MapCraft, University of California Berkeley, and the Urban Displacement Project (Bay Area, CA)
California’s 2018 Senate Bill 827 proposed rezoning areas near high-frequency transit across the state to make it easier to build denser housing.
ECONorthwest provided market insights and spatial analysis for MapCraft’s assessment of SB827 in the Bay Area. A MapCraft Lab was used to evaluate how much additional housing development capacity—both market-rate and affordable inclusionary housing units—might be enabled by the legislation. The analysis compared the impact of SB827 with current policies, in particular existing inclusionary affordable housing policies across the region. The project team analyzed market-feasible housing capacity for millions of parcels and then evaluated specific impacts in areas of opportunity and sensitive communities (including low-income neighborhoods and communities of color). The analysis resulted in policy recommendations regarding geographic applicability that were incorporated into later versions of the bill.
