David Grabill, North Bay crusader for affordable housing, dies

David Grabill, a longtime affordable housing advocate and Bay Area public interest attorney, died on Saturday June 11, 2016 at the age of 74. David Grabill, a longtime affordable housing advocate and Bay Area public interest attorney, died on Saturday June 11, 2016 at the age of 74. Photo: Courtesy Of Dorothy Battenfeld / / Photo: Courtesy Of Dorothy Battenfeld / / Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close David Grabill, North Bay crusader for affordable housing, dies 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

David Grabill, a Bay Area attorney who spent the last several decades fighting for affordable housing in a region that badly needs it, died in Santa Rosa after a long illness. He was 74.

Mr. Grabill was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis last year and succumbed on Saturday to the lung disease after recent complications, family members said.

Over the years, his litigation with Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group was behind the construction of scores of homes for low-income Bay Area families, and ushered in more housing policies that helped the homeless, colleagues said.

The Santa Rosa public interest attorney called himself retired, but those closest to Mr. Grabill said he never truly did. When his condition recently worsened, he worked on an iPad from his hospital bed — fighting to preserve a Santa Rosa rent control ordinance amid threats of appeals from developers, family said.

“He was extremely passionate about his work and making housing affordable to all,” said his daughter, Jane Battenfeld. “He said at a dinner last year ... housing is a right, it’s a necessity. It shouldn’t be a privilege.”

At that dinner, Mr. Grabill received a career of distinction award from the Sonoma County Bar Association for his years of social justice work. In one instance, he joined a suit against the city of Santa Rosa and helped forge a settlement to build 3,000 affordable housing units and an 80-bed homeless shelter.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 9, 1942, Mr. Grabill was 5 years old when he moved with his parents to Washington D.C., where his father worked as an anesthesiologist.

As a student at the prestigious Sidwell Friends School, he and several classmates called for the school’s desegregation, colleagues said. Although their initial efforts were unsuccessful, the school did eventually desegregate. Malia Obama graduated from the same high school on Friday.

Mr. Grabill spent his undergraduate years at Yale University, and received a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967.

After school, he started working as a legal aid fellow at the federal Office of Economic Opportunity. He got involved in a slew of legal battles, including one in Southern California to secure territorial and water rights for Native Americans.

Mr. Grabill eventually moved to West Virginia in the 1970s, and soon scored a major legal victory. As a group of women struggled to start a women’s health clinic, he argued the state’s restrictive policies ignored the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion, and an appeals court agreed.

He ended up marrying one of the women starting the clinic, Dorothy Battenfeld.

“He just kept up this passion for wanting to help people who were less fortunate,” his wife said. “I think all of us want to continue doing that.”

In 1981, Mr. Grabill began working with California Rural Legal Assistance and became managing attorney for the Santa Rosa office. His litigation forced government response to housing issues around Sonoma, Napa, Humboldt, and Mendocino counties.

One of his notable cases was a 1989 settlement with the city of Healdsburg that resulted in providing and zoning sites for 500 apartments.

After leaving the California Rural Legal Assistance group in 1995, he co-founded Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group, where he acted as an attorney up until his death. He was fierce, argumentative, and sometimes “a bull in a china shop” as he took on city officials, colleagues said.

But Mr. Grabill’s resolve was just a reflection of his own zeal for the cause, said Stephen Harper, co-chair of the Housing Advocacy Group and longtime friend.

“Unfortunately, our community lost a very compassionate, caring human being when it came to housing for those less fortunate,” Harper said. “I don’t believe we can replace him. To do what he did, there’s no money in it. You do it because you care. And that’s hard to replace, if not impossible.”

Mr. Grabill is survived by his wife, Dorothy, and daughter, Jane, both of Santa Rosa, along with daughters Holly Rhodes of San Francisco, Megan Rhodes of Santa Rosa and son, Christopher Grabill, of Santa Rosa.