Apartments coming to a neighborhood near you in Marinwood/ Lucas Valley/Terra Linda

Editor's Note: The fight for sensible land use is being fought in Seattle too. Like Marin, zealous planners, politicians and housing advocates are rezoning neighborhoods for affordable housing, micro apartments and the conversion of single family neighborhoods into multifamily apartment blocks. This is the idea behind the Priority Development Area in Marinwood and the rest of the 101 corridor. This is the future of Marinwood if they get their way and pass SB-1. It will allow redevelopment ANYWHERE without a declaration of blight.

The Fight Against Small Apartments

Why Neighborhood Groups Are Uniting to Stop Developers from Building Tiny, Affordable Units

by DOMINIC HOLDEN

KELLY O

In May of 2009, a rumor was floating around City Hall. Homeowners on Capitol Hill were furious about a construction project. So one sunny afternoon, while workers hammered nails into a few unfinished buildings near 23rd Avenue and East John Street, I went knocking on doors to find out what the problem was.

One neighbor was Alan Gossett. Gossett was trying to sell his blue Craftsman house, which shared an alley with the new development. Standing on the corner of his rear deck, Gossett pointed through the trees to the half-built structure and said, "I think this is going to be a magnet for very sketchy people."

Why sketchy?

According to permitting paperwork, the building was a commonplace cluster of six town houses—the sort that would typically attract well-to-do buyers. But inside each town house, the developer was building up to eight tiny units (about 150 to 250 square feet each, roughly the size of a carport) to be rented out separately. The tenants would each have a private bathroom and kitchenette, with a sink and microwave, but they would share one full kitchen for every eight residents. The rent would be cheap—starting at $500 a month, including all utilities and Wi-Fi—making this essentially affordable housing in the heart of the city. And, remarkably, for affordable housing, it was built without any subsidies from the city's housing levy. But Gossett was bracing for 46 low-income renters in the space where he'd been expecting six new homeowners instead.

Gossett and other neighbors felt hoodwinked, they told me.

There was no public notification and no review process that allowed neighbors to pose objections. This was due to a loophole in the permits: The city and developers classified the building as six units (with up to eight bedrooms each), instead of as an apartment building with dozens of units, which would have required a more public process. Neighbors said they feared that the area wasn't ready for so many new residents and that the influx of newcomers would usurp on-street parking. But Gossett also seemed concerned by who his new neighbors might be.

"Anyone who can scrape up enough money to live month-to-month can live there," he said, worried that low-income interlopers would jeopardize his chances to sell his own house. "I don't think most people want to live next to a boarding house with itinerant people living in it."

Letter from a Sacramento Resident who lives Next Door to Low Income housing.

Will your neighbor build an apartmentl like this next door to you?

Comment from This Article in the Novato Patch on Affordable Housing

I am a sacramento resident, I purchased a new home in 2004 and low and behold a low income apartment complex sprung up in the vacant land right next to me, with a direct access to the apartments from our street. 

Anyone who will say that these complexes do not increase crime, traffic, parking issues, racial tensions, etc, have never lived next to one. Because we had a direct access,our street became a parking lot for the apartments to the point that we could not park in front of our homes, and had to discuss with the city getting permits for our street. Anything that was not bolted down in front of my home was stolen. We got video cameras mounted on the house and it produced hours of video of people violating our properties, urinating on lawns, breaking bottles in the street, damaging cars, id even come home to find random people playing on my lawn. 

It was a violation beyond words. Since then I have become very active in affordable housig locally and all I see is the state mandating requirements that no community wants, with the exception of the people that take advantage of the programs. Put $500/mo apartments next to $500k homes and try to tell me that they done effect property value. 

It invites transient residents who have no long term interest in the community, thrash the apartments, and move on to the next. They have "off lease' guests who cannot pass a criminal background check and cannot be evicted because they should not be there in teh first place. 

Housing advocates limit the standards that can be put on tenants because they dont want to "discriminate" and the cities are terrified of lawsuits. Creating artificial housing markets should nto be the govts job. If people cannot afford to live there, they should move somewhere they can and the market will respond by either paying more for low wage jobs or building he homes on their own if there is a demand. 

I grew up in affordable housing and know its benefits, but also klnow the price a community pays to have it, including teh burden on schools, transit, jobs, and social programs. Sacramento "imports" housing need from surrounding communities because "if you build it, they will come"

Dan Walters: Steinberg's bills show his visions for California

Darrell Steinberg is the architect for SB-1 that gives the State broad powers of eminent domain. 

See Article:  Dan Walters: Steinberg's bills show his visions for California

By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com The Sacramento Bee

By Dan Walters

Last modified: 2013-08-26T05:38:51Z

Published: Monday, Aug. 26, 2013 - 12:00 am | Page 3A

Copyright 2013 . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Five years ago, Darrell Steinberg carried into law a sweeping revision of California's local land-use rules, aimed at creating what the legislation called "sustainable communities."

His legislation, Senate Bill 375, is still reverberating as all 58 counties and more than 400 cities, plus regional planning bodies, revise their land-use policies to emphasize high-density, infill and transit-oriented development and, inferentially, discourage traditional single-family housing and automotive travel.

This year, Steinberg, the president pro tem of the Senate, is once again attempting to alter Californians' lifestyles, this time through a new form of redevelopment and an overhaul of the California Environmental Quality Act.

When Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature abolished local government redevelopment agencies two years ago, their overt motive was financial.

The agencies were skimming off about $5 billion a year from local property taxes and the state was on the hook for about $2 billion of that diversion, which otherwise would have gone to schools.
"We take from redevelopment and we put $1 billion into schools. That's a good thing," Brown said, later adding, "It's just a matter of making hard choices."

From the broader perspective of public policy, however, the problem with redevelopment in California was that it had evolved from a program to reduce urban blight into a tool for local politicians to practice crony capitalism.

Quite a few proposals to resurrect redevelopment have been floated in the Capitol, and Steinberg's version, Senate Bill 1, is the most prominent.

It would rename redevelopment agencies as "Sustainable Communities Investment Authorities" and focus their activities on high-density, transit-oriented housing, low-income housing, and "clean manufacturing," such as solar panels and trolley cars, with "prevailing wage" workers.

The new agencies could issue bonds, levy sales taxes and seize land under eminent domain, but the old requirement to define blight in areas earmarked for redevelopment would be eliminated, thus vastly expanding their reach.

Steinberg has paired the bill, rhetorically at least, with his version of CEQA reform, which also would give special treatment to public or private projects that meet similar criteria of political correctness.
Steinberg holds visions of how Californians should be living their lives and wants state law and taxation to achieve those visions in ways that would discourage politically incorrect, albeit more traditional, lifestyles.

They are visions that may be shared by most of his fellow Democrats in the Legislature, but whether they're embraced by most other Californians – who may harbor more individualistic concepts of work, housing and transportation – is very uncertain.

Editor's Note: This powerful bill places every property in Marin within 1/2 mile of 101 highway in danger of loss by eminent domain. It is unheard of government power.

We must act now to save our private property rights. 

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/08/26/5680375/dan-walters-steinbergs-bills-show.html#storylink=cpy

Spotzoning will affect the price of your real estate but smart real estate companies are providing disclosures now.

see full meeting video at :  June 24, 2013 Planning Commission Meeting

In this clip above, the Planner Lele Thomas explains that only Bradley Real Estate is currently providing disclosures about controversial housing issues in their standard list of documents.  The Marin County Board of Supervisors, has not yet taken an official position but many realtors are insisting in disclosures for their sellers for legal protection.

Lele Thomas explains that selective zoning for projects like Los Ranchitos  60 unit apartment building is not "spot zoning" according to county counsel.  The 60 unit project is situated in the middle of a single family home development with 1 acre minimum lot sizes.  Later Commissoner Ericka Erickson argues to keep this project to "prevent segregation" policies.  It is not spotzoning according to County Counsel when we are fullfilling housing mandates for the State.

We can surely expect a legal test of this poor planning decision if allowed to remain in the Housing Element.

If spot zoning is allowed to occur, then single family neighborhoods will effectively no longer be legal.  This is a developers dream and a planner's utopian Smart Growth fantasy.

Politicians may expect voter backlash!