The Marin Post

Amy Kalish grew up in California and has lived in Mill Valley since 1983.

Since finding out about the new housing laws and RHNA in January 2022, she’s become a tireless researcher and spreader of information. She reinvigorated Susan Kirsch’s dormant citizenmarin.org as a RHNA/Housing Issues resource, and is a member of Catalysts for Local Control. She posts about state mandated housing issues constantly on NextDoor and is pleased to be a contributor to Marin Post.

Her Marin activism started in the early 90’s, organizing around a land use issue in Mill Valley: changes to the Bayfront Park Master Plan. Her protest efforts eventually helped secure the Dog Park, which remains unfenced, true to the original Master Plan. She still frequents the Dog Park, pleased at the way it all turned out.

Her hackles were raised again during the PG&E’s PSPS and she furiously spread awareness of safety and food insecurity issues created by the lengthy outages. These efforts were backed up by a successful Go Fund Me: “Help me do what PG&E won’t: Feed People;” that resulted in funding over 10,000 meals served by the Redwood Empire Food Bank.

The increased awareness of fire and PG&E’s criminal negligence and felony manslaughter convictions woke up her intense interest in evacuation safety. Noting that Marin is full of hazards, but has few evacuation routes, this interest dovetailed with the dangers posed by the increased density and overdevelopment demanded by the state.

With local control under assault, Amy is pleased to have been recently appointed to the Tam Design Review Board (TDRB). She is active in her neighborhood as a FireWise leader, volunteers as NRG block co-captain, and is CERT certified. She is also an artist, and member of Marin Society of Artists. Scenes from Marin are among her many landscape paintings.

She has an utterly unrelated college degree.