Dear Neighbors and Friends:

The State of California’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) is currently reviewing the City’s draft Housing Element - the City’s state mandated 8 year housing plan.  If the Housing Element is approved by HCD, the City will have the “green light” to develop 1 Hamilton for affordable housing up to 50 units. We hope to derail that approval and ask that you join us in the effort by writing to HCD. 

Letters should be directed to the HCD analyst in charge of the review, Reid Miller at reid.miller@hcd.ca.gov

Below are some talking points for your letters.  Please do not cite increased traffic, congestion, the number of units or density of the project, or environmental issues, etc. as HCD will not consider those arguments. 
 

For this campaign, we are focusing solely on an argument that MV should not be allowed to concentrate affordable housing in only one section of the City.  

Please use these talking points in drafting your letters to HCD or draft your own.  Letters should be emailed the sooner the better, and no later than Nov 4, 2022.

Sincerely,

FOHP Legal Team (CS Hyder, Jeralyn Seiling, Paula Weaver)

Talking Points:

• Mill Valley’s draft Housing Element demonstrates that the City will go to great lengths to keep its wealthiest neighborhoods free of affordable housing. The City plans to do this by concentrating affordable housing in the area east of Camino Alto, a street that divides the City into the ‘old’ and ‘new’ parts of town.  Currently, all affordable housing is located east of Camino Alto.  This type of discriminatory distribution of housing was the model for US public housing in the 50’s and 60’s, and it was a complete failure.  Mill Valley needs to spread affordable housing fairly throughout the City.    

• The City of Mill Valley appears to be favoring influential and wealthy residents by protecting their neighborhoods from affordable housing. It is simply incredible that the City owns 75 sites, but claims it could find only one site that is suitable for affordable housing.  It excluded from the Housing Element every other City-owned site, even sites its own paid consultant found suitable. 

• The City has produced a map of potentially suitable sites in the western part of the City (west of Camino Alto) and argues that these sites will balance out the density of the affordable housing it plans east of Camino Alto (at 1 Hamilton).  But those sites are all privately-owned and the City has no control over whether any of those sites will ever be developed. All the City has done is identify a fictional list of sites. 

HCD should not condone the City of Mill Valley’s discriminatory practice of keeping affordable housing out of its wealthier neighborhoods and creating an affordable housing district on one side of town.  This does not follow HCD guidelines of affirmatively identifying sites throughout the community.  Please direct Mill Valley to redo its site inventory. 

Thank you for your consideration of these comments. 

Name

Address