Blog Post < Previous
Kirk Draheim
An Open letter to Gavin Newsom from Fairfax
Dear Governor Newsom,
Though we welcome you and your family to Marin County, the spreading boondoggle you have created pertaining to affordable housing in California will soon land in your own backyard.
Californians, as residents of the fifth largest economy in the world, have the reasonable expectation that State policy decision making is evidence-based.
Yet, this is clearly not the case in regards to the gross inaccuracy of the California Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) [1] assessments, which are amplified by new housing laws and corresponding civic punishments, encouraged and ratified by your administration.
You have claimed that there will be a huge future population growth in California, a claim which has been questioned by many authorities and disproven by the State Department of Finance, which predicts population growth will be largely flat through 2060.
The California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) claims California will need 2.5 million housing units by 2031. HUD and Freddie Mac say we need 3.8 million new homes to fill the housing shortage for the entire country.
California has been losing population for years. Do you believe California needs 2/3rds of the nation’s total housing in a state that is projected to have negative growth?
This number, determined by your projected population growth claim, is not supported by the facts. The California State Auditor found this number was determined by imprecise methodologies, and not reliable or reproducible; yet the audit result was ignored by HCD and the State refused to adjust its RHNA calculations.
Why we care…
A 1.9 acre property in Fairfax, located at 95 Broadway, known as "School Street Plaza," has been identified as a potential site for affordable housing in the town's Housing Element. On November 12, 2024, Fairfax received a preliminary application for residential development on this site.
The proposed project may include:
- 257,039 square feet of residential with 202 market rate units and 41 affordable units (at 25% inclusionary rate for low income [2] )
- 5,750 square feet of commercial space
- Two levels of parking and four stories of residential units
Let me explain to you what this means to the citizens of Fairfax.
In Marin County, to qualify as “low income” an individual would have to earn between $104,000 - $140,000 a year, which in itself is a very high bar, based on the low-income populations you are attempting to house. Furthermore, this project covers only 41 of Fairfax’s 86 low-income residence requirements. (See chart)
IT WOULD TAKE JUST OVER 2 PROJECTS OF THIS SIZE to meet Fairfax’s “Low Income” RHNA requirement of 86.
The other categories of “Very Low Income” and “Moderate Income”, which comprise 44.9% of the housing requirement, will remain unfulfilled. This single project provides for 202 new market rate units, exceeding the total RHNA requirement of 184 new market rate units for Fairfax!
How many more new market rate units do you think Fairfax needs?
In the 2015-2023 planning cycle, the total RHNA requirement for new housing in Fairfax was only 61. In the 2023-2031 planning cycle for Fairfax, 490 new housing units are required by RHNA, of which, 306 are required to be below market rate. How is this increase in housing justified? Our population patterns have never reached this assumed growth.
With the current RHNA assessment, it would require building 2,000 + new market rate units to achieve the State mandated requirement for building “low-income” units at 25% inclusionary rate. This does not include fulfilling the state mandated requirements for building “very low” or “moderate” income units.
Our reality…
Crammed in next to modest, single-family residential housing, the current proposed six-story project, with 5750 ft.² of commercial space, and one story below ground level for parking, will be one of the tallest residential buildings in Marin County. This dominating presence will forever change the skyline of Fairfax in this older residential neighborhood. It will increase pollution and traffic congestion, challenge our natural resources and infrastructure, increase taxpayer costs and most importantly, diminish our ability to safely exit the one road out of town in case of wildfire!
Our small town was developed as a simple railroad stop. Our roads are narrow, the majority of our residents live in forested areas, up in the hills with winding roads. With a population of 7,417, we barely qualify for SB 330 [3], yet we find this fire-breathing dragon of a senate bill threatening to destroy our town!
Why are we being punished for being a small town?
For the last 20 years, hundreds of new state housing laws have steadily removed zoning and planning powers from locally elected government. Current state housing laws severely punish municipalities if the required number of homes in each category are not constructed [4]. In addition to fines, most punishments give more control to developers and less authority to local governments. Fines can potentially bankrupt small cities and force them into receivership.
Marin cities and all municipalities in the State are being set up to fail!
State regulations shift the developer's impact costs to local taxpayers. In place of impact fees (fees paid by the developer to municipalities to offset the cost of new infrastructure and environmental damage), costs of new infrastructure will be absorbed by “the full pool of homeowners," and that “fees could be distributed among a broad base of users” with requirements such as “utility billing assessments, vehicle license fees, parking permits, road tolls or sales taxes.”
Why are local taxpayers now being made responsible to unrealistically absorb all of the government and private developers’ risk for real estate investment when unfunded mandates are supposedly unconstitutional?
Both the California State Department of Finance and your State Auditor agree that California doesn’t need 2.5 million new housing units. Why is your administration promoting this excessive new development? Marin County has no shortage of expensive, "market rate" homes. But state mandates, fortified by new housing laws, encourage private, for-profit developers to build more than we need.
Why do we care?
We care because we’re going to see a huge increase in the production of unwanted, high-end, market-rate homes that will overload our town's ability to provide public services and maintenance of our roads and parks and institutions (and state laws exempt projects from paying property taxes on low income units).
As much as the residents of Fairfax believe in providing affordable housing, the approach the state is taking is unjust. Fairfax taxpayers do not support false needs based on false facts.
Is "Newsom's Folly" the legacy that you want to be known for?
You can still change the outcome. You can acknowledge the facts about California’s true population growth and true housing needs, promote the adjustment of RHNA and HCD numbers, and generate fair, constitutional and evidence-based policy for housing!
With hope,
Teliha Draheim
[1] RHNA determines the number of housing units assigned to an area by the State. The allocation numbers for each municipality are determined by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). The total number represents California’s predicted housing needs over the next eight years.
[2] The percentage of affordable housing added is called the inclusionary rate. At 25% inclusionary rate, 25 below market rate units are added for every 75 market rate units.
[3] A California developer may add a density bonus to a project when they commit to including a certain percentage of affordable housing units for low-income residents. The more affordable units a developer includes, the larger the density bonus they receive. The developer for School Street Plaza is claiming an additional density bonus by increasing the inclusionary rate to 25% from Fairfax’s required 15%. SB 330 prevents Fairfax from challenging the increased density or interfering with the approval process if all zoning and other general plan requirements are met.
[4] The California Attorney General, through his Housing Strike Force, has the authority to penalize towns not in compliance with the affordability requirement of their approved Housing Element plan, or not meeting their mid or end-cycle review criteria, or towns interfering with the housing approval process. These penalties are steep. Courts can fine jurisdictions up to $100,000 per month if a jurisdiction’s Housing Element plan continues to be out of compliance, multiplied by a factor of six, if fines are not paid.