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Title: The Bay Area Jobs-Housing Mismatch

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2001

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Abstract: The Bay Area faces an ever worsening disconnect between the locations of jobs, and housing that is compatible in price to the wages that those jobs pay. Unless more attention is given to this problem, commute times will continue to increase, pollution will increase, employee productivity will be lost, and the overall quality of life in the Bay Area will decline. This is what we are calling the problem of the jobs-housing match. Cities and employers must be impressed as to the importance of this problem, and encouraged to discuss possible ways to alleviate the situation.This pilot study examines the City of Dublin, one of the fastest growing cities in the Bay Area. Dublin expectsto see thousands of jobs move to the area in the next several years. However, very little thought has been givento the types of housing that will be demanded by all these new employees. In fact, many of these employers expect that the vast majority of their new employees will commute from areas where housing is less expensive.State law recognizes the regional nature of the housing market, and requires every city and county to plan for itsfair share of the regions housing needs (655883(a)(1)). As ABAG notes in its Blueprint for Bay Area Housing, only by identifying and measuring local housing needs can a community design its housing programs appropriately. Communities must take into consideration: Future population and employment growth; Affordability; Existing shortages; Replacement of housing which has been, or might be, eliminated; Deterioration; and Homes for those with special housing needsIn this study we examine only future population and employment growth, and affordability. The mathematicalmodel in this study utilized employee salary data, gathered from three employers that will hire over 4,300 employees for their Dublin offices within the next year. We categorized these salaries into different incomebrackets and then sorted incomes into households according to factors observed in Census data. These household incomes were then classified according to the type of housing that they will need. This housing match was done solely based on the amount of house that could be afforded by a household with this salary.Our findings demonstrate that over 85% of the incomes for these newly created jobs will be above $60,000, andalmost 50% of the jobs created will pay over $100,000 annually. This means that the majority of theseemployees will require larger-than-average houses, and Dublin must alter its housing plans to accommodatethese new employees. However, in this model no job multiplier has been considered, so these results are not anaccurate estimate of housing demand. Matching jobs to housing will very likely require Dublin to plan for morelow-income housing than this model would indicate.

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Stockmayer, Gretchen; Aivalotis, Joyce; Spaulding, Deb

Publisher: University of California at Berkeley

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Housing and Segregation, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other

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