Affordable housing is again a red flag in 'green' Marin County

From:  Los Angeles Times

The issue has long produced conflict in the eco-friendly county, California's wealthiest. Officials are being urged to help workers find housing in a place where the median home price is $650,000.

Advocates for affordable housing in Marin County protest before a meeting in San Rafael to discuss the issue. The push for affordable housing in California’s wealthiest county has always brought its “green” lifestyle and liberal social leanings into conflict. No Bay Area county has more protected open space — or fewer workers who can afford to live anywhere near their jobs. (Sherry LaVars / Marin Independent Journal / March 20, 2013)   By Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times March 31, 2013, 4:46 p.m. SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — After George Lucas abandoned plans to build a movie studio along a woodsy road in Marin County, he complained about the permitting process in a place so environmentally friendly that hybrid-car ownership is four times the state average. His next move, some here say, was payback for what Lucas described in a written statement as the "bitterness and anger" expressed by his neighbors. The creator of "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" is working with a local foundation that hopes to build hundreds of units of affordable housing on a former dairy farm called Grady Ranch, where his studio would have risen. Now Marin County is squirming at that prospect — and it is not a pretty sight. FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this story included a photo caption that incorrectly identified protestors as being part of Citizen Marin, a group advocating local rather than state control over new housing construction. The protestors shown in the photo support the construction of more affordable housing in Marin County. The issue of affordable housing in California's wealthiest county has always brought its "green" lifestyle and liberal social leanings into conflict. No Bay Area county has more protected open space — or fewer workers who can afford to live anywhere near their jobs. At a recent planning commission hearing, where possible sites for subsidized housing were discussed, nearly all the heated testimony had some version of: "I'm all for affordable housing, but …" Nine days later, protesters wearing "End Apartheid in Marin County" buttons demanded that officials do something to help low-income workers find housing in a place where the median home price is $650,000 and 60% of the workforce lives somewhere else. The irony is not lost on Thomas Peters, president of the Marin Community Foundation, the philanthropy that is collaborating with the filmmaker to build along Lucas Valley Road. The region's environmentally conscious lifestyle, he said, is built on the long commutes of low-paid workers whose cars choke Highway 101 to the point that "you can literally see the CO2 rising." "The community, to some degree, has been lulled by success in its 40-year-old determination to really protect the open spaces," Peters said. But "it is not sustainable to hold that kind of misperception that this is all beautiful and everything can stay as it is." With the Golden Gate Bridge as its front door and Point Reyes National Seashore in the backyard, Marin County is blessed with some of California's most breathtaking vistas. Indeed, 84% of its land is protected as tideland, open space, parkland, agricultural preserves and watershed. In an effort to address climate change and cut greenhouse gas emissions, the county in 2010 launched California's first so-called community choice energy program. Marin Clean Energy purchases power for its customers from renewable sources such as wind, solar and hydroelectric projects. But Marin is near the back of the pack in the nine-county Bay Area region when it comes to absorbing predicted population growth — and is the most unwilling, said Ezra Rapport, executive director of the Assn. of Bay Area Governments. Every eight years, California's 58 counties are required to come up with a "housing element." The documents are not guarantees that units will be built, but simply a demonstration that the county is zoned so growth could happen. After the Department of Housing and Community Development produces growth estimates for each part of the state, regional governmental agencies negotiate with their cities and counties to divide up the responsibility to zone for possible future home building. Currently, the Bay Area must plan for 187,000 new housing units by 2022, of which 110,000 must be affordable to very low-, low- and moderate-income families. So how much of that burden is Marin County's? A total of 2,292 units, of which 1,400 must be affordable. In other words, 1.2% of the total homes and 1.4% of the affordable ones.  MORE