Marin residents say they care about affordable housing but don't act like it

Housing prices are prohibitively expensive because we enact strict zoning that prevents other people from building more of it. These restrictions on new supply drive up the price of housing. No where is this more evident than in Tiburon, just north of San Francisco, with its own temperate micro climate and beautiful views of all three bridges across the Bay. When owners tried to develop a property to create 43 single family homes, the project was stalled for decades by lawsuits filed by neighbors.  Recently the county purchased the property under the pretext that it would "preserve open space."

Jenny Silva of Sausalito, a volunteer pro-housing watchdog who's been monitoring the creation of housing elements in Marin, said ... "there’s a housing crisis, not an open-space crisis." She noted that 31% of respondents to the county’s 2023 Community Survey said housing should be the No. 1 priority, ... Silva called it “frustrating” that Marin’s latest budget then dedicated more than twice as much to open-space expenditures than to its affordable-housing trust: $11.23 million versus $5 million.

BOTTOM LINE:  Marin residents say they care about housing but don't act like it. Instead, they have "revealed a preference" for open space which increases their own property values. But they are not the only ones (see previous blog posts on housing).