Activists Battle Marin Charity

John Ortega says not to be fooled by the scenic beauty of San Rafael’s canal district in tony Marin County. Just look inside the rows of cramped apartments, he says, and you’ll appreciate the plight of Latino laborers who can’t afford decent housing in one of California’s richest regions.

By day, 30,000 Latinos work as maids, gardeners and baby-sitters in an area with a median home price of $600,000. Each night, many return to the crowded canal district, where several families often share tiny apartments that command monthly rents of $2,000 or more.

“It’s like one giant human hamburger there, everyone stacked on top of each other,” said Ortega, acting director of the Canal Human and Ecological Development Assn. “There are Mexicans, Colombians, Salvadorans--some paying $200 a month to sleep on the floor.”

On Thursday, Ortega and other activists accused a massive Marin charity of running a monopoly that has shut out minority concerns such as the need for more affordable housing. The Marin Community Foundation, with $1.2 billion in assets, has ignored its mission to aid disadvantaged residents, the activists charged, choosing instead to embrace area environmental causes.

Barging into a National Philanthropy Day luncheon here, activists handed out fliers that read “Message from 11 million Latinos: The Marin Community Foundation Ignores Latinos and National Philanthropic Goals.”

An official with the Marin Community Foundation said the group has pitched in tens of millions of dollars for affordable housing causes and was being unfairly singled out.

But the scene was just one of the almost daily front-line skirmishes in California’s increasingly bitter battle over affordable housing, with growing frustration in several areas over how the state’s most affluent residents deal with its most destitute immigrants.

Activist groups, including the San Francisco-based Greenlining Institute, say they have been rebuffed in urging the foundation to commit $150 million to design a 10-year strategic plan for affordable housing in the wealthy county.

Currently, Greenlining officials say, the foundation awards six times more money in grants to environmental causes than to low-cost housing for Latinos who “endure Third World conditions, inadequate health care and infringements on their immigrant rights.”

Greenlining Institute officials say they support smaller Marin County Latino nonprofit groups that fear they will lose any chance at funding if they dare criticize the larger foundation.

“We want to get the word to the philanthropic community that one of their counterparts is ignoring its mission,” said Orson Aguilar, a senior Greenlining program manager. “Pressure can come from one’s peers--even if you’re a billion-dollar foundation.”

Robert Gnaizda, the institute’s policy director, said the Marin foundation has in effect told them to mind their own business, responding in a letter that “we are not persuaded that a group from San Francisco or elsewhere is needed to intermediate our community’s discussions.”

Thomas Peters, the foundation’s president and chief executive officer, said that in the last two years, the foundation has donated $80 million to Marin County causes.

While the trust does not keep track of the amount donated to ethnic causes, he estimated it had donated “tens of millions” to affordable housing--including $10 million just weeks ago.

“People say we’re so enamored with the environmental elite that we’ve forgotten poor Latinos, and nothing could be further from the truth,” Peters said. “The notion of sending in essence a demand letter for us to allocate any amount of dollars, not to mention an extraordinary amount, is amazing.

“I don’t know of any community foundation that operates that way. That’s not how we work.”

Tom Wilson, executive director of the Canal Community Alliance, a nonprofit that aids the poor, says the criticism of the Marin Community Foundation is off base.

“The foundation will be the subject of controversy here until the end of time,” he said. “They’re a huge trust with a lot of money and everybody wants some of it.”

Wilson, who says he receives 40% of his annual $1.6-million budget from the Marin Community Foundation, says that contribution doesn’t stop him from speaking out.

“I’m the biggest mouth in town about racism,” he said. “But these people are creating all kinds of needless fissures that don’t help the Latino community. It only sets up a destructive dynamic.”

After briefly distributing leaflets inside the luncheon, the activists were moved outside by hotel security. Some participants said the event was the wrong forum for the political message on the group’s green fliers and tossed them aside.

“It’s controversial when people look for a piece of the philanthropy pie only to find they’re not on the list,” said Nathan Nayman, executive director of the San Francisco-based Committee on Jobs. “But the fact is there’s not enough money for everyone. And every foundation has its own criteria and they have to stay fast to that.”

Others supported the activists.

“I think they have every right to be here,” said Peter Henschel, a former San Francisco deputy mayor under Dianne Feinstein and chairman of the board for the Berkeley Symphony, who has sat on numerous philanthropic boards. “Community foundations have great responsibilities to pay attention to the needs of minorities.”

Margot Segura of the Hispanic Education and Media Group said the 13-year-old Sausalito nonprofit was in danger of folding for lack of funding. Minimal support from the Marin Community Foundation could go far in helping the group provide vocation training for low-income Latinos, she said.

“Can you imagine a day without Latinos in Marin County? The place would shut down,” she said. “There’d be nobody to garden, nobody to make the beds or take care of the babies.”

She said 70% of service jobs are performed by Latinos, but wealthy residents--including members of the Marin Community Foundation--don’t see the need to help the needy educate themselves.

“We’re invisible here,” she said. “They suck the marrow out of us with their menial work. People say, ‘You live in Marin, you must be OK.’ Well, we’re not. We need help from the big players like the Marin Community Foundation.”