Marin County jurisdictions are racking up rejections in their efforts to scale back state housing mandates.
The Association of Bay Area Governments turned down requests for housing allotment reductions from Fairfax, Larkspur and Mill Valley during a third day of hearings on Friday.
Appeals by Corte Madera and Belvedere had the same outcome on Sept. 29.
The municipalities are among 10 local governments in Marin appealing ABAG’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation, the state directive for new residences to be created. The edict calls for more than 14,000 additional homes to be approved in Marin County between 2023 and 2031.
Each Marin appeal cited factors like drought, wildfire risk and a lack of land to dispute the number of homes assigned to the community. The numbers were determined by the California Department of Housing and Community Development.
During the hearings on Friday, the three appeals were preliminarily rejected for the same reasons. One was that ABAG did not find that any of the jurisdictions proved an inability to develop housing at the required rate.
For appeals that cited the drought as a reason to contain development, the board said no local jurisdiction’s survey of water use was submitted by the appellants.
Each jurisdiction reported conditions that could make building hazardous in high-risk locations, but they were told that housing law does not consider natural hazard risk to be a constraint — except when the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Water Resources determine that flood management infrastructure is inadequate.
The ABAG board members could not consider appeals criticizing the methodology used to determine housing allotments. Board member Carlos Romero, the mayor of East Palo Alto, said the board had to set perimeters for the determination process “which none of us liked, but which we had to accept.”
Board member Pat Eklund, the mayor of Novato, said Friday she does not support the board’s housing requirements methodology, calling it “setting cities and counties up for failure, in my opinion.”
However, she said she is obligated as a board member to evaluate appeals “based on the developed methodology.”
While some commenters agreed with Eklund and pushed against the allotments, there were also commenters on some Marin appeals who wanted them denied.
Debra Taube and David Levin of Marin told ABAG they are concerned cities and towns do not want to meet equitable development requirements.
“The equity adjustment helps increase affordability, ensuring that everyone can live in neighborhoods of their choice based on individual and family needs rather than based on historic patterns of segregation,” Levin said in an emailed comment.
Taube wrote that “exclusionary zoning and community opposition in neighborhoods with well‐funded schools and public amenities are major barriers to developing affordable housing.”
“It’s because of this that Marin and Sonoma counties are dramatically more segregated today than four decades ago,” she said. “We need the RHNA allocations to address the impacts of our historical inequitable land use policies.”
Corte Madera Planning Director Adam Wolff said the town had no other appellate plans.
Larkspur Mayor Kevin Haroff said, “I cannot say whether the city would seek to pursue further remedies in court, but that is something certainly I have been thinking about.”
“My interest is to make a sufficient record that could support litigation if that is a course our city decides to pursue,” he said.
The board will hear appeals from Ross, San Anselmo, Sausalito and Tiburon on Oct. 15. The appeal for unincorporated Marin County will be heard Oct. 22.
San Rafael and Novato did not contest the housing allocations.
A final ruling on all appeals is expected from ABAG by the end of the year.