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Marin City was built during World War Two as housing for people who came to California to work in the shipyard. Its residents are now nearly all black, with incomes at or below the poverty level, and most live in federally subsidized low rent housing. Despite the frequent

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problems of being an island of the poor in a wealthy Marin county, the residents want to expand and someday incorporate, but they have run into a bureaucratic wall. It centers on the Choice Ridge lands that surround the community. Under a complicated arrangement with the Marin County

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Redevelopment Agency and the federal government, 160 acres of the Ridge Land was sold 10 years ago to a New York developer, provided he built low cost housing in the flatlands. The whole project was financed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But the project has

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been stagnant for a number of years, and residents say most of the details of the agreement were unknown to them last night, and agreement was reached with local officials that would free the developer to build housing above Marin City on the hilltops that a vastly increased

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in value. Marin City residents say that would undermine their right of self determination. They fear an influx of high income residents who would raise the tax base with high priced homes would also dictate policies of the community. Current residents have formed the development company of their

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own one year old Marin Urban Development Associates, or Muta, and want to buy the Highlands themselves. Today, an irate group of Marines City residents converged on Hut offices in San Francisco to demand purchase rights. They say that since HUD has spent more than a million dollars

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on the low cost housing in Marin City and the developer as only half finished what was promised, the developer should be in default and the land should revert to the residents. But officials then provided a meeting room, one official said. If the controversy continues, all government

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housing in Marin City may be closed down. When residents said they would risk that program director Julian Fits you, explained HUD's position. Our position is for is the Richland is concerned. If they want the Ridgeland and Mr Cal Development is willing to sell the Richland to

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them. That's fun. We have no objection to that, but it's the price they have to pay for it. Are you saying that Hood is out of that kind of? Yes, we're not. We're not a party to the rich land agreement. Mhm. We should have some say

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as to the kind of housing which will meet the needs of young people who are now at the colleges and universities. Young families who cannot be housed and who are not a part of the original statistics for which the existing housing was built under the present

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agreements are housed were under housed under the present agreement. Are you excluded from participation in the planning and development of reasonable doubt beyond a reasonable doubt, we excluded by rich of the fact that we have to build housing on the top of the hill, which is

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of a price that most of our citizens could not be, would not be able to afford. All the agencies involved in the dispute seem to agree that Marin City residents should have a say in what happens to the land they say threatens their existence. The problem

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is that nobody has come up with a solution that satisfies all parties. Until that happens, the fight over the choice lands that bottom or in city threatens to be a long and costly one. Ben Williams reporting for eyewitness news from Marin City