She was fighting developers through a group called the Freeman Park Neighborhood Association. It has transformed into a larger organization called the Friends of Mill Valley, and a group called Citizen Marin. In 2016, Kirsch, who made a name for himself through activism, ran for the Marin County Supervisory Board. She lost 42 percent of the votes.
“We are all confused.”
Looking back, 2016 was another kind of turning point. It marked the beginning of a state law blitz that forced the city to accept higher density neighborhoods in the form of backyard units. Duplex After the state reformed its long-standing planning process to increase the number of growing cities, it can no longer be banned by local governments and will be even denser in the future. Need to plan.. To ensure that the city actually complies, Governor Gavin Newsom recently saidAccountability and enforcement unit“A kind of NIMBY patrol that monitors whether the area is approving new homes.
Ask planners and policy makers how this happened, and they point out a series of dull but important bills. However, they transferred housing power from the city council to state bureaucrats and local planning and construction departments. This is intended to ensure that activists like Kirsch do not have a significant impact on the approval of new homes.
Also, from 2018 to 2020, there was relatively little coverage and debate, as most of the attention was drawn to a series of more extreme bills proposed by San Francisco State Senator Scott Wiener. There were various forms of bills. However, regardless of local rules, California cities would have been forced to allow 4- to 8-story buildings within a mile from train stations and bus stops.
“I’m a former local elected civil servant and former president of a neighborhood association. I have a lot of faith in decision-making at the local level and those who are passionate about the community,” Wiener said in an interview. Said. “But we’re crossing a cliff and we couldn’t produce the housing we needed, whatever the benefits of local decision making, although there are real benefits.”
One afternoon in 2018, after Wiener traveled to San Francisco to hear him talk about his plans at the police station, Kirsh and a group of ferocious attendees left the meeting for a nearby restaurant, where they Established an organization called Revable California. The purpose was to bring the fight for local government to the State Capitol.