A rendering of Oak Hill Apartments, an affordable housing project on state land in Marin County, with 135 housing units for public school and county employees earning 50%-120% of area median income. Images via Eden Housing.
Marin County supervisors voted unanimously to take an initial step toward helping to guarantee rental income for a housing project designed to serve educators and county employees. The project, the Village at Oak Hill, envisions construction of 135 apartments on vacant land donated by the state in eastern Larkspur near San Quentin. The plan is to reserve 101 of the apartments for the employees of local schools and 34 for county employees.
The project, which is being overseen by the Marin County Public Financing Authority, a joint partnership between Marin County and the Marin County Office of Education, has a $16.4 million funding gap. Rising interest rates since the project launched are to blame, said Matthew Hymel, the authority’s director and a former county executive.
As a means of reducing the deficit, the authority is asking Marin County and local school districts to guarantee future rental income from the apartments for 40 years as a means of convincing bondholders to accept lower interest rates on the loan that will finance the project.
“If you agree today, you are essentially getting pregnant and then you become reluctant to abort further on,” said Mimi Willard, president of the Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers. “That is why I suggest you not do so.”
Casting his yes vote, Supervisor Eric Lucan said, “I don’t believe that we are getting pregnant yet. This is more of a let’s go on a second date, let’s work out the details.”
Kevin Saavedra, a Tamalpais Union High School District trustee, was one of several people with financial expertise who voiced their opposition Tuesday to Marin schools guaranteeing bondholders’ investments.
Tamalpais Union High School District declined to participate in the guarantee program in March. The Novato Unified School District and the College of Marin have both expressed interest. The project was initially designed to serve the county’s 17 school districts. College of Marin was invited in after the funding gap emerged. Despite the fact that the county could still reverse course, opponents of the plan warned strongly against embarking on a slippery slope.
The proposed Oak Hill Education Housing Partners (EHP) project, a California non-profit organization that provides development services to school districts and other public agencies. The nonprofit is a subsidiary of Thompson Dorfman, the real estate development and investment firm formed in 1999 by Mill Valley residents Will Thompson and Bruce Dorfman.
Some 43 percent of Marin County teachers can’t afford a studio apartment in the Larkspur area. The school district began the year with 70 unfilled teaching jobs, the Chronicle reported. The gray, white and beige apartments will overlook the bayside Remillard Park and the Larkspur Ferry Terminal, within walking distance of a SMART Train stop, bus stops, bike trails, a grocery store and shops.
The project has substantial momentum behind it, starting with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2019 executive order that made state-owned surplus properties available for affordable homes, thus providing runway to leverage the former gun range at San Quentin.
The project has a certified environmental study for a 250-unit affordable apartment project at 101 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard (see aerial map below), the San Francisco Chronicle reported. It would become the largest affordable housing project in Marin County in 50 years.
Marin County supervisors have allocated another $1 million to an effort to bring affordable workforce housing to land near San Quentin State Prison, according to the Marin IJ. The new allocation, which will come from the county’s affordable housing trust fund, will help cover the $118 million in development costs for a 135-residence project, likely to be deployed as matching funds to leverage state funds, the IJ reported.
“Due to an increase in interest rates, which have nearly doubled since we initiated the project in 2020, it is necessary to identify and secure funding from a variety of sources,” Dorfman said. “Unlike an affordable housing project, there is no proven pathway for capitalizing workforce housing, and there is limited funding available for this type of housing. We’re teed up to receive potentially $10 million if we can get matching grants to make our application more competitive. We need the availability of these funds to help move this development forward.”
So far supervisors have allocated more than $6.75 million from the county’s affording housing trust fund to the two projects in the hopes of attracting additional state dollars. The county has also allocated more than $2.5 million in federal housing grant money to the projects.
View the location of the site below at the blue marker, with Larkspur Landing at far left, just north of the Ferry Terminal, within walking distance of a SMART Train stop, bus stops, bike trails, a grocery store and shops.
