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Golden Gate Village Resident Council vs. Marin Housing Authority - An Untold Story - Part V
A multi-part series investigating the extraordinary story behind the case of Golden Gate Village Resident Council vs. Marin Housing Authority, and the challenge of housing those most in need in Marin County.
It Takes More Than A Village
About a year and a half ago, Lewis Jordan told me he could see adding another 600 units on the Golden Gate Village property as part of an overall redevelopment plan, in addition to the existing 300 units of public housing.[1] This would require demolishing some or all of the existing buildings. New structures would probably have to rise to four or five stories high to achieve that density.
At the time, I pointed out that proposing this scale of development would become a countywide political issue because it would create un-mitigatable impacts on traffic congestion, parking, utilities and infrastructure, public services, schools, water, and God knows what else. I don’t think it would ever be acceptable to the other residents of Marin City or to other Southern Marin communities, not to mention the GGVRC.
Marin is not Chicago.
On top of that, there are many other large-scaled housing projects now being proposed or discussed in Marin (see attached map), totaling almost 5,000 units. Including the addition of 600 units in Marin City, that would produce a population increase of approximately 13,000 new residents.[2] That would represent more than twice the total population growth for Marin County in the past ten years!
This doesn’t even include the ongoing infill development and redevelopment of existing properties in Marin that is already increasing our population at rates above average historic norms. And since we have approximately one vehicle registered for every man, woman, and child in Marin, this equates to adding another 13,000 cars, trucks, and other transportation vehicles to our growing traffic nightmare.[3]
Talk about unsustainable!
It is sobering to note that from a zoning standpoint, a total of 900 units at GGV (adding 600) would only bring the property up to 28.6 units per acre (a density generally supported by the Marin Planning Commission). If for some reason, the Golden Gate Village public housing project ceased to exist, under existing state laws, it would not be a stretch for a private nonprofit developer to attempt to justify the right to build as many as 43.5 units per acre using the State Density Bonus Law: a total of approximately 1,366 units on 31.4 acres. That’s an additional 1,100 new residents and another 1,100 motor vehicles.
Basically, the whole thing is out of the question. Adding 600 units to the GGV property is a political non-starter. Recently, I asked Lewis, again, about his comments and he now says, “I don’t recall” ever saying that and added, “Currently, we have no plan, therefore, I can’t speculate on a number of units.”
Perhaps the realities of being in Marin are starting to sink in, which would be a good thing.
The RAD Program
One option that MHA is aware of is HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration (“RAD”) program. As touted on the HUD web site, RAD is
… a powerful tool to preserve and improve public housing properties and address the … backlog of deferred maintenance. RAD gives owners… the opportunity to enter into long-term contracts that facilitate the financing of improvements.
It promises to allow housing authorities to
… leverage public and private debt and equity in order to reinvest in the public housing stock, to permanently preserve low income housing, [and to ensure that] public stewardship is maintained.
In the simplest terms, the RAD program allows the housing authority to access private capital markets by syndicating its interests through joint ventures with private for-profit and nonprofit developers. The added benefit for the housing authority is that under RAD, the project is switched from the antiquated public housing funding formula to Section 8, which increases revenues and reduces processing and paperwork burdens.
Under the right circumstances and with full participation of the GGVRC, you would think it might be an option for GGV. However, there are problems.
The first problem is that Congress has capped the number of units that can qualify under the program at 185,000, for 2015. Considering that there are over 2 million people currently living in public housing in need of renovation, the odds of MHA’s qualifying for this program are pretty slim. GGV residents are also leery of Section 8, fearing that it would only increase their chances of being displaced.
Assurances against that happening are possible, but considering MHA’s track record, the resident’s distrust is understandable.
The second problem is even more disconcerting for GGV residents. RAD is essentially a privatization program, a continuation of the trend that started with the Nixon Administration. Once MHA syndicates a 99 percent interest in the project, private developers take over managing and running it. This absolves MHA of most responsibilities (except for processing Section 8 vouchers). Although RAD prohibits re-screening of existing tenants, it leaves the tenants with a much more bottom line oriented landlord, which could eventually lead to more displacement.
Developers have already indicated they will step up enforcement of rules. But who makes those rules is also pretty vague in the HUD documents and untested in the courts. Looking at how for-profit privatization has worked out in mental health and prisons provides little comfort.
In addition, RAD doesn’t solve the problem of where the existing tenants go while the property is being redeveloped. On top of all that, big unions such as SEIU are against RAD or any other form of privatization because it eventually leads to staff’s being laid off at public housing authorities.
Redevelopment without Displacement
It may be true that there currently is no plan about what to do at Golden Gate Village, but during the past 12 months, MHA has invited GGV residents to tour the Bayview-Hunters Point redevelopment in San Francisco. This redevelopment, of one of the worst neighborhoods in the City, has been rebranded as “Hunters View” and is a joint venture of three private firms selected by the San Francisco Housing Authority: the John Stewart Company; Devine & Gong; and the Ridge Point Non-Profit Housing Corporation.
The project calls for the replacement of 267 units of run down public housing, built in 1956, plus the addition of 530 market rate units and for sale condos. It attempts to have the best of both worlds, gentrification, but without displacement.
As noted in the NY Times, the project parameters included (1) Resident participation throughout the entire process; (2) One-for-one replacement of all existing public housing units; (3) Current residents have the first right to new public housing units; and (4) Phased construction to allow for on-site relocation.
In a nutshell, the concept is similar to the RAD program and allows the housing authority to redevelop a property for mixed use and mixed income levels to make the numbers work and to be able to afford to save the public housing portion. It was originally planned to be financed under the federal HOPE VI grants program, but the funding for that was cut off by Congress in 2010.
Undaunted, the City of San Francisco took the initiative to find the funding from other sources and created their own HOPE SF program.
At Hunters View, a key consideration was that no low income residents be displaced. To address this, instead of relying on the hollow pledge that existing tenants can “come back after two years,” they ensured that no one had to move out during phased redevelopment. When their new units were finished, they simply moved across the street.
However, as noted above, the challenge to this concept in Marin would be the added density required to make it “pencil” financially for private nonprofit developers. San Francisco is urban and Marin City is suburban, with limited infrastructure to match. The “two market rate for one low income” percentage just won’t work here.
At Golden Gate Village, it would be a big stretch to attempt to even double the existing density from 300 to 600 units.
A Question of Leadership
Even with all of the conditions and requirements unique to Marin, we are lacking the key ingredient that made Hunters View possible, political leadership in creating public / private partnerships - something that seems unlikely in Marin County under its current governance. San Francisco stepped up to the plate to craft a financially viable solution and they brought considerable funding and expertise to the table to do so.
In Marin, we’re treated to endless hand-wringing and ideological arguments but no sustainable solutions to affordable housing, much less actually addressing the housing needs of our existing very low income residents. Instead, our elected officials flail about, emotionally, and propose tired ideas such as rent control, punitive zoning, increasing development fees, reducing parking requirements, and, of course, more and more high density housing by private, for-profit developers. County staff appears to be equally adrift about how housing actually gets financed and built.
At a recent County-sponsored “affordable housing” workshop, Supervisor Kinsey lectured the audience about the causes of our current housing challenges, saying that "We are not special" and that the affordable housing crisis “is a global problem." He blamed it on “capitalism” and the lack of “redistribution of wealth,” demonstrating his ignorance of history and economics, and avoiding the responsibilities of leadership.
True, there is certainly no lack of crisis in the world, but our current affordable housing challenges have little to do with capitalism and everything to do with the changes to our tax code and banking regulations over the past decades. At the risk of vastly oversimplifying, our present affordable housing challenges are the unintended consequences of past and ongoing economic policy decisions.
Some Economic Backstory about Housing Affordability
In the early 1970’s, a theory by economist Arthur Laffer, called the “Laffer Curve,” heavily promoted by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, prophesized that raising taxes past the bare minimum would produce less revenues and lowering them would produce more tax revenues and create more jobs. Similarly, they argued that government regulation was strangling innovation, so checks and balances began to be removed, particularly on Wall Street.
The Reagan Administration later took up this mantra with great enthusiasm and, all evidence to the contrary (Reagan ended up having to raise taxes), we’ve basically been running with Laffer’s theory ever since.
The result is that our national debt is astronomical, we’ve become addicted to zero interest rates to keep our stock market (and many pension funds) afloat, half our population doesn’t make enough money now to even pay taxes, and the overall effective tax rates on the upper classes (whose wealth comes predominately from dividends and appreciating assets) has never been lower.
On top of that, the average American’s inflation adjusted income has been going down since the late 1970’s. Even as the price of real estate has continued to rise, people are actually earning less and less for their labors, making housing less affordable for everyone. More recently, with the Federal Reserve artificially holding interest rates at zero, stocks, junk bonds, and real estate prices have skyrocketed, and we’re bankrupting a generation of savers. If you’re not already a property owner, it’s getting harder and harder to get on the merry-go-round.
The wealthiest individuals in the world must be laughing all the way to the bank. Maybe it should have been called the “Laugher Curve.”
Meanwhile, after decades of less and less money staying with local government or coming back to it from federal and state government in the form of direct funding or improvement programs the way it used to, we are quickly moving to a world in which regardless of how high your property taxes are, we will have to pay for everything “a la carte.” There will be a special parcel “fee” to get a pothole fixed on our streets, school buses will only serve us if we can afford to pay for it, we’ll have to pay to park in front of our homes or to drive in the fast lane on the highway, and we’ll suffer an endless number of other regressive taxes and fees, which unfairly burden the middle class and those below them.
The truth about “affordable housing” is that the only period in U.S. history when we, as a nation, intentionally created affordable housing was from the post war 1940's to the late 1960's. This was only made possible by federal income tax policies under which anyone who made more than a million dollars a year paid 90% income tax on the amounts over that. And major corporations actually paid taxes on earnings, something that rarely happens today.
We still had capitalism, unless you believe that Eisenhower was a socialist.
The federal tax revenues during those three decades sent millions of people to college, built the country’s backbone of highways and bridges, our power grid, our utilities infrastructure, our public schools, and just about everything else. It encouraged private enterprise and investment bankers to spend profits on making things rather than on stock buy-backs, mergers and acquisitions, increasingly opaque financial derivatives, and paying CEOs 450 times the wage of their average workers, and there weren’t endless ways multi-nationals could off-shore their U.S. profits to avoid taxes.
During those decades, we saw sizable productivity gains and rising relative earning power for the average worker. That is how we created the fundamental shared wealth that we’ve been borrowing against ever since.
Sometimes, you get what you pay for.
Unfortunately, however, the alternatives are equally unappealing. The idea of raising taxes just to put more and more money into the hands of inept, dysfunctional, and self-serving government agencies (federal, state, and local) won’t guarantee that anything will change for the better, either. In fact, it will probably make it worse since they seem to lack the ethics or discipline to stop hiring endless overpaid consultants, and giving themselves raises and benefits that greatly exceed both inflation and comparable private sector pay. And the public sector has carefully avoided establishing any metrics that might measure productivity or the “bang for the buck” the public is getting.
This has clearly been the case here in Marin, one of the richest counties in the country. As astronomical real estate prices fill the coffers of county government, we’ve seen salaries and benefits rise and consultants hired at the drop of a hat for every conceivable reason, but zero financial benefits have trickled down to Marin’s existing public housing residents.
If history is any guide, we won’t be able to achieve sustainable affordable housing solutions without sufficient, ongoing financial subsidy, because the “market” economy doesn’t look like it’s about to raise everyone’s standard of living proportionately any time soon.
I understand that ideas such as rent control and punitive fees are a natural reaction to market forces at work. And, yes, people can point to a few instances, here and there, where we have used some of those tools successfully. But that can’t be replicated at scale for the long term or the whole thing collapses in on itself, economically. It is one thing to have a few small projects rent restricted here and there, but quite another to pass a county wide ordinance.
Generally, the long term outcomes of punitive measures such as rent control have been the deterioration and loss of existing affordable housing, housing scarcity, and ultimately, higher housing prices.
Money chases self-interested yield, not what it “should” do.
Trying to solve what is a national economic policy problem at the local level with decreasing local resources won’t work. It will never really put a dent in our affordable housing challenges and will probably make things worse. So in conjunction with engaging in a national policy debate, we need to look for other options, locally. And we need more creative solutions.
Marin County’s Spending Priorities
The current situation at Golden Gate Village is a direct result of the Marin Board of Supervisor's mismanagement of the Marin Housing Authority’s finances over the past decade. Slice it up any way you want, but at the end of the day, after looking at all the factors involved, that’s where the buck stops. They serve as the chair of its Board of Commissioners and make up the majority of that governing body. They have been privy to every detail about how MHA is being run and its finances and the particulars about Golden Gate Village. They have the authority to change personnel, direct funding, and suggest new initiatives.
While it may be true that cities such as San Francisco have greater resources than Marin, this alone doesn’t excuse our County’s inaction. It is a question of priorities. Our Supervisors and County Planning Staff seem too enamored with catch phrases such as “smart growth” and “urban hubs” to acknowledge their existing responsibilities, which need to be addressed first.
Golden Gate Village has been here since 1960. It is an existing obligation that demands priority focus and funding resources. You don’t abandon your family and go start another one because the old one got too boring or too hard. Yet while Golden Gate Village has been in dire need of attention for more than a decade, our County Supervisor’s discretionary spending shows that its interests have clearly been elsewhere.
Over the past decade, the Board of Supervisors has given away more than $4,000,000 from their much coveted “Community Service Fund” (and probably spent ten times that on consultants and pointless studies). Much has been written about this controversial “slush fund,” but suffice it to say that this ability, for elected officials to give away taxpayer funds to their personal pet projects (particularly around re-election time), is unique in California.
It’s become obligatory to say that “all the projects are worthy of support,” but at the risk of being politically incorrect, I think some needs are more worthy than others.
While the Marin Housing Authority has struggled and conditions at Golden Gate Village have continued to worsen, the Board has chosen to give scarce taxpayer funds away to every other conceivable cause. Groups such as the Marin Builders Association raked in $8,000 in 2013 for their Home & Garden Expo, and “essentials” such as the Marin Concours D’Elegance car show received $3,000. Larger nonprofit organizations such as the Marin Conservation League and the Environmental Forum of Marin, and discretionary endeavors such as the Marin Open Studios Annual Event (so artists can sell their work) received grants of thousands of dollars. In 2013 alone, $5,000 went for upgrading computers for seniors, $7,000 for wellness “retreats,” $2,000 for the Novato 4th of July Parade, $10,000 to teach people about using gray water, and $8,000 for a beach clean-up in Bolinas. They even gave the City of Sausalito $1,000 to pay for the printing of banners and flyers to announce a survey of seniors.
Really? The City of Sausalito can’t afford $1,000 for its own flyers?
If money talks, these recipients and hundreds others like them, are apparently more important to our County Supervisors than ensuring that our poorest residents have heat in the winter. While you will find funds going to Marin City agencies and programs for youth (all very laudable), what you won’t find on the list is a single grant to fix up Golden Gate Village or support the GGVRC, or even to help the MHA with its operating costs.
I’m not saying that these other groups aren’t doing important work. I’m just saying that we have longstanding responsibilities that have to come first. If you can’t pay off the balance on your credit card, you don’t go out and get another one so you can keep spending.[4]
Why It Takes More Than a Village
While housing advocates love to rant about “NIMBY-ism” being the obstacle to the creation of affordable housing, the Marin Housing Authority remains the single most important agency we have to help those most in need in Marin. I’ve yet to hear the Board of Supervisors, planning staff or housing advocates acknowledge this.
Unless MHA is properly funded, there is little that they can accomplish. In other places around the country, public housing authorities are often in the forefront of planning and innovation. At the same time, unless MHA reinvents itself, just pouring more money into it won’t fix anything, either.
MHA asserts that they are stuck in a corner. They say they can’t borrow against their equity, can’t get bank loans, and they can’t tap into private financial markets or participate in creative financing opportunities, such as syndicating low income housing tax credits. They say that available funding programs, such as RAD, are too scarce to rely on.
But is all this really true?
While it’s true that it might be simpler to receive funding under RAD, to claim they haven’t had other options is simply false. There have been many other funding programs available to them for decades.
For example, HUD’s Mixed Finance Development Public Housing Program (Section 9; 24 CFR 941 subpart F) has been in existence since 1993. Basically, it allows a public housing authority the same flexibility and creative financing alternatives that are offered under RAD. It’s a bit more of an onerous process, which when dealing with HUD means more paperwork, but it’s been used successfully many times in many places, for decades. The only real difference between Mixed Finance and RAD is that under RAD, the units are no longer public housing, but managed under the Section 8 program (rather than Section 9). One benefit is that Section 8 subsidies are trending higher faster than public housing subsidies.
However, under Mixed Finance, the public housing authority can enter into partnerships and joint ventures with private for-profit and nonprofit companies, they can syndicate their interests, pledge equity in land and structures to get loans or source private equity, and benefit from Low Income Housing Tax credits.
In addition, there are many other funding programs that have been available. These include Energy Investment Credits (upgrading to renewables), Historic Redevelopment Tax Credits, AHP Loans (with banking partners), CDBG funding (for portions of the property developed for commercial or community purposes), HOME funding (development and renovation funding), Replacement Housing Factor funds, (funding to replace public housing units), and Choice Neighborhoods grants (neighborhood transformation projects).
At a recent meeting at MHA, I asked a member of the finance staff and General Counsel, Filmus, how they might determine the best future options for GGV. Filmus said they’d need to retain consultants who are experts in this area. His implication was that they don’t have anyone on staff who has the required expertise. Unfortunately, under those circumstances, the chances of their being “led down the path” by a slick consultant who’s connected to a certain nonprofit developer, is that much greater.
I wrote to Lewis Jordan and asked if the Mixed Finance Program had ever been considered to address the needs at GGV. His response was,
I understand that Sarasu and Ilya discussed RAD with you when they met with you and also explained RAD’s feasibility.
Huh? So I asked him again. This time his response was
MHA will consider recommendations from the Working Group, as well as feedback from industry experts, as it considers the various revitalization strategies. If “Mixed Finance Development” is a viable option, then MHA will consider it. … We are just starting to have conversations regarding revitalization possibilities.
At this point, I’m not even sure Lewis Jordan knows about the Mixed Finance Development program. And I would bet the ranch that the Board of Supervisors has never heard of it or any of the other programs I listed above.
What’s more, these are only the public financing options.
Private foundations have participated in “Program Related Investments” (“PRIs”) in affordable housing for decades. Major nonprofit foundations such as Ford and Rockefeller have invested tens of millions over the decades. Under the PRI program, foundations can make investments (not just loans) in housing development, in lieu of grants, at a rate of return that is typically below market rates. Several major foundations in the SF Bay area are candidates for such funding.
The new “social venture” investment space is also growing rapidly and the epicenter is right here in Northern California. Opportunities for joint ventures and partnerships in housing must also be aggressively explored.
Recently, I also asked Lewis Jordan if the Marin Board of Supervisors has ever offered to provide funding directly to MHA to help supplement the obvious cash flow squeeze the agency is experiencing or if MHA has ever asked them for any such funds.
Jordan’s response was
The Board and MHA continuously discuss possible methods of collaborating together [and that] MHA asked for special funding and the BOS has provided that funding (up to $45,000) [to support] the current Working Group process.
In other words, after ten years of wasting time and money, and fighting against their own tenants’ right to organize, the Board of Supervisors has now allotted $45,000 to pay for consultants and facilitators to hold a series of pointless “public workshops” to pretend that they are listening and engaging the residents. $23 million in deferred maintenance and capital improvements needed in the next few years and all they can come up with is $45,000 for a “Working Group?”
It cannot be emphasized enough that during all this time, there has been nothing that stopped the County from helping MHA or the residents of Golden Gate Village. Yet, what the record shows is a history of reckless disregard.
Nothing has stopped the Board of Supervisors from providing emergency funding to MHA, or investigating collaborations and public private partnerships using any of the many programs available. Nothing has stopped the BOS from working in partnership with MHA to fund improvements. Just a few of the options available to them include seeking private foundation grants, issuing County revenue bonds, backstopping private certificates of participation financing with payment guarantees, or implementing an infrastructure financing district (“IFD”) to secure financing for infrastructure improvements.[5]
Once again, the failure is one of leadership. In my view, there is more required to being a County Supervisor than we’re currently seeing.
As a Supervisor, you have the bully pulpit and it should be used to advance ideas that are sometimes controversial, not to constantly seek unanimous consensus. Supervisors have the ability to reach out to their constituents, unilaterally, and open up to their needs and opinions and bring them back to the Board. And they should do independent research and investigations to form their own opinions about issues, and have the courage to ask tough questions rather than simply rely on staff reports and the opinions of “expert” consultants.
Do I really believe that they will hear this message and start to do that in the case of Golden Gate Village? No, I don’t.
Under the circumstances, I think the residents of Golden Gate Village are on their own.
Fear and Loathing in Marin
There is something seriously wrong with the culture of government in Marin County and many of its cities. We seem to have a bureaucracy that is not only resistant to candid information sharing, but is actually afraid to talk to residents. I’ve been working with government agencies since I graduated from college in 1971, small and large, nationally and in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Denver, and many other places. And in all that time, I’ve never experienced anything like the things I’ve seen here in Marin.
In Marin, I’ve seen sitting council members chastised by other council members for communicating directly with residents. I’ve watched staff respond to simple factual questions from the public with strange, paranoid double-talk. And I’m amazed at the lack of fundamental knowledge about finance, planning, housing and development by people in highly paid and responsible positions.
In preparing this article, I talked with individuals at HUD in regional and national offices and I talked with experts in a number of fields. In all instances, there was an open exchange of opinions and detailed information, even when the discussion revolved around the absurdity of some of HUD’s national policies.
But in Marin, getting information is like pulling teeth. No matter what you ask for, the first response is to either deny having the information or to claim that they are not required to provide it. It is hard not to come away feeling that you are dealing with people who are hiding something… a lot of somethings. The whole process is sort of like one of those comedies in which the cop comes to the door and instead of saying hello, the guy inside the house screams, “I didn't kill him!”
It’s enough to turn a rational person into a conspiracy theorist.
“God Bless the Child That’s Got His Own” ~ Billie Holiday
Even before the lawsuit was settled, the newly revived Golden Gate Village Resident Council began working on its own proposal for the preservation and rehabilitation of Golden Gate Village. One of their concepts combines historic landmark status preservation and funding under the California “Innovation Hub (iHub) Program,” and the federal government’s “Manufacturing Hub Innovation Competition.” By doing this, they hope to revitalize the project and the community, and create jobs as a way of controlling their own destiny.
The GGVRC leadership continues to work toward their goal and they are planning a public event to present more about their plans at 5:30 pm, at the Hannah Gallery in Marin City, on November 23rd.
According to the GGVRC, "The plan is to address all the deferred maintenance needed, but not one fix at a time, but rather to create a path of growth of the local economy with shared opportunity for wealth." And as the GGVRC is well aware, their final plans will also have to include a source for the $23 million needed to rehabilitate Golden Gate Village over the next several years.
Toward that end, there is something very interesting contained in the GGVRC’s approved IRS 1023 application for nonprofit status. In addition to being approved as a public charity, the IRS approval of the GGVRC was very broad and under the topic of “providing” housing, it includes the ability to finance, develop, and operate low income housing projects. This means the GGVRC essentially has the same legal standing as any other private nonprofit developer. It could, conceivably, rebuild, own, and manage Golden Gate Village and any newly added mix of very low, low, and moderate income housing developed there.
To do that, however, the GGVRC would need to step up their game … and quickly.
If I were in their shoes, I would begin to immediately strengthen the GGVRC board with new members, and build a team of advisors, who reflect the diversity of GGV and who are all accomplished and financially savvy members of the greater Marin community. This would include professional men and women working in banking, development, construction, public relations, property management, real estate and finance, who can help them realize their dreams of self-sufficiency and local control.
With that in place, the GGVRC would be a formidable contender to sit across the table from MHA and its Board and map out a long term revitalization plan that would meet all their requirements. Such a team would have a big leg up on other for-profit or nonprofit developers that bid for the chance to redevelop Golden Gate Village, because they could work with much lower profit margins than the market would otherwise accept, and because their goals are community based, not merely profit motivated. Under this scenario, they might even consider options such as the RAD program because the GGVRC would be the owner/developer in charge of management and operations.
I realize that this sounds optimistic, but it has been done before in other parts of the country. There’s no reason it couldn’t be done here.
In a properly structured arrangement, MHA could syndicate its interests or enter into a joint venture with GGVRC. If the financially sustainable solution required adding units on the property, to offset the costs of renovating the existing units, at least this way the residents’ nonprofit organization would reap the benefits.
Of course, this would require all the players to reinvent themselves. Besides the GGVRC; the MHA; the Board of Supervisors; and even County staff would have to become more entrepreneurial. But it may actually be the only option available that is financially sustainable and socially just.
Denouement
The conversation about “affordable housing” in Marin always seems to revolve around providing housing for new residents who want to live and work here. But no one ever talks about housing existing residents who already live and work here, and whose present housing is at risk.
As I was spending time in Golden Gate Village over the past two years, in working on this article, interviewing people and attending GGVRC meetings, one thing I noticed was that I never saw any of Marin’s “white collar” housing activists who are always clamoring at the Board of Supervisor hearings and public workshops. Where were they all?
Did any of them show up to support GGVRC during their court battle? Did they file amicus curiae briefs? Did they hold rallies at the courthouse or send out one of their ubiquitous email alerts about fairness and equity to help the GGVRC? Did they flood the Supervisors with emails or "advocate" for the GGVRC during public open time? Or how about asking Governor Brown to declare a state of emergency at Golden Gate Village, where one really existed? Did they even know what’s been going on there?
The answer to all of the above is no. Why is that?
Perhaps it’s because it takes more than just photo ops and email alerts to create change. Or maybe standing with the GGVRC would’ve risked biting the hand that feeds them and losing some powerful friends. Perhaps it’s just easier to talk about bicycles and the evils of automobiles. And heck, most of the people in GGV don't vote anyway, right?
Too harsh? Not half as harsh as the way the Board of Supervisors and MHA have allowed the people of Golden Gate Village to live.
The sad fact is that we are losing our existing affordable housing stock much faster than we will ever replace it, especially if we continue to build eight or nine new luxury housing units for every one or two affordable units. The push to urbanize Marin, encoded in politically popular visions such as Plan Bay Area, utterly fails to take this and the massive displacement it will cause, into account.
At a recent Metropolitan Transportation Commission hearing, MTC president Steve Heminger finally admitted that “Planned Development Areas,” identified in Plan Bay Area as the locations where new high density development will take place, will likely displace a large number of existing residents. Yet it’s still fashionable for politicians, bureaucrats, and advocates to embrace the Plan as socially sustainable.
It’s time to adjust our focus and think about saving the very low income and affordable housing we already have.[6] It’s more cost effective and it strengthens communities. But we need to do this in a way that does not financially penalize existing property owners (as rent control does), many of whom have worked hard to maintain lower rent units for decades. And we need to do it in a way that provides incentives to build low income housing, which deed restrictions work against for both developers and low income purchasers trying to get a piece of the American dream.
I’m not saying this is easy to do, but we need to do it nonetheless. The bottom line is, if we don’t come up with more imaginative solutions to situation at Golden Gate Village, good things won’t just happen on their own.
The final chapters in the story of Golden Gate Village remain to be written.
[1] Per extemporaneous notes taken at that meeting.
[2] 2010 US Census: Marin County; 2.36 persons per household
[3] Marin County DMV 2014
[4] In researching the Community Fund, I filed a public records request asking for the total amounts distributed in each year, for the past ten years. The County’s General Counsel responded, saying an extension of time was required because I had asked for information that required them to “search for and collect, and appropriately examine a voluminous amount of separate and distinct records.” The request was made one month ago. As of the date of this article's publication, with the extension deadline having long past, the County had not produced the information requested.
[5] Legislation, such as SB743, specifically allows IFD funding to include infrastructure for housing.
[6] The recent decision by the Corte Madera Planning Commission against the “Casa Buena” proposal - to tear down existing units that are 100 percent affordable, in order to build luxury units with only 20 percent being “affordable” (but still more expensive than the existing housing) - is a significant case in point. It’s the first time I know of where a Marin planning body has used the primary principles of Plan Bay Area and Housing Element Law to preserve existing affordable housing and reject more dense development.
Read PART II - The Handwriting On the Wall
Read PART III - The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back
Read PART IV - The Big Squeeze
Bob Silvestri is an architect, former Section 8 housing developer, a Marin resident for over 22 years, and founder and president of Community Venture Partners, Inc.
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