[BATN] Study finds potential for 350k infill homes in Bay Area Date: 30 Mar 2006 10:22:22 -0800 Published Thursday, March 30, 2006, in the Contra Contra Times Group maps potential development By Kiley Russell If every city in California built homes on every vacant or underused parcel, the state would add nearly 4 million new homes to help ease the housing shortage, a new report finds. Those units would meet 25 percent of the anticipated demand in the next 20 years, say the authors of "The Future of Infill Housing in California," released Wednesday by UC Berkeley's Institute of Urban and Regional Design. [BATN: Web site, complete with GIS-based "infill parcel locator": http://infill.gisc.berkeley.edu 6mb study overview: http://infill.gisc.berkeley.edu/report_vol-1.pdf 16mb full study: http://infill.gisc.berkeley.edu/report_vol-2.pdf ] The writers analyzed 8 million parcels in the state to identify infill opportunities and have made that data available on a new Web site for everyone to see. "Our vision is that developers ... local planners and just citizens can go to the Web site and find the potential infill sites in their neighborhood," said John Landis, the study's lead author. The Web site allows users to pinpoint, down to the specific addresses, sites that might support infill. They found about 500,000 parcels comprising 200,000 acres that might be better used to help offset the state's crushing need for new homes as California adds between 7 million and 11 million people by 2025. While that sounds promising, infill development is far from an easy task. Because it is difficult to build within existing neighborhoods, only about 1 million to 1.5 million parcels are realistic candidates for redevelopment, Landis said. "The theoretical potential is about 4 million (units) but when you look at what's realistic, what's financially feasible -- the site has to be conducive to appropriate development, you want to respect the existing density and character of the neighborhood and avoid gentrification -- we came down with what we thought was a more realistic statewide estimate," Landis said. "It's still a lot and it's still a lot more than what we've been doing. It would provide a better balance of housing for the various demographic groups in California." Researchers found that most of the demand for infill is in older suburban areas and that 70 percent of the infill sites are in the state's five southernmost counties and 20 percent are in the nine-county Bay Area. Landis and his colleagues initiated the $300,000 study at the behest of the state's Business, Transportation and Housing Authority. His aim was to identify the infill parcels, determine how many housing units those parcels could support and what kind of buyers are interested. The study does not offer recommendations for any specific plot of land, but rather, it is intended as a tool for anyone interested in redevelopment, said Sunne Wright McPeak, secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing. Also, because the data was collected from assessors' lists, which are only updated when a property is sold, much of it may be old and inaccurate. For example, some of the sites listed as vacant on the Web site are already supporting new commercial or residential projects. Still, planners who are trying to come up with a comprehensive citywide or regional view of redevelopment possibilities and land-use patterns will likely find uses for the study and the Web site, which will be updated periodically. "It will be easier to inform our own decisionmakers about where we need to do this," said Margot Lederer Prado, a project manager in Oakland's redevelopment department. "Woodland, Dixon and Sacramento also need to do their infill, not just Berkeley and Oakland." While builders will also likely find the report and Web site useful, Joseph Perkins, president of the Home Builders Association of Northern California, warned that infill housing will not solve all of the state's problems. "Infill has become kind of the trendy public policy campaign now and that is to bend home builders towards infill rather than towards suburban development," Perkins said. "We need infill, but we also need to continue suburban development." "The reality is that for many families with children, they really don't desire higher-density, multifamily, high-rise kinds of housing. They still prefer ... single-family, detached. I believe they ought to have that option," he said. The study acknowledges that homes will still crop up in empty fields and hillsides, but Landis said he hopes it will also galvanize local governments to vigorously investigate their empty and underused lots. "We're trying to establish a culture that gets people excited about the possibility of infill housing," he said. To read the report and find infill sites in the state, go to http://www.infill.org Kiley Russell covers Growth and Development. Contact him at 925-952-5027 or krussell@cctimes.com. Email article texts/URLs for posting to . 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