Corridor Zoning Update #3
What is affordable when income, local rents and providing housing for all income levels is thrown in the mix and history underlies all of it?
When I heard the familiar phrase from a neighbor, “my son can’t afford to live here” I asked the next question, was it that there was a shortage of housing or was it that the housing that was available was unaffordable. The answer was what I expected. It was not a shortage of housing. The son could only afford $1500/month and there is nothing in that price range in Berkeley.
If you have never heard of RHNA (pronounced ree na) Regional Housing Needs Allocation or even if you had, what would it look like if new housing in Berkeley was approved and built to the current sixth cycle RHNA assignment to provide housing for all income levels? And how did Berkeley do in the fifth cycle?
Of course, not everyone agrees with the RHNA assignment, how the allocation was reached, how well the population and job projections fit reality to come up with for every 100 new units in Berkeley 27 should be for very low-income households, 16 for low income households, 16 for moderate income households and 41 at market rate (above moderate income 120% AMI). And if Berkeley fulfilled the RHNA assignment there would be 8934 new units between 2023 and 2031.
Even the assignment of 8934 units to Berkeley a city of only 10.43 square miles deserves scrutiny when Richmond just shortly up I-80 with a BART station and 33.7 square miles of land was assigned 3,614 units with 840 for very low income, 485 for low income, 638 for moderate income and 1,651 at market rate.
What seems on the surface to defy logic is based on the ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments) decision to take the RHNA guidelines to further Fair Housing to define cities one over another as high resource with Berkeley assigned 8934 units and Richmond with 3614 units.
A high resource neighborhood as defined in the Corridors Zoning Update (CZU) presentation is one with essential amenities, healthy food, transit, bike boulevards, safe streets, jobs and schools. Essential amenities were not defined, but typically expand beyond the basics of electricity, water, sewers, garbage pick-up and wi-fi especially when it comes to real estate investment and include shopping, dining, recreation, health care, parks and green space.
Parks and green space will likely be in even shorter supply as the City Council continues to zone for increasing density as the singular focus in Berkeley despite professing to “Promote Sustainability” in the CZU goals
Councilmember Taplin, representing District 2, a historical working-class neighborhood with the highest portion of Black residents at 18% was the first councilmember to question City staff on the CZU presentation at the November 6 city council work session. Taplin started his questioning with how much mixed-use housing had been built on Solano Avenue in District 5. The answer was none.
The implication appeared obvious, District 5 as a high resource neighborhood with the lowest portion of Blacks at 2% was not doing its share to create housing and end exclusion.
The distribution of race and renters versus owners in the final redistricting map of city council districts following the 2020 census underlies what at times came across as resentment during the evening council work session on CZU.
District 2 is still solidly in the former redlined area, but Districts 1,3 and 4 (the downtown) now stretch outside of the former redline borders. District 6 the upper hills and District 8 both in the old Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC – the New Deal program established in 1933 to use government bonds to refinance home mortgages in default) maps were labeled as A=best and B=desirable. The Southside, District 7 the current district of concentrated student housing was labeled as declining for lending money. Districts 1,3 and 4 which contain substantial former redlined areas were labeled as hazardous for lending like District 2 in the old HOLC maps.
We are decades past the end of HOLC in the 1950s, but the effects of redlining from that era are still with us. Expanding housing in high resource neighborhoods is supposed to right historical exclusion and provide opportunity and income mobility not available in poorer neighborhoods.
The high resource designation is the cause that places locally owned small shops in three neighborhood commercial corridors in jeopardy to make way for mid-rise residential housing.
Righting historical wrongs is usually a good seller in Berkeley, but with locally owned shops on the chopping block in the City’s up-zoning plan, it is not selling well.
The three high resource neighborhood corridors to right historical wrongs are Solano Avenue District 5, North Shattuck Districts 4 & 5 and the Elmwood on College in District 8.
Even after two and a half hours of public comment from locally owned small businesses and their supporters at the November 6 council CZU worksession, it was as if the City Council was present at a different meeting when public comment ended and they closed with their broad sweep of setting the height limit for all three corridors at seven stories for future Planning Department work. Humbert was the lone councilmember suggesting an alternative to up-zoning the entire Elmwood Corridor. A final approval of CZU by Council is expected in mid to late 2026.
What has made Berkeley special is the neighborhood shopping districts some only a block or two and others much longer each with their own flavor. San Pablo Avenue extending through Districts 1 and 2 and bragging rights to international groceries and restaurants received short shrift the night of the CZU worksession with not coming up for discussion until 11:15 pm.
Affordability is a near constant discussion, but what does it really mean when it comes to housing? Who qualifies for the 10% of very low-income affordable units in the 32.5% multi-unit density bonus projects. Or who qualifies when the developer uses the 100% density bonus (using the base project for calculation) with 15% of the units for very low-income households and 15% of the units for moderate income households?
Area Median Income (AMI) is not the average of incomes which can be skewed by a few high-income earners, AMI is the middle where 50% or one half of Alameda County households earn less than the bolded Median AMI line and half of the area households earn more.
If the table seems confusing, a two-person household with a total income from $38,400 up to $63,950 would fall into very low-income category. A two per household with an income from $63,950 up to $100,050 would fall into the low-income category. All references show an overlap where 30% - 50% is very low income and 50% to 80% is low-income and 80% - 120% is moderate income. RHNA uses 0 to <50% as the very low-income range.
The income limits for Berkeley on the City of Berkeley Affordable Housing Resources webpage is slightly different and as of this writing on December 7, 2025, the City of Berkeley is still using the income limits from 2024. It has not been updated to 2025. The Section 8 Voucher program is updated to 2025 income limits.
The Housing Choice Voucher program, Section 8 vouchers is funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and fills the gap between the tenants’ share of rent including utilities of between 30% to 40% of household income and the actual rent (allowed amount) charged by the landlord.
The Berkeley application waitlist for Section 8 vouchers closed in 2022. During the seven-day pre-application period of July 19 through July 26, 2022 over 22,000 households applied for a random draw of 2000 to be placed on the Section 8 Voucher waitlist.
This table shows what is the recommended maximum rent if the household income is at the top of an income category. A two-person low-income household with a very low income could afford $1598.75 including utilities. Note a Berkeley minimum wage worker at $19.18/hour (effective 7/1/2025) working fulltime 40 hours per week with annual earnings of $39,894.40 per year could afford monthly rent of $997.36 using the standard of no more than 30% of income spent on housing.
I stopped by the Higby at the southeast corner of Ashby to check rents and was given the general base rents for a 1-bedrooms $2900/month, 2 bedrooms $3424/month and 3 bedrooms (none available) $4000/month. Studios are advertised online as starting at $2355. Those base rates did not include the additional required fees for sewer, trash, and water. Gas and electricity are separate. Parking is $175/month with an assigned space. There is a list of per occurrence fees like $3 for package services which should be interesting with all the online ordering.
There is not a current tally of how many people in Berkeley temporarily lost their CalFresh/SNAP benefits during the government shutdown as available reports are for the years 2019-2023. During those years 15.4% of families with children in Berkeley were receiving CalFresh compared to Alameda County at 40.4%, California at 49.7% and the US at 47.2%. Berkeley families are doing better than the rest of the state, but 15.4% still represents families that are struggling and children who need school lunches and CalFresh/SNAP to eat.
The time period covered in the just released Shedding Light on Bay Area Poverty report ends with the data available through 2023. The poverty rate in the six county Bay Area (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco) is 16.3% with half of those living in poverty working in fulltime jobs. Three in ten Bay Area residents struggle to cover basic needs with 1,020,000 living in poverty and 790,000 in near poverty.
It seems obvious with all the federal employee layoffs, terminations and cuts to programs and social safety nets since President Trump took office on January 20, 2025, the next report is going to be worse than this one.
The problem with the Corridors Zoning Update and the Middle Housing zoning that preceded it is there are no requirements for inclusionary affordable housing. There is the assumption with middle housing it will be affordable by design, but there is no requirement. The in lieu housing fee which will be covered in greater detail in Corridors Zoning Update issue 4, basically exempts small projects from including affordable housing because only projects larger than 5,000 square feet are required to pay either the in lieu fee or include 10% of the units affordable to very low income households and 10% to low income households.
When the complaint is not being able to afford to live here, these up-zoning plans don’t get us very far in meeting the needs of households at all income levels. The excess housing built over the RHNA assignments as shown in the RHNA fifth cycle is market rate housing. That is what makes the money. Developers build when they can make money not when adding more housing will glut the market.
The struggles and impacts of being poor in America as described in Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2001 Nickeled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America are still relevant.
What isn’t said in broader plans to up-zone high resource neighborhood districts is that in Berkeley in order to balance schools socio-economically by including affluent families, middle-class and working-class families, the city is divided into three parallel zones from the flats to the hills. This means a child in a k-8 public school may be attending a different school than the one around the corner. Parents can always send their children to private schools of which there are many or avoid it altogether with home schooling. There is only one public high school, grades 9 – 12 with around 3,200 students in the center of Berkeley.
A common complaint besides housing being unaffordable is that housing is not being built for families. And there lies another conundrum, the fertility rate of women in the United States has dropped to 1.6 per woman. Patrick M. Condon in his 2020 book 5 Rules for Tomorrow’s Cities starts his book with we have forty years to plan for declining population worldwide which the State of California Department of Finance matches in its Vintage 2025 population projections.
Though declining population is projected in the Department of Finance long range population trends, you wouldn’t know it from reading the ABAG Plan Bay Area household and job growth projections.
There is no specification in how many bedrooms those 8,934 units need to contain. Since nearly everything that is being built is for UC Berkeley students, a tenant base with UC promises of continued expansion, Berkeley like college towns across the country is a target for national and international real estate investment firms building multi-unit student housing.
The recently approved 100% density bonus project at 2029 University arrived with two proposals for the same site, the student housing proposal had 160 units and 380 bedrooms (60 Studios, 20 one-bedrooms, 20 three-bedrooms, 60 four-bedrooms) while the alternate proposal for family centered units had 240 units and 280 bedrooms (80 Studios, 60 Junior one-bedroom, 60 one-bedroom, 40 two-bedroom). A junior one bedroom has a bedroom with no windows and possibly partial solid walls to define a bedroom.
A common practice in student housing in Berkeley is renting to a student by the bed. That used to be $1000 to $1200 per bed, but I heard and not yet had a chance to confirm that a student housing project under construction is advertising at a per bed rate of $1400/month.
Cities don’t actually build the housing. That falls to the developers. Developers build when conditions look ripe for profitable projects. In a city like Berkeley that almost never declares a permit lapsed under the Lapse Permit Ordinance BMC 23.404.060 which allows the Zoning Officer to declare a permit lapsed and void if the developer has not applied for a building permit within one year of project approval, a developer can sit on an entitled (approved) project for years until the timing looks right. And speculators can buy and sell entitlements (the approved project) during the intervening years.
A few businesses in Berkeley have survived construction by moving like Ace Hardware formerly on University found space on Milvia and the Berkeley Vacuum & Sewing Center moved to lower Shattuck. But most businesses pushed out for construction of mixed-use residential just disappear.
Density bonuses, by-right approvals, in lieu fees, population and household projections and punishment for not meeting the RHNA assignment (Builder’s Remedy) will be covered in the next issue, Corridors Zoning Update 4.
If you missed the first two Activist’s Diaries in this series on the Corridors Zoning Update titled Berkeley, California and the Corridors Zoning Update, you can find them at https://activistdiarybykellyhammargren.substack.com/p/berkeley-california-upzoning-and.
Resources/Sources:
New Vintage 2025 population projections from the Department of Finance
https://dru-data-portal-cacensus.hub.arcgis.com/apps/eebcf24ac5e942c7b8ab7011173efdbe/explore
Healthy Alameda County Households Receiving SNAP with Children
Affordable Housing Requirements for Developers
In Lieu Mitigation Fee as alternate to inclusionary housing
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2012/10/18/berkeley-council-sets-fee-for-affordable-housing-mitigation
Berkeley Municipal Code (BMC) on affordable housing requirements Chapter 23.328 Inclusionary Housing
https://berkeley.municipal.codes/BMC/23.328
Development Fees and Affordability Requirements
https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/List%20of%20devt%20fees%2C%20current_0.pdf
City of Berkeley BMR Program Guidelines & Operational Manual Revised 2019
https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-02/BMR-Guidelines.pdf
Housing Element, RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Allocation)
Affordable Housing Resources (Berkeley City Webpage still lists 2024 limits)
https://berkeleyca.gov/community-recreation/affordable-housing-berkeley/affordable-housing-resources
Tipping Point Report Poverty in the Bay Area Report
Final ABAG RHNA Plan San Francisco Bay Area, 2023-2031
Density Bonus Law AB 1287
https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1287/id/2840418
Corridors Zoning Update prepared for the Planning Commission September 17, 2025 meeting
Activist’s Diary on Middle Housing
Activist's Diary on Middle Housing in Berkeley, California
The second reading of “Zoning Ordinance and General Plan Amendments Relating to Middle Housing” is the final step at least for now in cementing middle housing zoning into City of Berkeley zoning law. It is the first item in the city council agenda on Tuesday, June 8, 2025 listed under consent as item A.
Department of Housing and Community Development Division of Housing Policy Development, 2025 State Income Limits
https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/docs/grants-and-funding/income-limits-2025.pdf
City of Berkeley Below Market-Rate (BMR) Housing Program Frequently Asked Questions
https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-02/Below-Market-Rate-FAQs.pdf
Redlining: The history of Berkeley’s segregated neighborhoods,
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2018/09/20/redlining-the-history-of-berkeleys-segregated-neighborhoods
Zoning Adjustment Board November 13, 2025 agenda with links to 2029 University
Debunking the trickle-down housing fallacy
https://48hills.org/2016/09/debunking-trickle-housing-fallacy/