Mill Valley
A small town with a big heart
Our workers—whether they be teachers, school staff, first responders, city employees, small business owners, health care workers, restaurant and retail employees, creative artists or others—deserve to be supported as valued citizens and members of our small town with a big heart.
Community Housing Foundation of Mill Valley
Mission
Our mission is to help people who work in Mill Valley affordably live in Mill Valley.
What we do
The Community Housing Foundation of Mill Valley provides grant funding to offer partial rent subsidies to qualifying local workers to help make rent more affordable in Mill Valley. We work in partnership with Home Match, an affiliated program of Front Porch, to administer the rental support program. CHFMV is a qualified 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (EIN# 86-2744257).
How much does it cost to live in Mill Valley?
THE CHALLENGE
Mill Valley’s Housing Crisis
Mill Valley is a city of approximately 15,000 people located in Marin County, immediately north of San Francisco. Housing is expensive, with a 2024 median single family home sales figure of about $1.7 million, and the average rent for a one bedroom apartment is $2,800/month requiring an annual income of $112,000 to be considered affordable, well above the income of the average person employed in Mill Valley. As a result, most of Mill Valley employees must commute long distances to their place of employment.
New state laws require cities and counties to expand local housing at all income levels. Mill Valley is essentially already “built out”, with little to no available space to build new housing. The Community Housing Foundation of Mill Valley was created to support community wide solutions to the current housing crisis.
How many Mill Valley workers are impacted?
THE SOLUTION
Community Housing Foundation
The Community Housing Foundation of Mill Valley (CHFMV) was founded in 2020 to establish a local and neighborhood-based response to housing needs affecting the larger Mill Valley and surrounding Marin County community. Our founders were interested in affordable housing solutions that have broad community support and are also economically fair and viable and environmentally sustainable. After a great deal of research and extensive review of many affordable housing models strategies, we adopted the priority of raising funds to provide rental assistance to members of the Mill Valley workforce who cannot afford to work and live in Mill Valley.
Our Core Belief
Every city big or small has a civic duty to provide an adequate supply of affordable housing for its local workers through the creative use of its municipal powers and collaborative partnerships with private and non-profit organizations.
IMPLEMENTATION
Grants as a Solution
We began raising funds for our rental assistance program in 2021. Our initial donor target group was a local Mill Valley neighborhood association. We raised approximately $400,000 in pledges and donations which have been committed to rent support grants.
The Front Porch/Home Match Communities Foundation serves as prime grantee and implementing agency for our Home Match Mill Valley Workforce Rental Assistance Program. Our priority is workforce housing, and our rental support program is up and running now to meet workforce housing needs.
