Are Feds Fanning Racial Flames in an Affluent, White Calif. County?

Marin County, the affluent Bay Area community outside of San Francisco, is too white, says the Feds. According to data culled from the recent census, Marin County contains seven of the 10 whitest cities in the Bay Area. And to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), that's a problem.

According to the Bay Citizen:

The draft report, released Wednesday, came in response to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s determination that Marin had “failed to comply” with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and two other anti-discrimination statutes.

Marin’s Community Development Agency recommended amending zoning regulations to ease the construction of new apartments, passing new laws requiring new developments to offer housing at below-market rates, and stepping up programs to combat discrimination by landlords and realtors.

Chuck Hauptman, HUD’s Regional Director for Fair Housing, said officials were reviewing the plan “to see if it is acceptable as far as content goes.”

According to this video report from KPIX, Marin County officials are scrambling to make more of an effort to reach out to minorities:

But is there really a race-related problem in Marin County?

Barbara Westerhoff, the Marin County resident you see below, seems surprised by these pronouncements implying that her community is racially insensitive. Westerhoff  lives in an affordable housing complex and she says, "We've never ever had a problem. I walk down the streets, people say good morning to me. I feel so fortunate."

Meanwhile, another Marin County resident, Nancy Reed, says that something is wrong with the racial make-up of Marin County. "I pick up my grand son, I take him to school. I see maybe four Latino children there, and one African American--two maybe...that's--something's wrong...why they're [the county officials] not doing more? Now they have to be forced to do more."

Marin County has now promised "to do more" as Reed said.