Development SimulatorWhat funding complexity costs an affordable home, and what building simpler could save
The Development Simulator is a tool meant to communicate some of the potential savings Alameda County HCD is working to realize through policy development and implementation. It works in three steps. First, choose a project type, size, affordability level, and financing. Second, review the development cost by component, the sources that pay for it, and the separate funding commitments a developer has to win. Third, simplify how the public money arrives, how the building gets built, where the site comes from, and how the mortgage is underwritten, then compare the result with the same project built today.
A speculative tool, not a forecast
The simulator is built on academic and practical research: Terner Center cost coefficients, the Legislative Analyst's Office review of state funding consolidation, ten years of Measure A1 project data, and the SHIFT cost calculator. The savings it shows are potential, not guaranteed. Realizing them means changing how funders make awards, how cities approve buildings, how sites are assembled, and how lenders underwrite, and each of those takes years of work by many partners. Treat every figure as an estimate of what a simpler system could be worth, not a promise of what any project will cost.
No affordable home is paid for with one check. Each one is financed by braiding together local, state, tax-credit, and private money, and every strand in that braid carries its own application, its own rules, and its own months of waiting. This page lets you build a project, see what it costs and who pays, then simplify how the money arrives and how the building gets built, and watch where the savings land. It draws on ten years of Measure A1 project data and the cost model behind the County's SHIFT program. To see how the portfolio's funding actually braided together, from dozens of competitive applications down to the four kinds of money that hold a finished building, jump to the Measure A1 assembly pipeline at the end of the page.
Total development cost, built the way we build today
$101M
2 · Cost, funding sources and rental income
Development cost by component
LandConstructionDesign, permits and feesFinancing and carryDeveloper feeCost of assembling the funding
Funding sources and rental income
Local subsidyState and federal subsidyTax credit equityPrivate capital
Funding commitments the developer has to win
Each brick is a separate application, underwriting, and set of compliance terms. Bricks in the same color come from the same kind of funder. The Terner Center estimates that each additional public source in a California affordable housing deal adds about $20,460 per home and four months to the schedule. Move the levers below to consolidate the bricks and see what changes.
3 · Simplify the funding and the build
Built today
Built simpler
LandConstructionDesign, permits and feesFinancing and carryDeveloper feeAssembling the fundingTimeline:Design and approvalsWinning the fundingConstruction
Per home
Built today
Built simpler
Change
4 · Measure A1 portfolio evidence
The 56 rental developments funded by Measure A1 are the evidence behind the defaults on this page. Counting each funding family once per project, they braided an average of 5.4 public funding sources and 7.1 capital layers to deliver 76 homes for $60.4 million. At Terner Center coefficients the public layers alone embed roughly $4.4 million, about 7 percent, in the average budget, along with some ten and a half months of assembly time.
Across the whole portfolio the estimated cost of public funding layers is about $246 million: roughly $95 million in local sources, a further $129 million in state programs and tax credits, and about $22 million federal. At the portfolio's own cost per home that is roughly 311 additional homes, not savings the County can capture on its own, but a measure of what a simpler funding system would be worth to the households still waiting.
The state is already moving. The Housing Development and Finance Committee one-stop takes effect July 2026, and the 2026 to 27 budget proposes pairing private activity bonds and 4 percent credits with those awards automatically. SHIFT, the County's missing-middle program, goes further for small projects: one upfront per-home loan as the only public source, pre-approved designs, and factory-built construction.
Measure A1 projects by size
Projects
Homes
Cost per home
Public sources
Local
State and federal
Tax credits
Private
Large (100 or more homes)
12
1,550
$678K
5.0
23%
33%
27%
17%
Mid-size (40 to 99 homes)
36
2,530
$857K
5.7
22%
34%
34%
10%
Small (fewer than 40 homes)
8
191
$864K
4.9
35%
18%
34%
13%
All 56 developments
56
4,271
$792K
5.4
23%
32%
32%
13%
Source: Measure A1 Affordable Rental Development Program dashboard v32, itemized capital stack (540 commitments, 59 sources). Large includes three conversions (OakDays, Edes Avenue, McKay); new-construction large projects run about $746K to $804K per home. Federal sources are shown with state. Public sources count each funding family once per project.
5 · Measure A1 assembly pipeline: how the portfolio's funding braided together
The assembly pipeline for all 56 Measure A1 rental developments, staged by financing milestone and collapsing as it flows: dozens of competitive applications and commitments braid into nine sources; at closing those combine into six, local (Measure A1, other County and city funds), state, federal, tax credit equity, private capital and philanthropic; and from the construction loan onward the stack resolves into the four kinds of money that ultimately hold the deal, public, tax credit equity, private and philanthropic, carried through to the permanent loan. Lighter ribbons hold at checkpoints: capital in projects still in predevelopment or under construction as of July 2026. The interactive version, with a breakdown for every ribbon, is on the Investment and Leveraging tab of the Measure A1 dashboard. Back to the top.
6 · Method and sources
Method, assumptions, and sources (read before quoting)
Draft for review. The project-type defaults, affordability effects, and delivery savings on this page are calibrated estimates, not audited results, and several are placeholders flagged for confirmation: the ADU cost basis, the factory-built savings applied to large and mid-size buildings, and the state subsidy shares by affordability level. Terner Center coefficients are association-based, estimated on statewide 2020 to 2023 tax-credit awards, and transferred out of sample here. Not causal; not a budget figure.
Alameda County Housing and Community Development · measurea1.acgov.org. Sources: Reid and Tran, Terner Center for Housing Innovation, UC Berkeley (April 2025); Legislative Analyst's Office, Streamlining California's Affordable Housing Funding System, Report 5154 (March 2026); California Housing Partnership unified-award analysis; HCD Measure A1 itemized capital stack and Cost of Complexity model (Annual Report 5, 2026); HCD SHIFT development cost calculator v4 and SHIFT Modeler (July 2026); HCD Clean Embedded Subsidy Model. Income limits: HCD FY2026, Alameda County. Fair market rents: HUD FY2026 Oakland-Fremont metro.
