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| Shelter Hill, managed by EAH Housing provides affordable housing for families in Marin County. |
In wealthy Marin, opposition to low-income housing is high and
so are the numbers of the county’s poor, aged and disabled who need it
most. This article originally appeared in the North Bay Bohemian.
Kathleen Burkland prays the Rosary, has a master’s degree in
psychology and, before arthritis forced her to quit, earned her living
as a counselor for at risk teens.
A year ago, she was also homeless.
The 61-year-old grandmother wears a dark blazer and white pendant when I enter her studio apartment in Novato’s Next Key transitional housing
on a recent Thursday. Straight, neatly combed gray hair falls to her
shoulders. She leans heavily on a cane—the result of six knee
surgeries—as she leads me to a table by a window overlooking the green
fields and clear morning skies of idyllic Marin.
Now enrolled in a Ph.D. program that will allow her to teach
online, Burkland says the stigma of transience kept her from sharing her
situation when she was shelter-bound—especially in one of the
wealthiest census tracts in the United States.
“I could never really say where I was when I was [in the shelter],”
she says, resting her right hand on the cane. “It was humiliating—all
these people have wonderful places to live and all this money, and I
would think, ‘God, I
don’t want anybody to know I’m homeless.'”
Burkland may seem like an unlikely candidate for homelessness,
but in Marin, she’s not. She’s over 50 and physically disabled;
according to the county’s 2011 homelessness survey, she fits right in.
“We’ve noticed that the homeless population is aging,” says Paul
Fordham, deputy director for the county’s main network of shelters,
Homeward Bound. He references the fact that roughly one-fourth of the
total homeless population (287 of 1,220) was over 51 in last year’s
count, and offers several explanations.
“Anecdotally, I can say that a lot of things catch up with folks
later in life: PTSD from the military, putting aside an amount for
retirement that then isn’t enough, disabilities. And then market-rate
housing is so high.”
It’s not just high; for renters, Marin tops the list of the least affordable markets in the United States, according to
an annual study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. And
while the median county rent of $1,523 shouldn’t be a problem for the
median county household earning $89,268, other residents, such as
seniors and the disabled, are struggling with one of life’s most basic
necessities: where to live.
With no available options, Kathleen Burkland lived in a homeless
shelter before finally moving up the wait list for a low-income studio
apartment in Novato. In some communities, this is where low-income housing
would come into play, but for a variety of reasons—land use
restrictions, zoning policies and neighborhood opposition among them—
Marin is lacking in below-market-rate units. According to a Novato-based
advocacy group, this has forced 60 percent of the local
workforce to live outside the county. But the shortage is also
affecting Marin’s disproportionately large population of seniors— 21.2
percent over 62, compared to 14.2 percent California-wide— many of whom
live on fixed incomes and struggle with age-based disabilities.
And the numbers say it’s a big shortage. The Department of Housing
and Urban Development (HUD) considers a one-person household
“low-income” in Marin at $62,200, meaning that below that householders
will have to pay more than 30 percent of their income on rent. An
American Community Survey (ACS) from 2006-2010 examining age and ratio
of income to the poverty level indicates that over half of Marin’s
residents over 65 fall into this bracket. According to a housing
inventory released by the county in 2008, Marin is home to only 1,032
low-income units designated for seniors and 196 units for people with
disabilities, a rough ratio of just one unit rented per 17 who qualify.
Of course, many aging adults may not want or even need subsidized housing. Some live in homes bought and paid off years ago. But wait lists tell another story.
Few senior developments listed in the county roster have any openings at all. None are available in the
subsidized complexes provided by the county housing authority, which, as of early 2012, had a cumulative wait
list approximately 2,000 strong. Wait lists often range several
years and, according to a 2011 county inventory, at least 18 complexes
accepting seniors have closed them entirely. For the Maria Freitas
Senior Housing in San Rafael, this closure means the complex can’t
guarantee even one spot within the next five years.
Burkland attests to the damning power of wait lists. As her
arthritis worsened, full-time work in an emotionally and physically
draining job became impossible. After her partner’s death in 2008, she
moved in with her daughter in Novato. Living primarily on Social
Security Disability by then, she couldn’t afford a market-rate
apartment. Being over 55 and disabled, she could have qualified for a
subsidized studio or one-bedroom. But she couldn’t find one to rent, and
her daughter eventually moved.
“All the senior and disabled places were filled, and there was something like a two-year waiting list,” she recalls.
She could have stretched her income further if she wasn’t paying
off her car, but knowing how precarious her situation was, she held on
to it. “I didn’t want to lose my car, because, especially if you’re
homeless, your car means so much to you,” she says. Without a place to
live, she entered the shelter.
Mental illness, PTSD, alcohol and drug abuse play a role in Marin’s
older transient community, as in any other. Burkland acknowledges this,
but also says she was surprised by how many “normal” people she’s met
in the shelter system. “There are more people homeless that you would
call your neighbors than just ‘those lazy druggies and alcoholics,'” she
says.
Now an advocate for affordable housing herself, Burkland points to
the region’s larger, systemic issues when speaking about her situation.
“Marin is just . . . ” She pauses. “It supports the people who have money.”
On the most basic level, Marin’s shortage of low-income housing and
its expensive market-rate units can both be tied to the county’s lack
of developable land.
But that’s not the whole story.
A report completed by the county for HUD—the Analysis of
Impediments to Fair Housing Choice, or AI—states: “Traditionally the
County resisted urban sprawl and preserved open space, which has helped
push housing prices higher since few subdivisions have been built in the
area since 1930.” Between agriculture, parks and open space, the
document estimates that only 16 percent of the county’s total mass is
suitable for building, mostly spanning the 101 corridor, and 11 percent
has already been developed.
And while parts of Marin have tried to remain forest-encircled
hamlets, the county’s location across the Golden Gate from San Francisco
has given it something of an identity crisis. Though towns like Novato,
Ross and Corte Madera look suburban, Marin is considered “metropolitan”
by the state department of Housing and Community Development (HCD),
meaning it’s supposed to zone land for multi-family housing at a higher
density than counties like Sonoma or Napa. So when it comes time to
update their cities’ housing elements—part of the general plan that
zones land for population growth— local officials say they’re often
frustrated. As Novato mayor Denise Athas puts it, “We throw up our hands
and go, ‘Where?'”
This process is governed by state Housing Element Law, enacted in
1969, which recognizes that although development generally belongs to
the private market, land-use and zoning patterns can get in its way. The
law includes Code § 65589.5, an “Anti-NIMBY Statute,” and instructs
local governments to create housing opportunities for all economic
segments of the community.
But that doesn’t always happen. In 1998, Marin Family Action filed a
lawsuit against Corte Madera, charging that its housing element didn’t
adequately plan for low-income units.
“Opposition to development goes way back here,” says Mary Murtagh, who since 1986 has served as executive director of EAH Housing, a low-income housing development and management nonprofit founded in Marin.
Affordable family housing built by EAH Housing.
Murtagh likens the county’s slow-growth tendencies and desire to
preserve small-town character with other regions across the Bay Area.
But the nonprofit director articulates another layer of opposition to affordable housing: fear of who might come with it.
“In general, Americans think poverty is a character flaw,” she says.
City hall dialogue in Novato between 2010-11 uncovered virulent
assumptions about the type of person who might apply to rent low-income
housing. As the city tried to update its housing element, public comment
exploded with characterizations of low-income residents as criminals,
gang members, sex offenders and “high-maintenance individuals” who would
decimate police resources and shuffle under-performing students into
public schools. Existing affordable complexes were said to be “riddled
with meth dealers and coke dealers and weed and everything else,”
ghettoizing a town that “used to be a nice place to live.” (Meanwhile,
statistics from 2010 show that violent crime was roughly half of what it
was in the early 1990s.) One woman concluded that, while cities risk
litigation by failing to update their housing elements, she “would
rather see the lawsuit.”
