Marin stakeholders, citing LA fires, escalate housing opposition

In the aftermath of catastrophic fires in Los Angeles, residents in Marin are expressing rising concerns about new housing construction planned in high fire zones.

Save Dominican Valley, a group of residents opposed to a 64-residence plan on a wooded parcel near Dominican University of California in San Rafael, sent a letter to Mayor Kate Colin on Monday pleading with her to oppose the project.

“The wildfire disaster in Los Angeles County is a devastating warning,” the letter says. “As we watch this tragedy unfold, the residents of Dominican Valley cannot help but envision the same nightmare playing out in our own neighborhoods. And it does not take much imagination.”

The letter was signed by Nicola Pitchford, the president of Dominican University, and Raz Ingrasci, founder of the Hoffman Institute Foundation. The foundation purchased the Santa Sabina retreat center from the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael in August. The center is adjacent to the proposed building site.

Colin did not respond to a request for comment.

The city issued a statement by email: “The Dominican project application was deemed complete on October 8, 2024, and an environmental impact report (EIR) is required. Once the draft EIR is released, the public will have at least 30 days to comment. The final review of the project and its EIR will occur before the city council in an open public meeting.”

In a related action, John McCauley, who served nine years on the Mill Valley City Council, has posted a petition on Change.org calling on Marin’s local representatives to “advocate for reflecting high fire risk in our state mandated building codes.”

“We can no longer ignore the real-world consequences of promoting housing growth at all costs, ignoring the impacts on the safety of our citizens,” McCauley wrote.

The Los Angeles fires have also heightened the anxiety of residents in Lucas Valley, where two projects totaling 87 residences have been proposed so far. Marin County’s housing element envisions at least another 80 homes at 2 Jeannette Prandi Way near Marin County Juvenile Hall.

“There’s very clearly an increased concern about added development,” said Kelby Jones, one of the founding members of Lucas Valley for Responsible Growth. “State regulations mandate that you can’t really take safety into consideration, which is a very, very big issue that the state will have to confront at some point.”

A flurry of new state laws over recent years has made it easier for property owners to build additional dwellings on their properties while virtually eliminating the authority of local governments to deny or even amend the projects. The laws were justified as a necessary remedy to the state’s critical shortage of affordable housing.

“Unfortunately the projects that have been proposed to date don’t do an awful lot to meet those objectives,” Jones said.

A project proposed at 7 Mount Lassen Drive in Lucas Valley calls for 29 single-family homes, six of which would be priced as “affordable.” The remainder will be market rate.

State law now allows owners of single-family properties to split their lots and build one house, two accessory dwelling units and one junior accessory dwelling unit on each half for a total of eight residences. If an ADU is 800 square feet or smaller, it must be approved ministerially, and no local subjective criteria may be used to reject it.

“Each new unit built adds more lives and cars attempting a possibly life-threatening exit from the neighborhoods least able to cope with evacuation,” McCauley wrote in his petition.

In Mill Valley, the areas include the Cascade, Summit and Warner Canyon neighborhoods.

“These neighborhoods have greater density of cars, challenging road conditions, and are farther up in the canyons, in high fire hazard severity zones,” McCauley wrote.

Marin County supervisors and planning commissioners conducted joint meetings in 2022 to update the safety element of the countywide plan. At that time, there was much discussion about the added fire risk that would accompany meeting the state’s mandate to zone for 3,560 new residences by 2031.

Supervisor Dennis Rodoni, who at the time represented Marin County on the Association of Bay Area Governments board, said the association failed to take into account how many areas in Marin are threatened by wildfire and face evacuation issues when it assigned the county that amount of housing.

It was noted at the meeting that approximately 60,000 acres, 18% of the county’s land area, falls within the so-called “wildland-urban interface,” or WUI. At that time, based on 2018-2019 tax assessor data, about 69,400 Marin residences valued at $58.5 billion were in the WUI.

Rodoni asked if it would be feasible to create a safety map overlay to remove hazardous sites from consideration as potential housing sites. The suggestion was not pursued.

Scott Davidson, a manager at MIG Inc., the Berkeley consulting firm that advised the county on its safety element and housing element updates, discouraged the idea.

“The safety element will include approaches to allowing development within areas where there are hazards as long as the development includes adequate changes to ensure safety,” Davidson said.

He said that under current state law, the safety element and the housing element were “coequal.”

“The safety element considerations need to be addressed through the implementation of the housing element,” Davidson said, “and the housing needs of the county need to be accommodated by the safety element.”

On two occasions, the Marin County Planning Commission recommended that supervisors push back against state housing edicts that would increase fire risk. Supervisors chose not to risk the ire of the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

In 2020, the commission recommended that supervisors prohibit accessory dwelling units in the wildland-urban interface and very high fire hazard severity zones unless they were 800 square feet or smaller and had direct access to a paved street.

Supervisors instead eliminated the access requirement for all categories of ADUs in the wildland-urban interface, unless they were also in a high fire hazard severity zone.

In 2023, the Planning Commission urged supervisors to push back on the state housing agency’s interpretation of Senate Bill 9 that allowed single-family homeowners to create two accessory dwelling units — twice the number then allowed by the county. Under this interpretation, state laws mandating the allowance of ADUs could be combined with Senate Bill 9 to make possible up to eight residences on a single-family lot.

Again, however, county supervisors chose not to challenge the state housing department.

“Enough is enough,” McCauley wrote in his petition. “Now is the time to demand that all California jurisdictions be given greater discretion over building in high fire zones. The state cannot continue to ignore the consequences of it providing incentives to build in these higher risk areas. It is time for the state to better balance growth with safety.”

In an email Monday, Assemblyman Damon Connolly wrote, “In light of growing climate concerns, it is clear that current housing mandates inadequately account for high wildfire risk. It is vital that development decisions in fire-prone areas include voices and input from the community and a renewed focus on safety.”