Bay Area Housing Element Tool Kit

June 2008


By law, every city and county in California must adopt a Housing Element as part of its General Plan. The purpose of the Housing Element is to ensure that local governments adequately plan to meet the housing needs of all people within the community—regardless of their income. The underlying premise of Housing Element law is that, for the private market to adequately address housing needs and demand, local governments must adopt land use plans and regulatory systems which provide opportunities for, and do not unduly constrain, housing development.

In the Bay Area, local governments must complete revisions to their Housing Elements by June 30, 2009. The Housing Element Tool Kit is designed to be a resource to help local government staff as they work their way through the update process. Our goal is not duplicate information that is already available, but instead to provide a single location for accessing those resources.

The Tool Kit builds upon the ideas and strategies presented in ABAG's Blueprint 2001: Housing Element Ideas and Solutions, Bay Area Housing. It also includes links to a wide variety of online resources: those provided by the State Department of Housing and Community Development, local and state housing advocacy organizations, and tips and best practices from local governments around the Bay Area. We invite you to contribute. Send us your links, success stories, and tools that have helped your community.

Planning for Change in a Changing World encourages planners to think of the Housing Element Update process as a needed catalyst to ensure that the Bay Area becomes "Intelligently More Urban" over the next 50 years. This can be accomplished not by asking what Bay Area communities want to change now, but what sorts of challenges Bay Area communities can anticipate in the short and long term and how to best meet those challenges. How and where we house our future will be of critical importance.

For starters, here's an excerpt from 2001: 10 Tips to Developing a Successful Housing Element.

  1. Ensure Meaningful Participation. Use the Housing Element process to identify and understand community housing needs, challenge people’s stereotypes about affordable housing, engage residents and stakeholders in identifying housing opportunities, and build a community consensus in support of local housing programs.
  2. Agree on the Goals. Local land use controls, development regulations, and procedural requirements often result in unintended obstacles to achieving community goals. Begin by understanding and documenting your community’s housing needs. Then agree on what it is you want to accomplish, and make sure that local controls, regulations, and requirements will help achieve your goals, providing as much flexibility as possible to support creative solutions.
  3. Identify Sites. One of the most important roles of local government is to ensure that adequate and appropriate sites are designated for residential use, including infill sites, reuse/redevelopment sites, mixed use sites, and vacant land.
  4. Increase Densities. The number of units that can be built on a unit of land has a significant impact on housing affordability. Increase residential densities to promote housing affordability for all income levels, especially in and around commercial centers and in areas served by transit.
  5. Focus on Design. Design is a critical component in successful affordable housing developments. The many “success stories” presented in Blueprint 2001 all have one thing in common, regardless of their density: they are well-designed and “fit in” with their surroundings.
  6. Learn from the Past. Build on past successes, and learn from past mistakes. Draw upon the experiences and “best practices” of other communities, and make sure that each Housing Element update is an improvement on the previous.
  7. Develop Partnerships. Successful housing solutions require working partnerships with community residents, non-profit and for-profit housing developers, housing advocates, financial institutions, and other interest groups. Solutions increasingly require multi-jurisdictional coordination and cooperation to address sub-regional issues and provide real, workable strategies. Involve partners in collecting data, identifying needs, and developing strategies for action.
  8. Provide Financial Support. A number of financial tools are available to local governments and private developers to support affordable housing development. Explore the options, seek assistance from regional housing experts, and identify the funds to support local affordable housing efforts.
  9. Call on the Experts. The Bay Area is home to some of the country’s most successful and innovative nonprofit housing developers and affordable housing groups. Pick up the phone and give them a call.
  10. Be Persistent. No single housing strategy will be successful in and of itself, and almost every strategy will have some opposition. Adopt a comprehensive approach and be committed to long-term implementation.

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Association of Bay Area Governments | 101 Eighth St. Oakland CA 94607 | (510)464-7900 | info@abag.ca.gov