Mill Valley’s Housing Advisory Committee met Oct. 26, 2025, to finalize priorities and hear presentations on short- and long-term strategies for producing and preserving affordable homes, including a HomeShare program pilot, ADU loan and monitoring offers from the Marin Housing Authority, and a MidPen feasibility briefing on building 100% affordable housing on public or donated land.

Public comments opened the meeting with residents urging stronger fair-housing commitments in the city’s housing element, preservation of lower-cost housing and consideration of community-led approaches to development. Dennis Klein, representing the Mill Valley Affordable Housing Committee, said the group’s audit found the city’s plan placed heavy reliance on accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and asked the committee to study upcoming changes in state law that affect general plan compliance.

Staff review and committee priorities
City staff (Danielle) reviewed items the committee has flagged as priorities: demolition regulations; soft-story retrofit requirements; updates to the ADU ordinance; leveraging underutilized housing; identifying and leveraging public land; and designing use of the city’s housing trust fund. The committee agreed demolition regulations should be advanced before a soft-story program to avoid unintentionally removing older rental stock, and recommended staff proceed on the planned ADU ordinance update and an interim ADU ordinance to bring to the City Council.

Housing trust fund discussion
Committee members discussed how to deploy roughly $250,000 currently in the city’s affordable housing fund, which has been collected for less than one year. Some members pressed for a fast, “speed and velocity” approach aimed at immediate relief — for example, short-term rent subsidies or a workforce housing stipend for Mill Valley employees — while others urged staff analysis of options and administrative guidelines before committing funds. Members asked staff to return with options for quick-deploy uses and administrative rules the council would need to adopt.

HomeShare (Covia HomeMatch)
Tracy Powell of Covia described HomeMatch, a shared-housing program that matches homeowners with extra space to people seeking affordable housing. Powell said HomeMatch is in four Bay Area counties and typically serves older homeowners (homeowner average age about 74) and home seekers (average age about 63, median household income about $37,000). In Marin County Covia’s reported average negotiated room rent is about $763. Powell said the program is high-touch — screening, background checks, living-together agreements, and post-placement mediation — and that deeper local funding would allow Covia to add dedicated staff to scale the program in Mill Valley. Covia reported it has made roughly 80 matches regionally and that additional staff and local outreach would increase placements in a short timeframe. Powell told the committee, “If anyone here today said I’d be willing to open my house, we could match you with someone tomorrow,” and recommended a local pilot and modest city support for outreach and staffing.

ADU loan program and Section 8 (Marin Housing Authority)
Carmen Zukrow, manager of homeownership programs at the Marin Housing Authority, described the Residential Rehabilitation Loan Program and an ADU loan option. Zukrow said the County’s program can provide loans up to $40,000 at 0% interest for units rented affordably; loans can be deferred so interest accrues and is repaid on sale or when the unit stops being rented affordably. She said the program historically required low-income homeowners or low-income tenants (per CDBG rules) but could be expanded with county or local monitoring support. Zukrow also presented county voucher data: Marin County administers about 2,055 Housing Choice (Section 8) vouchers; in the county about 745 voucher holders are working, roughly 1,000 are elderly and about 645 are disabled. In Mill Valley Zukrow reported roughly 104 voucher holders renting from 81 landlords. She noted that Section 8 payment standards in Marin are high (example cited: a one-bedroom rent standard around $2,305), making the program attractive to some landlords, and described landlord partnership incentives (hotline, enhanced deposits, vacancy loss coverage) to increase landlord participation.

MidPen feasibility and leveraging public land for 100% affordable development
Felix A. Young of MidPen presented a high-level feasibility analysis showing that new-construction, 100% affordable housing projects are technically feasible in Mill Valley but require scale and either donated/acquired land or significant local subsidy to close the financing gap. MidPen’s analysis identified these points:
- A family-oriented, three-story walk-up product—preferred for neighborhood context—typically needs roughly 30 units plus a manager’s unit to reach an operational scale that is financially sustainable; that product generally requires approximately 1.2–1.6 acres in Mill Valley’s zoning context. Senior projects can be more land-efficient (roughly 40 units plus manager on about 1 acre).
- State incentives help: a recent state density-bonus framework (an 80% bonus for 100% affordable projects) and a local/regional allocation change have improved the availability and competitiveness of 9% Low-Income Housing Tax Credits in the North Bay. 9% credits cover a larger share of development cost than 4% credits, reducing the local subsidy gap.
- MidPen estimated that if land were donated or leased at no cost, the remaining per-unit subsidy gap could be on the order of $50,000 per unit for the product types studied. That gap could be filled with a combination of county funds, local contributions, foundations and other lenders. Young emphasized a best-case timeline of roughly four years from site identification to move-in and a longer, riskier timeline up to 10 years in the county’s experience for complex projects.

Next steps and committee guidance
Committee members instructed staff to prepare: (1) an options memo on short-term, quick-deploy uses of the housing trust fund (including cost estimates and administrative procedures), (2) a proposal or budget outline from Covia for a Mill Valley pilot and staffing needs, (3) details on the Marin Housing Authority loan program and monitoring options, and (4) an inventory and assessment of city- and county-owned parcels and other potentially available parcels to support development or acquisition. Members agreed to pursue short-term pilots in parallel with longer-term land and development strategies.