State seeks more revisions in rejecting Marin housing plan

Marin County must further revise its eight-year housing plan to better promote fair-housing opportunities before the document wins the state’s stamp of approval.

In rejecting the county’s plan to accommodate up to 3,569 new units across its unincorporated areas, including Strawberry, officials from the state Department of Housing and Community Development said in a March 23 letter that Marin “has made tremendous strides toward addressing the housing needs of the communities of Marin County.”

However, they added, “additional revisions are necessary to substantially comply” with the law, mainly to address fair-housing requirements, which mandate that cities, towns and counties demonstrate what proactive steps they will take to combat disparities resulting from past patterns of segregation.

The state’s rejection language suggests Marin has been fully exposed since Feb. 1 to the punitive builder’s remedy, which removes major checks on local development for jurisdictions that failed to adopt a substantially compliant housing element by the deadline.

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