IN THE MOST UPLIFTING tone possible, several Marin City church communities gathered Wednesday for a first ever unified New Year’s Eve celebration, bidding goodbye to a year of setbacks felt by the historically Black community. The community saw the imposition of yet another affordable housing development and federal attacks on diversity initiatives.
“We sit here, and we celebrate, but to be honest with you the reason we really had this service is because it’s been a hard year,” said Rev. Floyd Thompkins of Saint Andrew Presbyterian Church. Thompkins was one of four religious leaders that spoke from the pulpit at the First Missionary Baptist Church as the congregation sang spirituals and prayed for their leaders and children.
“Up looks like down, down looks like up,” said Thompkins, referring to the Trump administration. “We’ve got an orange man trying to make things worse. We’ve got a bizarre group of folks who don’t even think they ought to govern, and we’ve got an economy that he says is getting better. Not in my house.”
With 27% Black residents, the unincorporated town of just over 3,500 people is one of the densest African American communities in the Bay Area. Marin City was built as wartime worker housing for the Marinship shipyard. After WWII, white workers largely left while Black workers were blocked from buying homes elsewhere by restrictive covenants and redlining, with the 296-unit Golden Gate Village public housing project formalized in 1961.
Beginning in February, people will be temporarily relocated from 88 units of Golden Gate Village in the first phase of a much-needed renovation, but the disruption has heightened anxieties over housing.
The area is at a high risk of renter displacement and eviction, according to research by the Urban Displacement Project in the Institute of Governmental Studies at University of California, Berkeley. About 69% of residents are rent burdened, spending over a third of their household income on rent and utilities.
“San Rafael got all the help when it comes to mental illness,” said church member Lisa Mack, who is starting a healing group through her church ministry. “You don’t have that kind of support here in Marin City.”
Mack said one of the biggest setbacks of 2025 was the loss of an open public space to an affordable housing development, in a community that already has a lot of low-income housing.
The five-story apartment building originally proposed at 825 Drake Ave. was too tall. It blocked the view for low-income seniors living in a group home behind it.
It was approved during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the neighborhood was distracted by the health crisis, and it was the subject of two lawsuits and years of protests. A final compromise cut the 74-unit project down to 42 units, with the remainder of units going to another location in the county.
“I think what it did more than anything is that there wasn’t a community consensus about that going up,” said Bishop Johnathan Logan Sr. of the Cornerstone Community Church of God in Christ after the service. “When it was approved, it didn’t take into account all of the people that perhaps were objecting to it.”
We’ve got an orange man trying to make things worse… we’ve got an economy that he says is getting better. Not in my house.
Rev. Floyd Thompkins, referring to the challenges under the Trump administration
The Drake Avenue project was the first application in the county for ministerial approval under a 2017 state law that sets in place a purely administrative process. In other words, the process automatically streamlines approval for affordable housing projects that check all the boxes on legal requirements, rather than the permit decision being left to the discretion of local governments and communities.
Threats to Black cultural identity went national in 2025. In January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order gutting federal programs that support diversity, equity and inclusion, characterizing them as “dangerous, demeaning and immoral.”
Cuts to safety net programs followed. By July, congress had passed a spending bill that dramatically reduced funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food assistance to older people, the disabled and low-income households.
Put a ‘yet’ on it
Thompkins offered solace to the crowd with a biblical verse from the book of Habakkuk:
“Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines; though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food; though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls — Yet, I rejoice in the Lord.”
Thompkins emphasized that the term “yet” is an attitude that can be applied to positive thinking as Marin City residents look ahead in the new year.
“If your circumstances don’t change, you can put a ‘yet’ on that, and things can change,” he said. “Even when your bank account don’t have the right number of zeros on it, you could put a ‘yet’ on it.”
