Editorial: Bay Area officials need to listen to Marin’s elected leaders as housing plan evolves

Bay Area planners seem to have a problem with Marin.

We don’t look like the South Bay.

They think Marin has plenty of room to grow – out and up.

The state’s undermining of local control over land-use decisions and ambitious quotas for approving construction of new housing has set the stage for the new round of Bay Area regional planning. It’s not surprising that Marin leaders don’t share the same vision as those from other Bay Area counties.

One might think that planners with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission might want to see how their current vision is working out before they start dictating growth toward 2050.

But they’ve been busy formulating housing and jobs projections – drafting Plan Bay Area 2050+ and drawing complaints from Marin leaders that their vision for our county is inflated.

County leaders have protested before, with little success.

That’s why the state-mandated housing quotas are steering Marin toward growing local housing by 12% by 2030. It is an ambitious paper goal that has not yet been tested by reality.

While that goal has laid the legal foundation for plans to build out-of-scale housing complexes around the county – much taller and more dense than ever contemplated in local land-use planning goals – few have been built. Building proposals – even those that have been approved – have been slow to start construction.

Marin Supervisor Mary Sackett is rightly questioning MTC’s projection for Marin to add 23,000 new households by 2050 – a roughly 25% increase. She’s calling on regional planners to take another look at their projections through the lens of “grounded assumptions.”

MTC’s vision is based on a premise that the construction of more jobs and housing – especially around transit hubs – will decrease the need to widen highways and help meet regional need for more homes and apartments.

The draft plan’s Bay Area-wide growth projection is nearly four times that of the state Department of Finance’s demographic predictions.

At the very least, state planners should be using the same numbers.

There’s little debate that Marin needs more affordable housing – for its local workforce and for seniors. It needs housing that’s accessible to lower-income households and minorities, helping correct a local market that has forced those populations out of Marin. Decades of restrictive zoning – and the length and costs of getting local approvals – have not kept up with the need. But throwing out local control to force future construction is not the answer. Sacramento’s growth push aimed to rebalance local land use, but with little consideration that its strategy works beyond its findings in a planning document.

Marin’s longstanding planning goal has been to strike a balance between allowing growth along the Highway 101 corridor and preserving the open spaces of West Marin. Local planning has also sought to protect the small-town, low-rise suburban character of its towns.

Sacramento doesn’t share that vision. And MTC’s draft plan mirrors that pro-growth push.

When it comes to the approval of those regional plans and quotas, our local leaders have not been able to convince their regional counterparts that Marin can write its own plans to meet their regional share of housing and jobs.

Instead, state lawmakers have rewritten land-use laws, with “one size fits all” rules and bonuses that undermine local control and priorities, while promising to introduce large-scale change to Marin’s small-town landscape.

Sackett and other Marin officials are right. They are not coming from a no-growth perspective that for decades dominated Marin politics. But sadly, that’s the mindset of state and regional decision-makers.

Their push for MTC to take another look at its projections and plan are borne out of “feet on the ground” knowledge of Marin’s land-use potential and constraints – both economic and environmental.

In recent years, state and regional planners have ignored that local awareness and experience and have imposed their own strategies.

The recent wayward imposition of the expanded hours of the Highway 101 carpool and bus lanes is the most recent example.

Maybe, this time, they’ll listen to and heed comments from those who actually live and work in Marin.