Marin Independent Journal May 20, 1990

opinion

A voice in the wilderness

By Dwayne Hunn

 

MARIN VOICE

Dwayne Hunn is assistant ex­ecutive-director of Novato Ecu­menical Hous­ing and execu­tive director of the North Bay Transportation Management Association

 

Winston Churchill was greeted with scorn and abuse when he told the British Parliament in the days before World War II that a crisis was approaching. He must have wondered how many times the facts had to be presented, the grim picture painted, before leaders took a forthright stand for the common good.

Britain’s wise politicians thought they knew better than to listen to a young up-start. They were wrong.

Novato Ecumenical Housing feels like Churchill when it speaks to the Marin Conservation League about the crisis in affordable housing.

With 88 percent of Marin’s land set aside in open space, agricultural reserve or park land, doesn’t the league have enough? Since its board recently voted to endorse acquiring more open space, why not support setting aside 25 percent of the Open Space Bond Act money for acquiring pockets of land along the rail line for affordable housing?

Only one of Novato’s 52 police officers lives in town. That man solved a recent Novato murder because of his knowledge of the town. That kind of public service saves time, money and lives. Doesn’t that human component count in the environment?

Some Marin firefighters commute from Sacramento and Stockton. Do you believe forcing public servants and emer­gency service workers to live hours away from Marin is a sensible means of pro­tecting our people during a natural disas­ter? Will firefighters really stay in Marin during a major disaster, on try to get here?

The Association of Bay Area Govern­ments is an umbrella organization that, among other things, determines what each city’s fair share of affordable hous­ing should be, so that we can balance jobs and housing and reduce gridlock caused by long commutes in search of affordable housing. Does Marin Conservation League Executive Director Karin Undulant understand the waste of regional resources inherent in the statement, “ABAG’s fair share is much too high. Every community ought to be able to de­termine its own fair share.”

Urquhart misses the point when she says, “We have supported affordable housing for the elderly and the handi­capped, but if it is outside our mission, we can’t support it.”

In the last 10 years, Marin has deliv­ered 33 percent of its ABAG-calculated fair share of affordable housing. Each time a community ignores its fair share, the next community has to make up for the shortfall. This visionless form of ap­peasement in the end brings pain to the sons and daughters of those who lacked the vision to prepare for the future.

 

If Marin’s real estate appreciation is cut in half to 10 percent per year, the av­erage single-family home will cost $1 million and the average condo $500,000 as this decade ends. How many Marin emergency service workers, or young people of any profession, will be able to pay that price?

In all of Marin, only about 12 percent of the land is eligible for development and only 4 percent of that remains unde­veloped. About 2 percent of that land lies along the rail line. When the conserva­tion league calls for purchasing the Silveira Ranch and St. Vincent’s properties for open space, we see flat developable land lost that properly developed could encourage rail use, reduce our single-oc­cupant-vehicle addiction and thereby cut air pollution and provide significant amounts of affordable housing.

Can affordable housing on its starva­tion diet sit down at the same table with the league’s voracious appetite for open space and come away with a few crumbs of land? Yes, if the league realizes that “supporting” more affordable housing means supplying mechanisms that actu­ally deliver affordable units.

Delivering affordable units to families is a lot tougher than supporting a few units for disabled or elderly people. Since the affordable housing crisis is so severe, it will mean fighting on behalf of mixed-use developments in city centers as well as along the rail line. These well-planned communities can provide significant af­fordable housing as well as leave 75 to 80 percent of the rail lands in open space.