In 2018, the California Legislature passed Assembly Bill 686, which took aim at housing discrimination and also sought to turn HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule at the time into concrete policies and programs to remediate major disparities between racial groups as a result of systemic racism in housing policy. One part of the bill required municipalities in the state to add a Fair Housing Assessment as part of their Housing Element updates. The text reads:

It is no secret that the United States is facing a significant housing crisis[1]. While national programs have been put forth to address housing[2], the most significant changes must take place at the local level. Zoning, building incentives and processes, housing programs, and social services all take place at the local level. While federal funding can guide what policies are implemented, the execution and direction of housing policy is squarely in the hands of counties and municipalities.

This is a housing needs assessment I completed as part of my coursework at the University of Maryland. I provide a demographic overview of the county, an analysis of their current zoning, what the current policy framework is, and recommendations for additional programs and policies.

The Reno-Tahoe metropolitan area is an interesting case study. First, it is located in the same region as major ‘new economy’ centers such as the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and Los Angeles. The policies and decisions by policy makers had to recognize these close markets and respond accordingly. Second, the region pursued an aggressive business attraction strategy. A now famous anecdote describes how the planning manager for Storey County scrawled out a grading permit on the spot for Tesla executives to convince them to locate to the region[1].  Furthermore, the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center has been a long-term public private partnership which has seen Storey County collaborate with private landowners to develop a large employment center on the outskirts of the urban center[2].

Planners today will require new methods of quantifying proposed projects. A paper I wrote with a fellow planning student demonstrated a new methodological approach to understanding the impact of bicycle infrastructure on accessibility. Our paper combined the level of traffic stress index developed by the Mineta Institute to measure the quality of bicycle infrastructure and an energy consumption method of limiting distance.