Alameda County, located in the East Bay of the Bay Area, has a population of approximately 1.7 million living in major cities such as Oakland, Berkeley, and Livermore, along with a host of smaller incorporated and unincorporated communities. The County is facing a severe housing affordability crisis.

 

THW was engaged by the County’s Housing & Community Development Department (HCD) in 2023 to provide a comprehensive housing needs assessment, including a summary of current County housing initiatives. This work was intended to move the County forward, building on its successful 2016 voter-approved countywide bond program (“Measure A1”) that raised $425M for permanent affordable housing projects, creating over 4,200 new affordable units. The report also outlined remaining unmet housing needs.

 

The purpose of this work was to set a foundation for a new round of voter-approved bond funds, and to offer a set of concrete additional programmatic actions to encourage more affordable housing development such as accelerated support for Community Land Trusts (CLTs) and acquisition of existing housing to preserve affordability.

 

The THW report provided a detailed view of recent demographic and economic trends, housing supply and cost burden metrics, current county affordable housing initiatives, and an expansive documentation of current and future unmet housing needs with a focus on cost-burdened lower income households and those experiencing homelessness. The work included comprehensive data analysis of demographic/demand and supply trends for all incorporated and unincorporated areas because the County is a key jurisdictional vehicle for broad funding initiatives, distributing subsidies throughout all jurisdictions. A key aspect of this work was to move further than the conventional state mandated regional housing needs allocation (RHNA) formulas, which do not account for most existing severely cost-burdened households or existing unhoused populations in their Housing Element goals.

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THW report was completed and provided to the County’s governing body, but further momentum was placed on hold due to several simultaneous, competing regional housing and transportation funding initiatives also requiring voter approval. Depending on the outcome of several ballot measures in 2026 and 2027, the County will likely consider moving forward to replenish this critical fund to accelerate permanent affordable housing production.  The report is available here. 

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