for your mid-week nerdy entertainment, join along as I play around with MTC's RHNA allocation tool/toy unveiled at the last #rhnamtg rhna-factors.mtcanalytics.or…

first, let's calibrate RHNA sets the minimum housing growth target for each of the Bay Area's 101 jurisdictions I've chosen an overall regional need determination of 750,000 new homes in the next 8 years shared equally by population, that's 28% growth in households everywhere

now, let's see what happens when we adjust that based on different factors first, Access to High Opportunity Areas this is based on which areas provide residents with the greatest economic, educational, and environmental resources Learn more here: belonging.berkeley.edu/tcac-…

Weighting on opportunity shifts growth away from poorer areas like Richmond & Vacaville, toward wealthier areas like Marin & Silicon Valley Growth is highest (45%) in places like Palo Alto, Lamorinda, and South Marin (Atherton is perhaps brough down by jobless billionaires?)

Next up: the Divergence Index, which measures segregation by how much a city's racial composition diverges from the regional average It's used by the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley produce these maps of segregation: haasinstitute.berkeley.edu/s…

You can see that this one is kind of all over the place, with high growth in both exclusionary communities like South Marin & Cupertino, but also poor segregated communities like Richmond & Antioch The highest growth targets, over 50%, go to Cupertino & San Pablo

Next is a set of metrics based on jobs access Jobs Proximity - Auto uses a 30 minute commute shed by car Here's what that looks like: growth shifts away from the North Bay toward Silicon Valley & San Francisco Growth is highest in SF (40%), Palo Alto & Mountain View (39%)

There's also Jobs Proximity - Transit, based on a 45 minute transit commute to work This option weights very heavily toward San Francisco (+55%), Oakland (+42%), and to a lesser extent other BART & Caltrain corridor cities Walnut Creek BART doesn't really register on this one

Staff also created a weighting based on employee VMT: it shifts housing growth to the areas where workers drive the longest distance to get to work This means less housing growth in SF & more in unincorporated county areas (unincorporated San Mateo County leads the pack at +46%)

What? How on earth does that make any sense at all?