Holdouts in Marin County resist California rules speeding up multifamily housing

Although California’s local governments have had state-designated targets for housing construction for decades, they have been enforced only in recent years.

As Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature ramped up pressure to make more land available for multifamily housing and modify design restrictions, resistance has stiffened, particularly in upscale suburban communities dominated by single-family homes.

City councils, under pressure from constituents to preserve the status quo, devised all sorts of strategies to fend off state officials, but the state has been relentless in insisting that local planning documents favor housing, with penalties for communities that don’t comply.

The epicenter of resistance has been Marin County, whose affluent residents simply don’t want their bucolic neighborhoods to be, as they see it, scarred by multifamily, multistory apartment buildings.

Fifty-four years ago, as Marin’s population was increasing rapidly, the county board of supervisors adopted a policy paper titled “Can the Last Place Last?” that called for strict restrictions on new housing. “This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go,” the manifesto declared, referring to those wanting to move to Marin as “hordes … now piling up.”

The state housing quotas threatened to undermine that attitude. A decade or so ago, while Jerry Brown was governor, the Legislature passed and he signed a measure giving Marin some relief by designating it as suburban rather than urban.

Nevertheless the resistance has continued, largely project-by-project. One such clash is underway in Fairfax, one of Marin’s most insular communities. A developer wants to convert a boarded-up former spa of hot tubs and yoga studios into a 243-unit apartment complex that would go a long way toward meeting Fairfax’s state housing goal.

City officials bucked fierce opposition to approve the project, and opponents are now seeking to recall the mayor and vice-mayor for what they see as betrayal of the town’s desire to maintain the status quo.

“This is a town just saying, ‘We don’t care what the law says, we’re gonna say no,’” Riley Hurd, an attorney for the developer told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I guess the plan is to pretend that the ministerial policy doesn’t exist. They’re gonna get their housing element decertified, they’re gonna get sued and lose. The question is why? It might be as simple as, ‘We are going to have a court make us do it.’”

Saying no to housing development is long-standing Marin County tradition. The county has scarcely added any population over the last half-century, even shunning development of new water supplies as a means of stopping housing projects.

However, the pressure to allow more housing is relentless and Marin County cannot resist it forever. If the Fairfax project continues to languish, the state will step in to override any effort to block and the community also faces a likely lawsuit from YIMBY Law, an organization that sues communities that violate state housing laws.

“Fairfax is walking into a buzzsaw,” YIMBY Law executive director Sonja Trauss says. “They are going to waste a lot of money and they are going to lose. They are having an absolute and complete freakout over one project that is not that big a deal.”

Not only is Fairfax likely to lose the battle over the apartment project, but Marin County, whose quota is 14,000 new housing units by 2032, is beginning to realize that it cannot continue to be a no-growth island.

The Marin Independent Journal, in a recent editorial, notes that the Marin County Planning Commission has seen several resignations lately due to “frustration over the county’s approach to the state’s ultra-ambitious housing goals and Sacramento’s undermining of local control to streamline the county and city approvals for new development.”

“State streamlining of land-use approvals has upended the process, eliminating public involvement and sidelining appointed and elected decision-makers,” the newspaper lamented.