Marin County will continue to identify local barriers to fair housing choice and develop recommendations even though the Trump administration suspended the requirement to submit an assessment by next year.

On Tuesday, the Marin County Board of Supervisors approved a three-year plan to complete its “Assessment of Fair Housing,” which was initiated in 2016.

While the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has pushed off the requirement for an official assessment by Oct. 5, 2019, it is still requiring federal grantees to prepare an “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice” by January 2020.

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“Where you live can determine your household income, credit score, chances of being incarcerated, chances of being a homeowner, your child’s chances of graduating from high school or going to college, your health outcomes and even your life expectancy,” Liz Darby, Marin County’s assessment of fair housing coordinator, told supervisors Tuesday.

The life expectancy of residents of Ross is 88 years, while the life expectancy of Marin City residents is 73.3 years.

“Over the next three years,” Darby said, “staff will engage with residents and communities to identify any disparities that negatively impact certain communities or populations more than others.”

County staff will do its work in conjunction with a community advisory group and steering committee.

“Together,” Darby said, “ we will analyze and discuss a number of topics including disproportionate access to community assets, which include access to grocery stores, financial and banking services, internet access and access to public services.”

The three-year work plan also calls for using local data to examine disparities in life expectancy, proximity to health hazards, economic opportunity and educational opportunity.

“We’ll review who has access to proficient schools,” Darby said. “We’ll examine graduation rates and suspension rates by race and by schools to determine if some communities are impacted more than others.”

Under the 1968 Fair Housing Act, federal grant recipients must commit to affirmatively further fair housing as a condition of receiving federal funds. Marin County, however, has failed in the past to fulfill this requirement.

“In 2009 the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) conducted a onsite review of the county’s federal grant program and identified a number of items where the county was in noncompliance,” Darby said.

The HUD investigation highlighted the fact that Marin’s minority population is far lower than most other communities in the Bay Area and that Marin County had not updated a mandated “analysis of impediments” to fair housing since 1994.

Marin like other wealthy communities in the United States has a historical legacy of housing discrimination based on race. Restrictive covenants once prevented people of color from owning homes in Marin.

In 2017, Advancement Project California, a Los Angeles-based civil rights organization, issued a report showing that Marin was the most racially unequal county in California. The report ranked counties’ performance in seven key areas. Marin’s poorest performance came in the housing category, where it also ranked first in racial inequity. Marin also ranked as the county with the second-most racial disparity in the categories of economic opportunity and crime/justice.

Darby, however, said the Assessment of Fair Housing would not delve into criminal justice statistics.

Dave Coury of Corte Madera, a landlord and affordable housing advocate, was one of only two members of the public to comment on the county’s plan to complete its Assessment of Fair Housing. He was not complimentary.

“This is a meaningless exercise,” Coury said. “It does do a decent job of looking at the equity impacts of the lack of fair housing, but it doesn’t look at the causes or how to remediate the impediments to fair housing.”

Coury said what supervisors need to concentrate on is zoning changes to allow more affordable housing to be built.

The other member of the public who spoke, Rollie Katz, executive director of the Marin Association of Public Employees, said, “Part of the solution has to be to build more housing.”

Supervisor Dennis Rodoni asked if the information gathered through the Assessment of Fair Housing would be incorporated in the next update of Marin’s countywide plan.

Community Development Agency Director Brian Crawford said that is a possibility.

“Certainly, there will be wealth of information that will be available,” Crawford said.

Crawford, however, said the most likely way lessons learned from the data would be incorporated is through the county’s housing element.

The state of California passed a law effective in January that requires an assessment of fair housing be included in housing elements submitted after Jan. 1, 2121.

State law requires all Bay Area counties and municipalities to periodically update the housing elements of their general plans to demonstrate that there are sufficient sites available for the jurisdiction to provide its fair share of regional housing needs. The housing elements must identify sites with appropriate zoning densities to meet the needs of all income levels. The current planning period for housing elements ends in 2023.

Crawford said, “That’s where we expect to see this work definitely reflected in policies and programs.”