Territorial Pissings
As mentioned yesterday, cities around the entire bay area are undergoing a Housing Element update. It’s a state mandated process.
Once again, I will rely on the Piedmont staff report, as I can’t sum the process up any more succinctly than they did. Succinct isn’t always one of my strong points!
The state has determined that 243,000 new housing units will be needed between now and 2014. That’s a quarter million new housing units in the Bay Area in the next seven years! Put into perspective, Oakland currently has 160,000 households, so in the next seven years, it’s projected that Bay Area Housing will increased by 150% the current size of Oakland. (now might be a good time to reference my “succinct” comment above)
So where to put all these new households…..hmmmmm?
ABAG creates the numbers using a “mathematical equation that consists of weighted factors “ including:
- Projected household growth (45%)
- Existing employment (22.5%)
- Projected employment growth (22.5%)
- Household growth near transit (5%)
- Employment growth near transit (5%)
The total number of housing units determined for Alameda is 2,046. That’s 116 less than the last round of allocations.
Things get a little wonky at this point, I’ll let Piedmont staff do the heavy lifting:
“The 2007-2014 methodology is designed to equalize income distribution across the region. Income allocations give each jurisdiction 175 percent of the difference between their 2000 household income and the region’s 2000 household income. The practical effect is to assign a high share of low and very low income units to the region’s affluent communities and a high share of above moderate income units to its less affluent communities.
For instance, 36 percent of Oakland’s households were in the very low income category in 2000. Applying ABAG’s formula, their RHNA assignment places just 13 percent of the city’s 2007-2014 “needs” in the very low income category. By contrast, 9 percent of Piedmont’s households were in the very low income category in 2000; the resulting RHNA assignment for 2007-2014 is 33 percent.”
For Alameda, here’s the breakdown:
|
1999-2006 |
2007-2014 |
||||
| % of Total | % of Total | Regional Need (%) | |||
| Very Low |
443 |
20% |
482 |
24% |
23% |
| Low |
265 |
12% |
329 |
16% |
16% |
| Moderate |
611 |
28% |
392 |
19% |
19% |
| Above Moderate |
843 |
39% |
843 |
41% |
42% |
| Total |
2162 |
2046 |
|||
This chart says that Alameda’s current housing stock is pretty much in line with the Bay Area overall distribution, and that we are being asked to maintain that distribution. Put another way, please keep building housing in line with what already exists in Alameda.
One last point on these numbers, Cities have the ability to transfer their “allotments” to other receptive cities. But there’s a catch:
“the transfers must be pro-rated by income so that the overall distribution in each city remains constant (in other words, a city is prohibited from transferring only the lower income portion of its assignment).”
So now the discussion turns to “How dare a regional agency tell Alameda how many housing units it needs to build” but that’s a story for another day.
References:
1999-2006 housing numbers: ABAG
2007-2014 housing numbers: ABAG (page 19)
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