Marin Housing
This is a positively bizarre take on the issues facing Marinwood (“Angry Grousing About Housing,” Aug. 7). Portraying Susan Adams as a “victim” of angry constituents is insulting to the community and ultimately to Supervisor Adams herself. Journalists used to be reliable in keeping politicians accountable. This story reads more like an apology.
Fair-minded people will be able to see the truth through the fog created by the politicians about Plan Bay Area. It will radically alter our landscape and economy if built to plan. Unfortunately, we can no longer have the help of local media to help us.
The “Gay Eskimo” post was making fun of racist xenophobia. It was pretty obvious and even had “satire” labeled in the post and discussion. It has received a disproportionate amount of attention, and some people even stupidly claim that it is evidence of racism. It shows the intellectual dishonesty of the phony outraged people who want to promote the idea that people for good planning are racist NIMBYS.
Marinwood
Excellent article. It’s not hard to see “what the hell is going on”—there’s an ugly streak of racism and classism in Marinwood. Sixty percent of the people who work in Marin work outside the county and commute from Sonoma, Contra Costa, Alameda and Solano counties. Most of these commuters are lower income, and nonwhite. Most would greatly prefer to live close to where they work. The crazy thing about this latest outburst is that ABAG has now drastically cut the housing needs allocations (RHNA) for Marin jurisdictions, even though very little affordable housing has been built there to meet current and prior RHNA housing needs allocations. ABAG is dominated by Marin, Napa and other wealthy jurisdictions, all of which have their numbers slashed for the next (2014–2022) planning period. But even a small RHNA allocation is not acceptable with these NIMBYs.
Santa Rosa
As a moderate-income resident of Marin County, I am personally suffering from this refusal to build more housing. I wish people would stop making up scary stories about how poor people will be imported into the county, and realize that by fighting every housing proposal, many of us who are here now will be forced to leave. My rent has jumped $500 in two years because there just aren’t enough rental units. I have lived my whole life in Marin County, and have a good job here, but paying the increasingly high cost of housing here means I can’t ever get ahead.
Via online
Cramming all development into high-rise housing next to noisy, polluting freeways is not a healthy option, affordable housing or not. Not only is it a step backwards in progress, but it is no solution to greenhouse gas emissions nor an equitable solution to affordable housing that could otherwise be accommodated by a smarter option: infill housing all over the Bay, not just in congested PDAs.
Via online
There seems to be an underlying assumption that we in the Bay Area must “plan for future growth,” as it states in your article. It would also have us believe that the heavy commute traffic on Marin freeways is due to a lack of low-income housing in the county. I dispute both of these assumptions.
Let’s look at the first assumption. For tens of thousands of years, homo sapiens were small in number and competed with other humanoid species and with large mammals many times our size. From this experience, it was ingrained in us that more homo sapiens was beneficial. And that belief stood us in good stead. Humans won this multi-millennium competition, and we have populated the entire planet. In fact, we are so numerous—7 billion and counting—that human activity is now endangering the health of the planet.
All this is to say that we need to change our assumption that population growth is both beneficial and inevitable. I believe that Marin’s efforts to limit growth, or curb it entirely, and to maintain open space is a wise policy and should be a model for the rest of the Bay Area. Visit Orange County and you’ll see what happens when unbridled growth is allowed.
San Rafael
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