By Dwayne Hunn
The IJ editorial referring to the Marin Conservation League’s proposal
as an “exciting land purchase idea” was, I hope, a case of “too quick a study.”
The League’s proposal
includes:
·
Acquiring
almost all of the land along the Northwest Pacific Railroad right of way;
·
Studying
the social and economic impacts of implementing the preferred alternative (rail
and freeway expansion) of the 101 Corridor Plan.
The league estimates that the study would cost
$150,000 and take six months. Study experts more than triple those costs.
If the league is concerned
about social and economic impacts, why not pay a good affordable housing
developer to produce the requested study?
The study would document the
most serious of basic social and economic costs. Fees for doing the study would
be reinvested into affordable bedrooms and working steel rails that would
provide real solutions to Mario’s social, economic and gridlocked
environmental needs.
This is what the study would
find:
·
The
land the league wants the public to acquire is valued at more than $1 billion,
which, invested in other areas. could be much inure helpful to Marin and the
region s environment and needs.
·
Marin
has a long history of acceding to the wishes of Marin’s special-interest groups
by downzoning local general plans and then by further reducing every housing
development project toward the magical Marin goal of one unit per acre. In the
last 10 years, “pro-growth” Novato has pushed its gross residential density
down from about four to about two units per acre.
This countywide reduction
of land and housing supply causes the cost of the remaining homes to
skyrocket. Since a 1985 county surveys tells us that only 17 percent of Marin’s
jobs paid aver $20,000 per year, few Marin workers can afford to purchase
Marin’s average single-family detached home that sold in July for $290,000, or
its condos, which averaged
$190,000.
·
Marin
has the highest median age, the most two-worker households, and is one of the
most expensively housed counties in the nation. Marin also has 81 percent of
its land set aside in open space, agricultural reserve or parkland. Only 19
percent, most ringing the Highway 101 corridor, can be built upon. and only
about 5 percent of that remains for building. How can anybody other than a
comic worry about Marin becoming another San Jose?
Since the inception of the
101 Corridor Plan Process in 1984, Novato Ecumenical Housing and North Bay
Transportation Management Association have been saying that coordinated
regional land use planning is critical to the reduction of long-term traffic
problems.
In Marin, the only land that
remains that can easily be designed to allow substantial affordable housing to
be built and simultaneously support a new automobile-free transit way is the
land that the Marin Conservation League wants the public to buy and set aside
for a billion-plus dollars.
·
Building
mixed-use pedestrian pockets at. St. Vincent’s-Silveira lands and Hamilton Air
Force Base, and designs close
pedestrian pockets at other Marin lands adjacent to rail, could begin
the process that encourages Sonoma to use land near its railroad right of way
for more pedestrian pockets. Pedestrian pockets place offices, retail,
commercial, child care, recreation and schools all within walking distance of
homes and the rail line. This design causes the car to be discarded as the primary
means of commuting, generates property taxes and does not require the costly
infrastructure costs or water consumption associated with suburban sprawl as
we know it.
The study’s conclusion
would state:
Expensive, developable Marin
land that is constantly downzoned deprives developers of the ability to deliver
affordable housing. This forces workers such as police officers, firemen,
teachers and retail clerks- into long-distance commutes from
from their affordable homes outside
of Marin to their Marin jobs. This causes air-polluting gridlock on
Highway 101 as well as social, economic and environmental degradation.
Please send a portion of the
$150.000 study money to NEH and NBTMA, where we work hard every day to find
enough money to invest in balancing jobs with affordable housing and reducing
the commute that causes air pollution
Dwayne
Hunn is assistant executive director of Novato Ecumenical Housing and program
director of the North Bay Transportation Management Association.