JUST NORTH OF SAUSALITO lies one of the longest-lasting and historically important African American neighborhoods in the Bay Area. Sustaining the Black community in Marin City would protect a living piece of American history that dates back more than 80 years.
In the Nov. 3 election, the people of Marin City could seize an opportunity to frame their own narrative and pursue a progressive vision for Black public space. With a culture-first approach to Black architecture, a new board could define Marin City as a magnet for Black talent and an expression of Black resilience and Black joy.
The Marin City Community Services District is a special local government entity that manages the neighborhood’s public spaces and some city services. It is also the only form of elected representation for the unincorporated community and the locus of civic dialogue.
All 10 candidates running for the district board are Black. Some of them hold fond memories of the tight-knit community that bonded there in the post-World War II years. Black Marinship workers and families remained in temporary military housing for a full generation after the shipyard closed. While other workers purchased homes in neighboring suburbs, Black workers were geographically contained by race-restrictive real estate covenants.
“This election is a big deal,” said Marin County Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters, whose district includes Marin City. “They haven’t had this many candidates running in a very long time, so that’s a positive sign.”
In a midterm election, where hundreds of Bay Area races are uncontested, this tiny district at the grassroots of power demonstrates a community’s political will to define its own culture.
Earlier this month, candidates participated in a debate at the First Missionary Baptist Church. They are Sarah Canson, Kevin Douglas, Terrie Harris Green, Angela Haynes, Beatra Hall, Eboni McKinley, Royce McLemore, Derek Morgan, Capri Price and Latanya Wiggins, who was the only contender not present.
Questions centered around issues of transparency, equity, inclusion and community-building. The threat of gentrification, displacement and lost cultural identity underscored nearly every answer.
“In years to come, people won’t even know that people of color have ever lived here,” said 48-year resident McKinley to the question of building a history museum on the campus. “Having a place where our history is restored is very important to me.”
Price, a mother who wants to expose her children to Black culture, agreed.
“I don’t like going to Sausalito to teach my kids about Marin City,” she said, noting later that her neighbors also include Latinos, whites and Asians who should also have a sense of belonging.
“I feel like they feel like they don’t have a place here, and that’s another problem,” she said.
The MCCSD owns a 1-acre public park and a 4-acre public campus. The buildings on the campus include a gymnasium, senior center, teen center and a shuttered 19th-century Portuguese farmhouse. There are no local shops or cultural sites within the neighborhood. The closest cafe is a Starbucks in a shopping mall next to U.S. Highway 101.
In this year’s state budget, there is $3.3 million earmarked for the district to use for gymnasium maintenance, design, renovations and planning. Moulton-Peters said the county has been working to support the MCCSD.
“Not to supplant it, not to take over, but just to make resources available to them and technical expertise as they work through this whole renovation of their building,” she said.
Marin City: A city in name only
There is no mayor or council in Marin City. The unincorporated district north of Sausalito faces Richardson Bay. It is 15 minutes across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco and borders the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
That connection to the land has inspired productive community gardens, and healthy vegetables are shared among residents whose only other choice might be boxed food at a discount grocery in the shopping center. Every night, wild deer descend from the national forest into a neighborhood orchard.
Marin City’s proximity to the city and nature has raised property values, resulting in higher home costs and gentrification.
“We need to find a way to help people in the community buy those houses instead of selling them to the highest bidder,” said Canson, who has served on the board since 2025. “All the Black people that originally own these houses sold them out to people that weren’t of color.”
New homes and apartment buildings have sprouted in recent years, including an affordable multifamily building that was opposed by the community but approved under new state housing laws.
Haynes said there were a lot of new buildings popping up, and it felt like a whole new community was being invited in.
“If we take a look at the housing that’s being built, it’s all being built to displace us,” said Green. Green is a 76-year-old native whose parents moved to Marin City from Texas during the Great Migration, along with tens of thousands of other Blacks fleeing the Jim Crow South.
“The way I see it, we lose 65 to 75 Black residents yearly,” said Morgan, who is a third-generation Marin City resident.
Marin County is predominantly white and wealthy. Only 2% of county residents are Black, according to a 2024 American Community Survey, while 33% of Marin City’s 3,000 residents are Black.
U.S. Census data shows the Black population in Marin City decreased from 43% in 2010 to 30% in 2020. Household income for nearly half of Marin City residents was under $50,000, with a median household income of $58,901.
Forty-seven percent of seniors, age 65 and older, live below the poverty line, and 67% of housing units are occupied by renters. A third of residents have attended some college, with 12% holding bachelor’s degrees. Twenty-one percent of Marin City residents hold a post-graduate degree.
The largest regular source of revenue for the MCCSD is local property taxes, about $412,000 in fiscal year 2026, but many of the district’s properties are tax exempt.
Marin City has the highest concentration of affordable and public housing in the unincorporated county, according to Sarah Jones, director of the Marin County Community Development Agency. That is mostly due to the presence of the tax-exempt 300-unit public housing project called Golden Gate Village, and the fact that Marin City was a tax-incentivized redevelopment area from 1974 to 2011.
“Every apartment building in Marin City is tax-free,” Canson said. “Somebody once told me that’s how you make a ghetto.”
According to the Marin Assessor-Recorder-County Clerk, there are 500 parcels within the special district. Some parcels are large and contain multiple apartment buildings. Twenty parcels are government-owned and not subject to property taxation, and 18 parcels receive a property tax exemption. Limited tax income has left the district dependent on grants.
“I say if you’re looking for a hand, you’ll find one at the end of your wrist,” said Douglas, who has lived in Marin City for 65 years. “We’ve got to get off the grant hamster wheel. We are begging for money.”
Douglas suggested providing a waste and recycling service, like the neighboring Tamalpais Community Services District.
The special district
A board seat on the MCCSD pays $1,500 a year, according to 2025 data from the California State Controller’s Office. In addition to being the local park and recreation department, the MCCSD is responsible for waste collection and lighting. Police, fire and public works services are provided by the county.
The special district was established in 1958, the same year architects began sketches for Golden Gate Village. With 29 buildings and an extensive landscape design, the development was created by the federal government to replace the World War II-era Marinship housing. Beginning this summer, the village is undergoing a massive renovation. Black residents are having to move out to temporary spaces and rely on promises to return.
Price, a resident of Golden Gate Village, said she is running because she thought the board should have some young people who can be heard and not be overshadowed by another generation.
Hall, who works in the Marin City Library, said the board might want to include a white person for a different perspective.
“Possibly someone that can open up doors,” Hall said. “Some people don’t listen to an all-Black board. Some people don’t take it seriously.”
According to the state controller, the district has 35 employees, with a budget of $605,000 for wages and $105,000 for benefits. The general manager is the highest-paid employee at a salary of $93,600. A maintenance position earns the second-highest salary at $57,200.
One of the first priorities of the new board will be hiring a new general manager, who oversees properties and a range of educational, recreational and civic programs.
“We know we need someone with a governmental background, that’s very clear, someone with a fiscal background,” said Green, stressing the importance of knowing how to work with the Marin County Board of Supervisors.
“That person should be walking around making sure the building is OK,” Canson said.
The district’s average annual budget is about $1.7 million. Revenue is drawn from property taxes, waste collection fees, building rental fees, investments and a portion of increased tax revenue generated at the Marin Gateway Shopping Center.
“One thing that is depressing for me is that we have 17 nonprofit organizations here and not one Black business in our shopping center,” said McKinley, who moved to California in 1978 and has served on the Marin Women’s Commission for 20 years.
Green mentioned that she helped secure about $15 million for flood protection efforts by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as well as $10 million toward a temporary pump station that keeps the main access road open during king tides and seasonal flooding.
The MCCSD is lagging on its paperwork. It was one of 11 Marin County districts and local agencies cited in a 2025 civil grand jury report for missing or late audits and financial reports.
The State Controller’s Office recently confirmed the receipt of MCCSD’s required financial transaction reports for fiscal years 2021-22 and 2023-24, but the district has not yet submitted reports for fiscal years 2022-23 or 2024-25.
“They have not had the staffing. That’s why the audits are not complete,” said Moulton-Peters.
The state has earmarked $335,000 to the MCCSD for property maintenance, plus a re-appropriation of $3 million for renovations.
“You are seeing the same $3 million in funding for Marin City CSD in the 25/26 state budget that was first appropriated in 2022,” said Jake Brymner, legislative affairs associate with the Office of the County Executive in an email.
Marin City CSD had not expended the funds by the point the Legislature needed to re-appropriate the funding, so it appeared again in the new state budget, he said.
Creating restorative Black public space
With land, public buildings, urban agriculture, steadfast community leaders, living civil rights memory-keepers, and seed funding from the state, the new board of the MCCSD has the core components needed to pursue a culture-first approach to restorative Black architecture.
Might new Black public spaces involve collaborative, participatory processes that treat residents as co-designers and restore dignity, preserve cultural memory and strengthen collective resilience?
That is the question addressed in a 2026 study by Eric Harris, published in a journal from the global nonprofit Urban Land Institute. Harris examines the social impact of Black modern architecture on communities in Atlanta, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
“Black modernism demonstrates that architecture can function as a restorative instrument within cities shaped by long histories of displacement, disinvestment and racialized extraction,” Harris writes.
“Restorative economies are further advanced through food hubs, markets and urban agricultural centers, as well as circular employment ecosystems in which local construction, maintenance, and programmatic work produce intergenerational economic benefits,” he said.
Finding Black designers to do this work can be challenging, but a network can be found through the National Organization of Minority Architects.
Another organization that takes a culture-first approach to Black community development is New York-based Black Futures Collective. The organization runs an accelerator called Studio KIN, which stands for Kinfolx Imagining Neighborhoods.
“My vision would be to have more for our teens, financial literacy classes, home ownership classes, teaching our kids more homework and after-school study,” said Canson.
Hall advocated for parenting classes, with family-based events that remind parents they are their children’s first teachers.
“I remember when my children were coming up, there was always something at the rec, and it was supervised,” said 85-year-old Marin City civil rights legacy McLemore. She also advocated for more activities for seniors. “You don’t need a lot of money to make it happen, but you need consistency.”
Morgan said he wants the facilities to look like the newly renovated local library.
“It’s pretty,” he said. “They’ve got beautiful colors. It’s inviting. You feel good when you’re in there.”
Green called for a community hall for weddings, big events and conferences.
Canson agreed there should be a Marin City historical museum, with a coffee shop.
“I would cut the stalling,” she added. “I’d cut all the things that stop us from being a better community. I’d cut discussion constantly around rehabilitation when we’re on our third or fourth architect.”
