Marin IJ Readers’ Forum for Dec. 18, 2022

Housing Authority dismissed better plan

I am concerned about the Marin Housing Authority’s plan for renovation of Marin City’s Golden Gate Village public housing community. It will sell the property to a limited partnership consisting of a developer and investors. They will get the benefit of the low-income housing tax credits. So will the MHA (which will have a 1% interest). Despite promises from housing authority leaders, it ultimately won’t be required to be answerable to the Marin voters or the tenants.

In addition, this decision precludes the residents from owning the property, which they have said was their goal since presenting their proposal for a Limited Equity Housing Cooperative to the authority. It leaves out an opportunity for the mostly Black community to achieve self-determination — to have control over their own housing and community.

The Resident Council’s plan, created with a pro bono strategy team of experts, was rejected out of hand because of a belief that it could not obtain funding. The Resident Council’s plan included a mortgage insured by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (available only to housing co-ops), state cap-and-trade funds, private foundations and HUD grants for “green” construction. Seemingly without any further investigation, these sources were deemed speculative. The Housing Authority’s own sources of funding through tax credits and loans were not questioned.

MHA’s claims that a significant part of its plan is the involvement of residents in choosing a developer and many other aspects of management. Many citizens of Marin will be watching to see if this promise is kept.

— Mary Morgan, Point Reyes Station

Solar panel owners are not exploiting anybody

This is a follow-up to Susannah Saunders’ excellent Marin Voice commentary on the California Public Utilities Commission solar reform plan supported by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (“New proposal to reform rooftop solar incentives bad for California,” Dec. 5).

Some say that solar panel owners make a ton of money on their system, resell their power to PG&E at a huge profit and get a payback on their investment within only six years. But according to my research, that is a myth. The economics of solar panels are not so attractive, especially when you include a battery that just about doubles your costs. I have one of those.

Even after tax credits, the system costs me 22 times my annual energy bill. So, my starting payback is 22 years. But the battery won’t last much longer than 10 years. Soon after that, I will have to replace it. That would extend the payback another 10 years or more until that second battery needs replacing.

Solar panel owners make very little money on reselling power to PG&E. The latter pays the solar panel owners only 3 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) on the surplus electricity they resell to PG&E.

Meanwhile, PG&E customers can participate in the Power Saver Rewards Program and earn $2 per kWh by saving energy during the summer months. The rewards program, as structured, makes it most unlikely that solar panel owners will benefit. It sounds like PG&E is paying regular customers a price per kWh for conservation that is 67 times higher than what they pay solar panel owners for supply.

— Gaetan Lion, Mill Valley

Marin residents must face dire realities of situation

Forget the ideologies (right, left, woke and everything else). I think the bigger issue for Marin residents is living in an imaginary bubble of “all is just great.” For our own good, it needs to be burst.

Since January 2021, our gas prices have skyrocketed and overall inflation is in record numbers. The cost of food, energy, clothes, cars and rent is out of control. Taxes in California are extremely high and overall poor academic performance in our schools is troubling. We have not solved issues with securing our borders, which is not helping the fentanyl crisis killing our youth (an issue hitting home in Marin). I think the federal government spends far too much on housing people who enter the country illegally. It should be prioritizing things like housing for all veterans.

We are on the verge of a world war and China appears to have too much power over U.S. interests. We buy oil from suspect countries while making it too expensive for our own oil fields to open — all in the name of fighting for “the climate.” I worry that corruption at the highest levels of the U.S. government can too easily be dismissed as Russian collusion. We are in deep trouble.

— Rich Cairns, San Rafael