Institute of Urban and Regional Development

The Center for Community Innovation is assessing both the social and individual benefits of second units as well as their potential to accommodate future housing needs in the East Bay.

Berg oversees the City of Santa Cruz’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund and Inclusionary Housing Program as well as the HUD CDBG and HOME Programs. In 2003 Berg developed Santa Cruz’s Accessory Dwelling Unit Program, which won national APA, AI and EPA awards.

California will need an unprecedented amount of new housing construction -— more than 200,000 units per year through 2020 -- if it is to accommodate projected population and household growth and still be reasonably affordable. California will need more suburban housing, more infill housing, more ownership housing, more rental housing, more affordable housing, more senior housing, and more family housing. California will also need more diverse housing, and more diverse neighborhoods. California's high land and construction costs, coupled with the cumbersome and open-ended nature of the local entitlements process, have served to discourage innovative land planning, site design, and building design. While there are few intrinsic limitations to meeting California's future housing needs, the core of the existing housing production system is too fragmented and haphazard to produce the volume and quality of housing needed. This applies to the laws and procedures that govern housing development, the funding and lending programs, and the myriad public, private, and non-profit organizations that produce and operate housing in California. If indeed California is to remain a state where people from all backgrounds and walks of life are able to pursue the American dream of homeownership and secure housing tenure, then substantial investment and innovation in housing development policy, financing, and planning will be required.

Over seven weeks in the East Bay Business Times, the Work Force Housing Committee, sponsored by the Business Times, published its recommendations for alleviating the East Bay’s shortage of affordable housing. The committee’s members included many of the Bay Area’s top experts on housing policy. In the final installment of the series on March 5, 2004, the committee summarized its findings in 10 key recommendations. The committee determined that these steps would do the most to eliminate obstacles to the construction of affordable housing in the East Bay and throughout California. Also included in the report are the committee’s weekly commentaries exploring the origins and potential solutions to the housing affordability crisis.

This study examines the potential for individuals trapped in dead-end jobs in the service economy to cross the Digital Divide into jobs in the knowledge economy. The conventional wisdom is that the lack of human capital entraps workers in dead-end jobs, unable to capitalize on the demand for high-skilled labor in an increasingly networked -- and exclusive -- society. Other approaches focus on the demand side, suggesting that information technology (IT) itself acts to exacerbate societal divisions and ultimately income inequality, particularly in high-tech regions. IT not only drives the bifurcation of the economy into high-end knowledge analyst and low-skill service jobs, but also creates a new networked system of economic organization that has few access points for those who are "switched off." The implication is that as globalization accelerates and IT jobs shift offshore, these patterns of bifurcation, inequality, and job inaccessibility will only grow worse.

The author argues instead that a low-wage future is not inevitable for disadvantaged groups. The downskilling of IT work, along with the rise of workforce intermediaries, creates an opportunity to move large numbers of low-wage workers into jobs with a career ladder, particularly at the peak of the business cycle. Although some entry-level work is disappearing offshore, the economy still offers opportunities for jobseekers with little college education to work in IT. Nonprofit training programs in the "second-chance" employment and training system play an important role in making the transition possible for those whom the educational system has failed. The majority of training program graduates remain in IT four years later, with a clear career trajectory ahead.

This report reviews transit-linked development in over two dozen U.S. cities, the history of joint development, and the evolving role of the Federal Transit Administration (formerly the Urban Mass Transit Administration). The report attempts to classify and catalogue existing joint-development projects by size, type, location, and year of completion. Included as an appendix are brief descriptions of the more than one hundred existing U.S. joint-development projects. An analysis was made on the financial impact joint development has had on the capital budgets of transit agencies that pursue joint development and the policy framework in which it occurs.

In addition, the study presents the results of a survey of transit officials responsible for negotiating joint development agreements and their appraisal of its effect on their agency's operating and financial performance as well as other goals.

Finally, the study uses quasi-experimental and multi-regression analysis to measure the effects of joint development and transit service on commercial real estate market performance indicators such as office rents, office absorption rates, and vacancy rates. From the transit side, a similar analysis was done to measure the effects of joint development on system ridership and revenues. These analyses show that transit service and presence of joint development are statistically correlated with unique benefits to the real estate market, namely higher rents, lower vacancy rates, and faster absorption rates.

The study concludes with an assessment of the institutional and market conditions necessary for successful joint development and recommendations to FTA for promoting and facilitating local joint-development efforts.