Dan Walters: Will resistant Marin change now that pro-housing governor has moved back?

Gavin Newsom has just two years remaining of his governorship. As it winds down, he is stepping up efforts to build a national profile toward what many pundits assume will be a 2028 presidential campaign. That apparently includes writing his autobiography.

As he prepares for whatever follows his 16 years in Sacramento as lieutenant governor and governor, Newsom is also abandoning the state capital in another sense: moving himself and his family back to Marin County. He has purchased a $9 million home in the affluent town of Kentfield.

He bought it from Daniel Pritzker, a billionaire heir to the Pritzker hotel fortune. There’s an ironic twist to that transaction. Daniel Pritzker is a cousin of Illinois Gov. Jay Pritzker, another wealthy heir and a potential rival to Newsom in the 2028 presidential sweepstakes.

However, the more interesting aspect of Newsom’s return to Marin County is its stubborn resistance to his efforts, as governor, to compel communities to plan for millions of new housing units, particularly those for low- and moderate-income families.

Slow or no population growth is a long-standing credo in Marin and has been largely successful. Since 2000, it has gained only 7,000 residents, thanks to well-organized opposition and a conscious effort to minimize expansion of water, sewer and other services.

The state’s Department of Housing and Community Development, armed with new enforcement powers, has been leaning on wealthy communities to accept housing quotas, threatening lawsuits and intercession if they resist. Currently, under state and regional directives, Marin is supposed to be planning for 14,210 new housing units countywide, including 3,569 in unincorporated areas such as Kentfield.

County officials have developed a so-called “housing element” that would, in essence, override community planning agencies hostile to large housing projects. It’s needed, county officials say, to satisfy state housing watchdogs and avoid penalties for non-compliance.

However, opponents of the plan persuaded a local judge last spring to agree to remove the override language, creating a dilemma for county officials. The judge set an upcoming deadline to comply with the order, and county officials — caught between state pressure and local sentiment — are trying to get an extension.

“This is really about trying to thread the needle to satisfy both sides as much as we can,” County Supervisor Dennis Rodoni said during a stormy hearing on the issue.

An even more explicit example of Marin County’s stubborn resistance is occurring in Fairfax, another insular community a few miles from Newsom’s new home. A developer is proposing a six-story, 243-unit apartment project in downtown Fairfax, on the site of a partially vacant office park, with 41 units set aside for low-income families.

But the developer is getting heat from town officials, even though the town’s housing element identifies the site’s potential for hundreds of new units. Town officials have declared the project application was incomplete — which the developer denies — and the issue could become fodder for state intervention or lawsuits.

So, one might wonder, as Newsom reconnects with Marin County, will his presence affect its perpetual battles over housing?

While Newsom’s administration has cracked down on other affluent communities that resist quotas — it’s been especially aggressive with conservative Huntington Beach — liberal Marin County has historically received the kid gloves treatment.

A decade ago, Newsom’s predecessor, Jerry Brown, signed legislation to give Marin partial relief on housing quotas by treating it as suburban rather than urban, and later signed an extension of the special treatment to 2028, which was buried in a budget trailer bill and received little public attention.

Marin officials characterized the exemption as a way to provide more time for the county to do the right thing. But as the current clashes indicate, strong opposition to the state’s 14,210-unit housing quota has not abated.

Dan Walters has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, spending all but a few of those years working for California newspapers. His commentary comes via CalMatters.org, a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more, go to calmatters.org/commentary.