Marin YIMBY

Marin County is in a housing crisis. This is undeniable. Even compared to the Bay Area as a whole – a region notorious for high home prices – Marin stands out.

While the Bay Area population continues to rise, Marin is losing people. A significant number of these losses are concentrated among prime working-age adults, who invariably cite the high cost of housing as the primary reason for their forced departure. Many forced out are essential workers in professions where salaries are considerably lower than those of a typical hedge-fund manager, such as firefighters, nurses and teachers.

For teachers at Marin’s many high-quality schools, being priced out leaves them with a choice between giving up a job that they love or enduring an hourslong commute. Finding a way for these highly qualified and dedicated professionals to continue to live here will benefit Marin children today and Marin society in the future.

Five years ago, the Oak Hill project was proposed as a way to stanch the flow of teachers out of the county. While it would not solve Marin’s housing crisis, it would make the lives of a significant number of teachers easier. In many ways, the project was perfect. It would be built on land that was acquired essentially for free, the completed apartments would have guaranteed demand and the strong financial position of the county would allow it to access financing at relatively favorable rates.

All this is now in jeopardy due to stated concerns about global instability and rising interest rates tied to the war in the Middle East. There is undoubtedly a great deal of uncertainty about the world, but using the excuse of uncertainty to delay the Oak Hill project would be extremely shortsighted.

At the Marin County Public Finance Authority’s board meeting on April 1, Director Matthew Hymel said that interest rates had “gone up by approximately 40 basis points” since the board’s previous meeting on Feb. 18. This is technically correct – the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage interest rate did rise from 6.01 on Feb. 19 to 6.46 on April 2 – but it is also misleading. Since then, the average interest rate has declined by 16 basis points.

In fact, February 2026 marked the end of a yearlong decline in the interest rate from a peak of 7.04 on Jan. 16, 2025. Even this peak represented a decline of nearly 80 basis points compared to the five-year high in May of 2023.

Fluctuations in interest rates are not unprecedented and should not be unexpected. Financing for large projects is designed to be robust in the face of short-term changes to market conditions.

Pausing the project is not a neutral act. With rising construction costs, every month that it is delayed will surely push up the budget. There is also the very real danger that the delay will cause public support for the project to dissipate as it fades from view. A delay could signal the breaking of a commitment that Marin County made to its own residents who keep the county running.

Pausing the Oak Hill project will also detrimentally affect the affordable housing project on the same site, led by Eden Housing. That project faces a firm deadline to begin construction by July 2026 or risk losing critical tax credits. The delay would then cause not one, but two promising developments to die, all the while teachers and low-income county residents are pushed out steadily.

The project has already overcome significant hurdles. A year ago, it faced a budget gap of $17 million. This was bridged through the efforts of state Sen. Mike McGuire and the Marin Community Foundation, along with the developer.

Hymel has previously proposed an innovative financing option where the county would serve as the primary guarantor for the project, allowing the bonds to be issued with a lower interest rate. This kind of financing is not unprecedented – the Jefferson Union High School District in Daly City successfully used a $33 million bond to construct 122 affordable, below-market rental units for teachers and staff, which opened in 2022.

In a region with so many struggling polities, Marin County has the opportunity to leverage its excellent bond rating to start addressing the burdens that the county’s past policies have placed on its own residents.

Delaying the Oak Hill project would be a costly mistake. The correct way is to move forward carefully and strategically, but also decisively. The longer we wait, the harder it will become to solve a problem that is many years overdue.