Jobs and Housing

Getting Inclusionary Housing Right

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Cities across Santa Clara County are considering this powerful tool to build more new affordable homes without subsidy.

But done wrong it can fall short, or even stop the development of new homes in its tracks. Learn how it works, and how to get it right!

Many of our local cities are joining forces right now in a shared nexus study, the wonky and in-depth analysis that assesses the feasibility of local residential development and the potential for developers of market-rate housing to add a share of affordable homes to their buildings.

If cities require too few affordable homes or affordability that’s too shallow, they leave public benefits on the table. Too much, and developers can’t build any housing at all.

Come hear about local cities that are getting it right: successfully using inclusionary housing policies to achieve mixed-income communities, generate funding to subsidize deeper levels of affordability, and gain valuable land for affordable homes!

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Santa Clara County and to other parts of the Bay Area faces a significant jobs-housing imbalance. Every day, 100,000 Santa Clara County workers leave the County for work in surrounding counties, and 200,000 people come in, a net 100,000 people. While there are no requirements that people live near their jobs, the fact that so many more workers travel into Santa Clara County than travel out illustrates that many of our workers have no choice to live near work. We simply don’t have enough housing for the jobs.

Map: Which cities in Santa Clara County have the greatest jobs-housing imbalance?

Answer: Palo Alto (3.54 jobs for every housing unit), Santa Clara (2.58 jobs for every housing unit), and Mountain View (2.51 jobs for every housing unit). This map shows the jobs-housing balance ratio – calculated by dividing the number of jobs by the number of housing units – for each city in the County. Click on the map to discover the jobs-housing balance ratios for other cities.
Sources: 2017 ACS analysis completed by SV@Home

Jobs-Housing Balance and Jobs Housing Fit

The jobs-housing balance ratio and other similar ratios like housing to employed worker are used frequently by cities in developing plans for growth.

Jobs Housing Imbalance: The mismatch between the number of jobs and the number of homes within a community. In Santa Clara County, some cities have two to three times as many jobs as homes.
Jobs-Housing Balance: A measurement used by planners that assumes that a balanced community is one where people can both live and work. Therefore the jobs-housing balance ratio compares the number of jobs in a community to the number of housing units.
Jobs-Housing Fit (Low-Wage Jobs-Housing Fit): the mismatch between wages and housing affordability. The UC Davis Jobs-Housing Fit Ratio considers the right fit between the housing stock and the income level of households in a community. In Santa Clara County, some cities have as many as 19 low-wage workers competing for each affordable home.