Kavion Dormishian

Sam Kinney

Housing struggles in Marin

In 2008 the US economy crashed, this crash was detrimental and affected all except for a handful
of counties. As the jobs became scarce people were forced to find jobs in cities outside of their district.
This means that people have to commute to work, these commutes on average is more than an
hour(Marins Struggle to House Its Workforce is Making Already Bad Traffic Worse). In Marin County
during this time jobs became available yet these jobs were all of the lower income type. The ideal living
conditions for one is living and working in the same area, but due the fact that these new jobs were lower
income these living conditions were either not available or too expensive. Therefore they were either
forced to commute to work or give up these jobs and look for lower paying jobs in their district.
The work force of Marin county is divided between the people who live in Marin and the people
who live outside of Marin; this is a 4:6 ratio(Marins Struggle to House Its Workforce is Making Already
Bad Traffic Worse). This mean that 60,000 people are commuting to Marin in the morning and back to
their home district every day; forcing them to spend their already limited resources on gas. Idealy this
commute would not be necessary, but due to the limited housing in Marin and lack of jobs elsewhere in
the bay area, people in poverty must make a decision on whether or not to make the commute for better
pay and be farther from their families or risk looking for other work nearer to home with jobs that pay
less. As of 2015 the minimum wage in Marin is $13 a hour, this means at 36 hours a week you make
$468, $1872 a month, and $22464 dollars a year and if you divide your yearly salary by three (which is
how much one should spend on their housing) than they would have $7488 a year for housing and $624 a
month for housing. This means if an average a two bedroom apartment costs between 2500$ and 3000$,
this split between two people is 1500$ a month. Recently tenants have been asking for first last and last
months rent and a security deposit, this is triple the cost of the original apartment. Making renting a house
nearly impossible and forcing people to live in less than ideal conditions.
Marin is very famous for its open space and many measures have been taking to ensure that
Marins wildlife is preserved. This means that only 15% of the land is developed, causing a constant
struggle to find affordable housing in Marin. Many people have been looking into finding a solution for
this problem. In 2013 there was a proposal to bring BART into Marin for affordable, fast means of

Kavion Dormishian
Sam Kinney
transportation. This was quickly denied by the people of Marin because as they said, We do not want
homeless people coming to Marin(Its the BAY AREA Rapid Transit). In reality this short term solution
would decrease the amount of homeless because, it would allow the homeless that have work but do not
have homes to look for homes elsewhere, keep their jobs, and commute with this new eco-friendly, fast,
reliable, and cheap form of transportation. The other more straightforward solution is for buildings all
around Marin County to be converted from office building that are hardly used to housing units. This
seemed very logical yet the people of Marin thought that this would bring big ghettos of the inner city
sort to their pristine neighborhoods. This would do the opposite. This would bring all the people doing the
hard hands on work to Marin. This would greatly impact the community in a positive way by making less
traffic havings better homes for everyone who works in Marin. Lastly, this would help these homeless and
people with low paying jobs by giving their children the opportunity to go to one of the many good public
schools in Marin County and prevent the circle of poverty from repeating itself.

As seen, housing in Marin for the lower working class is nearly impossible. People are just not
making enough money to pay rent for their apartments causing them to find cheaper locations either in
Marin, which are sparse, or relocate to a city outside of Marin with cheaper living conditions. Yet in the
near future this could be possible with support from the cities and the upper class of Marin.

Works Cited:
Burd-Sharps, Sarah & Kirsten Lewis. A PORTRAIT OF MARIN MARIN COUNTY HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2012. American Human Development Project, 2012.
"Imagine Hopping on BART to Get to Marin County - Curbed's Could Have Been."Curbed SF. N.p., n.d.
Web. 31 May 2015.
"Its the BAY AREA Rapid Transit, Except for MarinTheyre Exclusive | The GRID."Global Site Plans.
N.p., n.d. Web. 31 May 2015.

Kavion Dormishian
Sam Kinney
"Marins Struggle to House Its Workforce is Making Already Bad Traffic Worse:." Non-Profit
Housing Association of Northern California. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 May 2015.