Marin County has a proven and well-documented need for affordable housing. We need to stop “Waiting for Godot” and provide Marin voters with an opportunity to approve vitally needed funding.

Marin needs affordable housing for farmworkers, low-income seniors and veterans, teachers, nurses, police, firefighters and the myriad of workers who jam roads leading to Marin from Sonoma and Solano counties and the East Bay because they cannot afford to live in Marin. Our county’s more than 1,000 unhoused people need a safe place to at least spend the night, before eventually transitioning to permanent housing.

The California Housing Partnership states that Marin needs an additional 10,000 units of affordable housing.

County officials acknowledge the need, but want to defer to the nine-county Bay Area Housing Finance Authority, which is (endlessly) contemplating putting a regional funding measure on the ballot in all nine Bay Area counties.

Last year, BAHFA deferred the regional funding measure, and for good reason. Polling indicated it would not gain anywhere near the two-thirds approval vote required. There appears little or no likelihood that a regional housing tax measure will appear on the ballot in the near future.

In the famous play “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett, the two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon await the titular Godot, who never arrives.

Marin County should stop waiting for BAHFA (aka “Godot”) and place its own housing finance measure on the 2026 ballot. Marin can afford such a measure. In 2003, the county issued $112 million in bonds to refinance pension debt. These bonds will be paid off in fiscal year 2026-2027. This will free up $13.5 million of general fund revenue which could be used to service a comparable amount of housing bonds.

There are many reasons why a housing finance measure could pass in Marin, while it would resoundingly fail in the Bay Area as a whole.

Marin voters are probably more willing than others in the Bay Area to support affordable housing, due to the plight of farmworkers and the widely recognized unaffordability of Marin for teachers, seniors, firefighters, police and other essential workers, let alone our own children.

The Marin County Board of Supervisors is well regarded. Voters are likely to trust the supervisors to consider community values when picking locations for affordable housing. They may fear that under a BAHFA measure, such values would not receive high priority. Unlike state housing mandates, a local measure could be much more sensitive to community plans when locating affordable housing.

Why 2026? It is important not to place too many expenditure measures before the voters at one time. The Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District will probably ask the voters to extend a sales tax in support in either June or November of 2026. The housing measure could appear on the other 2026 ballot.

In 2028, the county will almost certainly ask the voters to extend the funding for the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority, which expires in 2030.

In 2030, the county will almost certainly ask the voters to extend the sales tax for parks and open space, which expires in 2031.

If the 2026 election window is missed, the next opening on the ballot for a new funding measure will not occur until 2032, with new funding not available until 2033. The Marin workforce housing affordability crisis should not wait an additional 8 years from now.

A Marin County housing funding measure could be placed on the county ballot through the voter initiative process, and can pass with a simple majority. A BAHFA measure would have to pass Bay Area-wide by a clearly unachievable two-thirds vote. If the Marin supervisors indicated support, the many county affordable housing nonprofits could quickly gather enough signatures to place a housing measure on the ballot for the 2026 election.

BAHFA is a fig leaf for inaction on the Marin housing affordability crisis. The odds of Estragon and Vladimir finally meeting Godot are a lot higher than BAHFA successfully passing a Bay Area housing measure.

Marin needs to look after its own housing needs, and not rely on BAHFA to deliver Godot to our doors. The time is now. Let’s get on with it.

Gerald Meral, of Inverness, and has placed 10 initiatives on state and local ballots.