Gavin Newsom has simply two years remaining of his governorship. Because it winds down, he’s stepping up efforts to construct a nationwide profile towards what many pundits assume shall be a 2028 presidential marketing campaign. That apparently consists of writing his autobiography.
As he prepares for no matter follows his 16 years in Sacramento as lieutenant governor and governor, Newsom can be abandoning the state capital in one other sense: shifting himself and his household again to Marin County. He has bought a $9 million dwelling in the prosperous city of Kentfield.
He purchased it from Daniel Pritzker, a billionaire inheritor to the Pritzker lodge fortune. There’s an ironic twist to that transaction. Daniel Pritzker is a cousin of Illinois Gov. Jay Pritzker, one other rich inheritor and a possible rival to Newsom within the 2028 presidential sweepstakes.
Nonetheless, the extra fascinating facet of Newsom’s return to Marin County is its cussed resistance to his efforts, as governor, to compel communities to plan for thousands and thousands of recent housing items, notably these for low- and moderate-income households.
Gradual or no inhabitants development is a long-standing credo in Marin and has been largely profitable. Since 2000, it has gained solely 7,000 residents, because of well-organized opposition and a acutely aware effort to attenuate enlargement of water, sewer and different providers.
The state’s Division of Housing and Group Improvement, armed with new enforcement powers, has been leaning on rich communities to just accept housing quotas, threatening lawsuits and intercession in the event that they resist. Presently, below state and regional directives, Marin is meant to be planning for 14,210 new housing items countywide, together with 3,569 in unincorporated areas reminiscent of Kentfield.
County officers have developed a so-called “housing element” that may, in essence, override neighborhood planning businesses hostile to giant housing tasks. It’s wanted, county officers say, to fulfill state housing watchdogs and keep away from penalties for non-compliance.
Nonetheless, opponents of the plan persuaded a neighborhood choose final spring to conform to take away the override language, making a dilemma for county officers. The choose set a deadline for this week to adjust to the order, and county officers — caught between state stress and native sentiment — are making an attempt 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 mentioned throughout a stormy listening to on the problem.
An much more specific instance of Marin County’s cussed resistance is happening in Fairfax, one other insular neighborhood just a few miles from Newsom’s new dwelling. A developer is proposing a six-story, 243-unit residence venture in downtown Fairfax, on the location of {a partially} vacant workplace park, with 41 items put aside for low-income households.
However the developer is getting warmth from metropolis officers, though the town’s housing component identifies the location’s potential for a whole lot of recent items. Metropolis officers have declared the venture utility was incomplete — which the developer denies — and the problem may change into fodder for state intervention or lawsuits.
So, one would possibly surprise, as Newsom reconnects with Marin County, will his presence have an effect on its perpetual battles over housing?
Whereas Newsom’s administration has cracked down on different prosperous communities that resist quotas — it’s been particularly aggressive with conservative Huntington Seashore — liberal Marin County has traditionally obtained the child gloves therapy.
A decade in the past, Newsom’s predecessor, Jerry Brown, signed laws to present Marin partial reduction on housing quotas by treating it as suburban fairly than city, and later signed an extension of the particular therapy to 2028, which was buried in a finances trailer invoice and obtained little public consideration.
Marin officers characterised the exemption as a means to offer extra time for the county to do the fitting factor. However as the present clashes point out, sturdy opposition to the state’s 14,210-unit housing quota has not abated.
