Preserving Marin Valley Mobile Country Club as Affordable Senior Housing

Dana Dean, Hanson Bridgett LLP

Some matters and clients just get under your skin and live with you from then on. Such is the case for me with regard to the beautiful community of caring, deeply engaged residents at Marin Valley Mobile Country Club (MVMCC). I have been fortunate enough to represent these folks for the better part of the last year in their to-date successful efforts to save 315 affordable housing units for over 400 senior residents. The residents range in age from 55 to over 100 years old, and the vast majority qualify as low income in Marin County. Many have put their life savings into their homes, which rest on a lovely, somewhat hidden hillside along the San Pablo Bay in Novato.

After a summer of advocacy that at its peak involved 182 organized, articulate (but respectful) senior residents attending City Council night meetings in person, last August the Novato City Council voted to decline a $30million offer from a private for-profit company to purchase the city-owned land where MVMCC is located.

The City of Novato has owned the MVMCC property since 1997. In June 2023, during a live public City Council meeting, the City Council received an unsolicited $30-million purchase offer from a private for-profit developer for the MVMCC property. Facing budget deficits, over the following nine weeks, the City Council met in closed session to discuss the pursuit of the sale and specific sale terms. Dozens of park residents came to every meeting during that time to express their fears of losing their homes, while our team made the case for keeping the park out of for-profit hands and transferring it to the residents.

On August 23, 2023, the City Clerk sent out the announcement: “The Novato City Council has decided not to pursue the offer from HCA to purchase Marin Valley Mobile Country Club."

The decision was hard fought, but ultimately the City Council made the right choice. MVMCC provides an important affordable-housing option for Marin County’s seniors. The park keeps these residents, 80 percent of whom are low income, in a stable and caring community. Through this challenge, everyone, in particular the City Council, came to understand the folks at MVMCC deserved to know that that their own City would not put the homes they’ve put their life savings into at risk.

In the days that followed, a special kind of joy and sense of relief spread throughout the park. I felt great joy myself. Through my 21 years of practicing land use law, I have represented dozens of groups and entities before city councils and all manner of governing bodies. I have never been more impressed with a group's organized advocacy and dedication to their cause. It was hard, hard work but a delight for me to support them.

After that glorious moment in late August, MVMCC and its residents quickly turned their attention to making that moment of security in their homes permanent. The City Council, for its part, created an ad hoc committee to work with MVMCC's non-profit board, known as the Park Acquisition Corporation (PAC), to advance that objective. Since then, we have worked to negotiate an Exclusive Negotiating Agreement (ENA) between the PAC and the City, as both parties work towards the residents' ultimate ownership of the property. The ENA became operative in May. Now, the PAC has the very real opportunity to move forward with due diligence and all necessary steps to bring the goal of selfdetermination to fruition.

It has been my great honor to work with the PAC and all of the MVMCC residents to bring them to this moment of hope and opportunity. I look forward to the day these wonderful folks reach their goal of self-determination.