According to HousingWire, Bloomberg Philanthropies is backing an effort to take housing solutions that have worked in three major cities and spread them across the country. The foundation is funding a program that will support up to thirty municipalities in adopting proven strategies from San Diego, Austin, and Atlanta. The first batch of fifteen cities selected includes San Jose in California, along with communities in other states ranging from Maine to Florida to Nebraska.
Each selected city will receive funding along with technical assistance to implement one or more of these three approaches. San Diego's model focuses on streamlining the building permit process through digital systems, which the city accelerated significantly after the mayor set a thirty-day approval target. Austin's strategy centers on allowing multiple residential units on single-family lots, including smaller accessory dwelling units and reduced lot size requirements. Atlanta's approach involves bringing housing agencies under unified leadership to move stalled affordable housing projects forward more efficiently.
The results from these three cities show real progress on the housing supply challenge. San Diego saw a dramatic jump in homes cleared for construction in a single year, reaching levels not seen in years. Austin has managed to build a substantial number of new units over the past several years and has actually seen rental prices decline since the pandemic, which is rare for a major market. Atlanta has gotten thousands of affordable units back into the pipeline and is tracking toward meeting an ambitious construction goal.
Bloomberg Philanthropies is structuring the support so that participating cities can learn from each other as they implement these reforms. The funding and partnership support is designed to help municipalities show concrete results within two years, such as cutting approval timelines and increasing the overall housing stock. The initiative is also meant to position these cities to take advantage of federal housing incentives that reward jurisdictions ready to implement modernized approaches.
What I am seeing locally here in the Bay Area is that housing approval timelines and zoning flexibility remain critical bottlenecks for our own production challenges. While I'm watching to see how San Jose performs under this initiative, the broader lesson is clear: cities that can streamline their processes and expand housing types tend to see measurable supply increases. These are exactly the kinds of practical reforms that communities like ours in the East Bay need to consider if we want to make meaningful headway on affordability.
