{"id":90853,"date":"2025-12-12T00:19:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T00:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/90853\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T00:19:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T00:19:06","slug":"alameda-county-launches-pilot-program-for-faster-housing-construction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/90853\/","title":{"rendered":"Alameda County launches pilot program for faster housing construction"},"content":{"rendered":"

For as long as California has had a housing shortage, pro-housing advocates have decried the burdensome development process that both stifles construction and inflates development costs, leading to more market-rate units than affordable units.<\/p>\n

But a new Alameda County pilot program called the Scalable Housing Investment Funding Toolkit, or SHIFT, seeks to make more housing for less money with an innovative, first-in-the-state approach to affordable housing. On Thursday, county officials chose an Oakland-based firm as the primary developer for the project, which is supposed to break ground on projects in late 2026.<\/p>\n

SHIFT utilizes pre-approved, generic designs targeted at in-fill lots to create affordable housing units aimed at residents who make between 60-80% of area median income, according to the Community Development Agency. Through eliminating bureaucratic barriers such as environmental review and local planning commission approval, the program enables a developer to put their money in the ground, not into paperwork.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to build affordable housing more affordably, and so we\u2019re trying to do a bunch of different things at once to figure out where we can save the most money,\u201d said Dylan Sweeney, the program and policy manager for Alameda County Housing and Community Development Agency. \u201cIf we\u2019re not able to leverage the advantages of government to produce housing more cheaply, we\u2019re missing out on opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Alameda County selected the Oakland-based development firm Inspired ADUs as SHIFT\u2019s primary developer. The firm has built affordable in-fill developments in Berkeley, Oakland, and Santa Clara that makes it aligned with Alameda County\u2019s goals in the pilot, Inspired ADU CEO and Principal Architect Carrie Shores Diller said. .<\/p>\n

\u201cAlameda County\u2019s SHIFT Program is among the most forward-thinking housing initiatives in the state, and Inspired ADUs is uniquely equipped to help realize its vision,\u201d explained Carrie Shores Diller, Inspired ADU CEO\/Principal Architect.<\/p>\n

Shores Diller\u2019s firm will be tasked with creating housing units for $600,000 a piece, which is around $250,000 less than the average cost to develop an affordable housing unit in Alameda County, according to Sweeney. SHIFT will prioritize developments in infill lots with scalable buildings of 4-16 units, with the first projects hoping to break ground in late 2026.<\/p>\n

The need for affordable housing has been steadily growing over the past half century in the Bay Area as zoning limitations and regulations have stifled development in some of the most attractive neighborhoods in the region, said Lindsay Maple, the director of project and planning at UC Berkeley\u2019s Possibility Lab. The county estimates that 107,000 new units of affordable housing are needed to create a \u201chealthy housing ecosystem,\u201d according to a 2025 report by HCD<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The SHIFT pilot program is unlike any program in the state, Maple said, and she\u2019s curious to see how the pilot progresses as an analog to the Abundance agenda, based on the 2025 book by New York Times columnist Ezra Klein and Atlantic staff writer Derek Thompson that argues for growth-oriented liberalism to solve the affordability crises in housing, healthcare and transportation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a project that\u2019s entirely aligned with the Abundance ethos. I love the idea of having these pre-approved and modular units, like, that\u2019s fantastic,\u201d Maple said. \u201cBut I also am curious about the conditions in which those projects were able to actually come to fruition.\u201d<\/p>\n

That policy-wonk tinkering of using pre-approved designs and modular units is a signature trait of Klein and Thompson\u2019s writings; working around the edges of policy to deliver material wins. Alameda County\u2019s SHIFT program prioritizes in-fill development with buildings of 4-10 units. The county estimates there are over 9,000 Alameda County households that these units will have a market for.<\/p>\n

Still, Maple questioned the feasibility of SHIFT developments in wealthy communities like Atherton which have strong local zoning control. She described herself as \u201ccautiously optimistic\u201d about the SHIFT pilot program and its potential to be replicated across the state.<\/p>\n

That sentiment is shared by Sweeney and other county officials who hope SHIFT becomes a model across the state. To support that, Alameda County HCD created an open-source library of pre-permitted designs for both housing developers and private builders to access, adapt and build affordable housing.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Maple said she is curious to see if SHIFT brings the shift in housing development that California so desperately needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, 4-to-10 units isn\u2019t going to be what pulls us out of this. So there\u2019s a little bit of a balance between, \u2018I love this idea,\u2019 and, \u2018It will not be what saves us,\u2019\u201d Maple said. \u201cI know that I sound like a pessimist; I truly am cautiously optimistic that we can find something that works. And I applaud Alameda County for trying to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For as long as California has had a housing shortage, pro-housing advocates have decried the burdensome development process…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[380,389,184,7,332,2333,1011,1336,1337,1533,181,23,100,143,145,144,182],"class_list":{"0":"post-90853","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-affordable-housing","9":"tag-alameda-county","10":"tag-bay-area","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-east-bay","13":"tag-editors-picks","14":"tag-housing","15":"tag-housing-crisis","16":"tag-housing-development","17":"tag-keywee","18":"tag-latest-headlines","19":"tag-local-news","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-oakland","22":"tag-oakland-headlines","23":"tag-oakland-news","24":"tag-pm-report"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}