Approve Response to Grand Jury Report on Affordable Housing - YES

I voted to approve the Town's response to the Marin County Civil Grand Jury's report on affordable housing. The report sets out a number of findings and recommendations for how Marin's cities can advance affordable housing within the county, and requires each city to respond.

Corte Madera's response makes clear that we are committed to taking ambitious steps to create more affordable housing in Marin, and to address the local housing and affordability crises. We agreed with the vast majority of the Grand Jury's findings, and also used our response to contribute some of the on-the-ground experience that our Planning and Building departments have acquired over years of working with developers to create local affordable housing.

The only shortcoming we saw with the report is that the Grand Jury called for the creation of a new, county-wide affordable housing agency in barely 5 months. Creating a joint agency run by Marin's 11 cities and the County—especially with such a broad, critical, and controversial mandate—is something that typically takes years, not months. While the timeline outlined by the Grand Jury may have struck many as unrealistic, I am nonetheless committed to the creation of a County affordable housing agency.

Finally, our response also outlined for the Grand Jury additional ways in which Corte Madera is eager to collaborate with our fellow cities and the County to address the affordable housing crisis.