You can look up Inclusionary Housing specs
in 150 locations in California

See also:  A list of Inclusionary Housing Programs in California

Do you want to look up what the Inclusionary Housing requirements are in, say, Healdsburg, Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, West Hollywood, or Goleta? Here’s where you can find that data, for both renting and owning. The results can be viewed on-line or printed out.

The UC Davis “Center for Regional Change” and the California Coalition for Rural Housing (“Working to ensure affordable housing opportunities for low income and rural households since 1976”) have created a searchable database that shows 150 Inclusionary Housing Programs, both city and County, in many areas (not all) of California. 

You can click on a municipality shown on the map, and all the details of that location’s program are shown. You can search for, say, all the places that have 20% or more of low income (80% AMI — area median income) inclusionary housing. You can see at what level the program starts — at 5 units, 20 units, 30 units, and so forth. 

To see and use the California Inclusionary Housing Programs searchable database, click here or here. A 3-page set of instructions for using it are shown here below or you can print out the PDF file. Also included are some tips on how to use the database.

Some examples of what we can find

The searchable database contains 150 local programs. If we look for rental programs of over 20% and that includes low or very-low area median income (AMI), there are three: Port Hueneme in certain zones; Mill Valley, 25% in all areas; and Corte Matera, also 25% but only in certain areas.

In Mill Valley, the entire town is 25% inclusionary housing, starting at 4 units, and lasting in perpetuity (forever). The program was started in 1998. Low-income must be 51% of that, and moderate-income at 40%.  See the Mill Valley 2023-2031 Housing Element

Filtering for 11% to 20% yields 42 programs. Monterey County is 20% overall, structured as 30% very-low, 30% low, and 40% moderate (i.e. 12% low and very-low, and 8% moderate). The program kicks in at 5 units and above, and has similar percentages for both rentals and ownership properties.

It appears that not all the Inclusionary Housing programs are in this database. For example, Redwood City is not in the database. Redwood City has a 20% requirement for rental projects of 20 or more units (10% must be set aside for moderate-income households, 5% for low-income households and 5% for very low-income households). For-sale/ownership units must be a minimum of 15% for moderate-income households.

A description of this searchable database, from the UC Davis Center for Regional Change website

The Inclusionary Housing Database
from the UC Davis website.

The California Inclusionary Housing Programs Searchable Database is a collaborative project between the UC Davis Center for Regional Change and the California Coalition for Rural Housing (CCRH — “Working to ensure affordable housing opportunities for low income and rural households since 1976”). This online database documents and maps 150 inclusionary housing policies across the state and allows users to filter results using over 30 program and jurisdictional characteristics, including the percentage of affordable units required by income band, percentage of affordable units required by tenure type, unit number thresholds triggering IH requirements, income-targeting, term of affordability, alternative compliance methods, and more. Users can also select programs in jurisdictions with similar population size and geographic regions. The map identifies where in California these policies exist, and the pop-up panel provides detailed information about each policy. Users can then export selected policies into a table or spatial format for their own use. This publicly accessible web application informs stakeholders and helps make the case for inclusive communities where everyone, including disadvantaged populations, will have access to decent and affordable homes in good locations.

For more background on this project and instructions on how to use the database, see the Inclusionary Housing User Manual, below.

What’s in the database

The maps:

Some of the available filters:

• Percentage of Affordable Units. 2-10%, 11-20%, 21-30%, over 30%
• Income Categories used to determine Unit Mix: (R) Rental, (O) Ownership. Targets include any of: Extremely low, Very Low, Low, Moderate, Above Moderate.
• Number of new units that triggers the Inclusionary Housing Program
• Developer Incentives: Density Bonus, expedited permitting, fee reduction, tax relief, public subsidy, concessions
• Population size

.

Tips on using the database

It may help to zoom the size of the website on your browser display to about 50% or 70% so you can see all the data. Your situation will vary.

You can download any or all of the data into a CSV file, to import into a spreadsheet. In the upper right corner, near where the city/county names are, is a square icon with 4 small circles. You can export the data you’ve selected (i.e. that one city) or export all 150 of the programs.

When you use a filter, such as for Percentage of Affordable Units or any other filter, the toggle switch also has to be turned on for the filter to be working.

It probably helps to read the two pages of instructions, below.

If you like, you can not use the filters at all, and just click the + button on the list of cities and counties on the right. There is way more information shown than is necessary for our purposes, so you will learn to skim for what is important:

• Area Program Applies:  To Entire jurisdiction or a special district
• Minimum Percent of On-Site Development that must be Affordable:  such as 20%
• Number of New Units that Trigger IH Program.  Such as 5 units, 20 units, etc.
• Rental Program: Percent of Inclusionary Housing  Set-Aside by Income Group. Such as:
  Extremely low income (%ELI)  0
  Very low income (%VLI)        20
  Low income (%LI)                37
  Moderate                             43
  Above moderate                    0
• Homeownership Program: Income Categories Used to Determine Unit Mix
• Rental Program: Terms of Affordability. Number of years required.
  Homeownership Program: Terms of Affordability. Number of years required.

.

Instructions for using the Inclusionary Housing Programs searchable database

Here is the link to what’s shown above.

Below is the PDF version of what’s above — Useful if you want to print the document.