Dick Spotswood: State to blame for overwhelming high-rise plans in San Rafael
Like it or not, large scale high-rise housing is coming to downtown San Rafael.
Don’t blame City Council members or Mayor Kate Colin. The instigator is state Sen. Scott “Mr. Housing” Wiener, D-San Francisco, and his bipartisan cohorts in the California Legislature.
Local control of planning? That’s so yesterday. Don’t waste time complaining about increased traffic congestion, lack of adequate water supplies, crowded schools or inadequate highways and transit infrastructure for a larger population. It appears legislators couldn’t care less. Mediocre cookie-cutter architecture is the new normal.
As San Rafael planning commissioner Jon Haveman told the IJ, “The state gives us very little latitude to do anything about it.”
Instead of fretting, we should appreciate that there are smart places to locate multi-story housing even in Marin. Sites in downtown San Rafael and similar midsized California coast-adjacent cities are appropriate for high-density homes. That contrasts to low-rise residential neighborhoods or small towns like Fairfax where six-story condos don’t belong.
In central San Rafael, permits are granted and demolition of old structures on housing sites is underway at 703 Third St. and 900 A St. The former will be six floors with 119 apartments. The latter is 18 floors tall with 210 apartments. Eighteen are reserved for low- and moderate-income residents.
Soon to complete the permit process is 700 Irwin St., located between Second Street and the canal. That 17-floor structure will deliver 200 market-rate units, of which 30 are for low- to very-low-income residents. A 12-story apartment building will likely be approved for 1250 Fifth Ave. at C Street. It’ll have 187 apartments, of which 19 are affordable. There’s a proposed six-story, 35-unit condo at Fourth Street and Grand Avenue. Four units will be “below market rate.”
What’s needed is presenting new legislators elected in 2026 with a strategy to forge a compromise. By then, Wiener may be off to what appears to be his “dream job,” replacing San Francisco’s retiring Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi in Washington’s House of Representatives.
A fair deal is for cities to provide high-density homes in their downtowns. The trade-off is not requiring high-density housing in low-rise neighborhoods or in smallish towns. Return a modicum of local control in determining housing locations and allow municipalities to demand quality design.
It’ll be instructive to learn if the construction of a thousand new units in Central San Rafael will lead to lowering the cost of market-rate housing as Wiener and “yes, in my backyard” housing activists predict. That’s highly unlikely as the global demand for residences in economically booming, culturally vibrant, beautiful coastal California is insatiable.
What’s legitimately needed is housing priced for our workforce. Less than 100 of the new units to be built in downtown San Rafael will be “affordable.”
The state’s “regional housing needs allocation” report requires San Rafael to “plan to accommodate” 3,220 new housing units by 2031, of which 1,350 are market rate. San Rafael is on track to meet that demand.
Simultaneously, the city must plan for 857 units reserved for those with very low income, 492 for low-income folks and 521 for those the state defines as “moderate incomes” households. That’s an aspirational goal that’s economically unattainable. The state’s required volume of affordable units will never pencil out for private-sector developers without a state subsidy that an already overcommitted state budget can’t support.
“Transit-oriented development” is a catchphrase often used by housing advocates to justify high-density homes near bus, rail and ferry routes. There’s little hard evidence proving that new residents will use transit to commute in statistically significant numbers.
The coming housing wave in the Mission City’s downtown presents a rare opportunity to learn whether transit-oriented housing has tangible benefits or if it’s a myth. Since this new housing is close to bus transit and the SMART train, planners should require each project to submit annual reports on residents’ destinations and transportation modes.
Columnist Dick Spotswood of Mill Valley writes on local issues Sundays and Wednesdays. Email him at spotswood@comcast.net.