going to be controversial.”
Marin planners are quick to point out that the sites on the list are only candidates and have not been selected or approved. Nevertheless, critics of the process aren’t shy about expressing their dismay.
Sharon Rushton, president of Sustainable TamAlmonte, raised concerns regarding four sites on the list assigned a total of 137 homes. They sites are in the Tam Valley, Almonte and Manzanita lowlands.
In an email, Rushton wrote that constraints on the sites include risk of flooding; high seismic activity; projected sea level rise; traffic congestion; and proximity to vulnerable natural habitat.
“Encouraging new residential development, especially high density development, in these lowlands,” Rushton wrote, “would increase the risk of undue harm to the environment and undue hardship, illness &/or injury to the residents.”
Susan Kirsch of Mill Valley, founder of Catalysts for Local Control, wrote in an email, “The list of locations and numbers of units might look good on paper to a bureaucrat in a state office, but they defy common sense for people who currently, daily, try to get out of their driveway, deal with congestion, or try to find parking. They ignore fire hazards and flooding risks.”
The list is online at bit.ly/3g3X576. The mapping tool is at bit.ly/3G2b3kp.
