By Dwayne Hunn
Dwayne Hunn chairs the Marin Housing
Development
Trust Fund Task Force.
A recent Marin Independent Journal
editorial accurately said:
“Marin land is pricey to the point of
exclusivity. We are at risk of becoming a single-class society of landed
gentry, served by outsiders who commute because they cannot afford to live
where they work.”
In that editorial, the U called for the
establishment of a permanent relationship between the Marin Community
Foundation and a network of non-profit affordable housing associations.
In 1984, when the San Francisco Foundation
administered the Buck Trust, a group of affordable housing providers began to
develop such a program. Pursuit of this concept consumed substantial amounts
of organizational time, showed few results and produced much frustration.
After two years, at Novato Ecumenical
Housing’s urging, Supervisor Robert Stockwell convened the Canal Community
Alliance, the Ecumenical Association for Housing, Marin Community Development
Block Grant officials and the, Marin Housing Authority to resurrect the idea of
a Marin Housing Development Trust Fund. These organizations have provided the
staff and funding for a housing development’ proposal.
More than 70 percent of the speakers at the
foundation’s community forums expressed affordable housing as their primary
need and concern.
As part of the process following their
community forums, the foundation is now discussing specific goals for the future
in their Consultation Group meetings. Those of us involved in producing
affordable housing are confident that the 38-page development trust fund
proposal will be given attention by the new foundation.
What would a Marin Housing Development
Trust Fund do? As proposed it would implement a unified long-term strategy to
produce affordable housing by establishing:
• A revolving low-interest
loan program that would support 100 percent of the trust fund’s
administrative costs.
• A risk capital program to enable
non-profit sponsors to pursue outstanding property acquisition
opportunities.
•
A pre-development seed money program, which would use annual earnings on an
endowment to
make loans to get projects started.
• A grant program, which would supplement
existing sources of such funds to reduce the up-front
costs of housing.
The task force requested $5 million a year
for four years to implement this model program. At this time, while the foundation’s,
income is low for the next few years, $5 million could amount to 25 percent of
the foundation’s yearly income — certainly, a lot of money. But when one
remembers that most people devote 30 percent or more of their yearly income to
shelter costs, that kind of foundation budgeting does not seem unreasonable.
Drawing $5 million a year from the $400
million corpus and securing it on Marin real estate should also be considered
as a profitable strategy and a reasonable investment in improving Marin’s
quality of life.
Each task force member, as well as the
other housing advocates who have provided valuable input to the Marin Housing
Development Trust Fund proposal, hope that the New Year will find Marin on its
way to answering some of the impassioned pleas for affordable housing that were
so often heard during the community forums.