Affordable Housing Decision Time for City Council June 26th Meeting

I hope the city council takes into consideration the past very low and low affordable housing Novato has built when deciding what to accept from ABAG for the next cycle. 

Between 1996 and 2006 Novato, 20% of the population of Marin, created 51.4% of the affordable housing. The issue is in that time Novato created 56% of all of the very low housing and 85% of the low housing in all of Marin which are all rentals.  

I believe the failure to make sure Novato gets proper credit and also to prevent an over accumulation of very low and low housing in Novato, as well as the reduced density issue, could have detremential long term effects on the city. 

It would also appear to leave the city open to litigation based on the failure to comply with Government Code Section 65584(d).  This requires “Increasing the housing supply and the mix of housing types, tenure, and affordability in all cities and counties within the region in an equitable manner, which shall result in each jurisdiction receiving an allocation of units for low- and very low income housing units.

The failure to allow a significant credit for past performance only incourages the other cities, many built no very low and low housing, to follow the same pattern and behavior with little downside. 

This also is completely at odds with SB375 as Novato is acting as the main source of very low and low affordable housing and that does not decrease traffic on 101, it actually increases the number of cars per day as people commute to Southern Marin as there is no or few very low and low affordable housing opportunties in those cities.   Thus, the goal of Novato should be to limit to as small an allocation as possible very low and low affordable housing in the next cycle.