What is the Housing Element?
The Housing Element is the City's policy document for meeting all of its housing needs, including housing affordable to low and moderate-income families.

The main theme of every Housing Element is how the City will try to handle increased demand for housing. To ensure that cities do not overlook their responsibilities to provide housing for households of all income levels, each city is assigned a "fair share" number of housing units for various income levels that it needs to try to accommodate. This "fair share" number is called the Regional Housing Needs Determination.

The Housing Element was adopted on May 6, 2003.

To view the Housing Element click here. (06/05)

What is the Regional Housing Needs Determination?
The San Francisco Bay Area is a growing region. With this growth comes increased demand for housing from households of all income levels. In an attempt to manage the growth and accommodate projected housing needs, the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) allocates a certain number of housing units at various income levels to each community in the region, based on a complicated formula that uses new jobs projected to be created over the next several years. This "fair share" number is called the Regional Housing Needs Determination (RHND). The RHND Allocation for Alameda is shown in the table below.

City of Alameda - Housing Element 2001-2006
RHND Allocation - New Housing Units

(8/27/03)

What if a city doesn’t create enough housing units to meet ABAG’s Regional Housing Needs Determination?
By law, cities are required to identify in their Housing Element enough sites for potential housing development to accommodate their “fair share” of the region's housing needs. The sites must be zoned to allow for residential development. However, the law does not compel jurisdictions to build those units within a given time period. This is because numerous factors, including the local economy and the availability of funding, significantly impact the ability of both the public and private sectors to undertake housing development projects. (8/27/03)