Tiburon sending tweaked housing draft to state

Tiburon’s revised plan to meet state housing-needs mandates still relies heavily on sites downtown — but the town has slashed nearly 100 units from its buffer in an attempt to limit future development in the area to three stories.

The Town Council at its Aug. 31 meeting voted unanimously to submit the draft 2023-2031 housing element to the Housing and Community Development Department for preliminary review with 685 units, down from 777, where 639 is required. The extra identified units help provide a safety net to ensure Tiburon still meets the minimum if the state objects to any portions of the plan.

The final housing element must be certified by the state by Jan. 31, but officials have said Tiburon is unlikely to make that deadline, given the required reviews and responses that need to be completed over the next several months. It’s currently unclear what the consequences of a late submittal may be, though the state has built in a grace period for tardy submissions.

Each city in the state is required to update its housing element every eight years based on an updated regional housing needs assessment that lists the number of market- and below-market-rate units the state says an area must accommodate within each cycle.

In Tiburon, the 639 units in 2023-2031 is up from just 78 in the current cycle. That includes 193 units for very-low-income households, 110 units for low-income households, 93 units for moderate-income households and 243 units for households of above-moderate incomes.

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