Emily Biro

Originally from the Bay Area, Emily is passionate about creating paths for housing stability and affordability in that region and beyond. Currently, Emily is pursuing a Master of Urban and Regional Planning at UCLA with a focus on creating more affordable and accessible housing.

Prior to graduate school, Emily worked in environmental planning, analyzing the environmental impacts of new housing and transportation projects. As an environmental planner, she also supported updates to General Plans in various jurisdictions across California. Through this work, she witnessed the intricacy of housing legislation and the complexity of financing affordable housing projects. She chose to pursue a degree in urban planning to better understand the barriers to building housing and identify opportunities to improve housing policy and streamline development.

Emily is excited to join this year’s cohort of Lewis Center graduate student fellows. She is honored to be supported in her research, which explores an approach to expanding the supply of small multi-family housing to help solve housing challenges in California and beyond.

Emily is a first-generation college student and holds a Bachelor of Science degree from UC Davis in Environmental Policy Analysis and Planning.

Project Overview

My research will explore the achievability and financial feasibility of encouraging 5-to-10 unit housing projects on single-family zoned parcels. The intention of this work is to help meet California’s housing needs, given potential feasibility concerns with development of 2-to-4 unit projects following implementation of Senate Bill 9.

Through this research, I hope to answer several questions including: what opportunities exist to improve the financial feasibility of small multi-family housing construction, how can lessons learned from ADU programs and Senate Bill 9-related projects inform our understanding of process mechanisms and financial feasibility for 5-to-10 unit projects, are there any roles for local or state agencies to further incentivize these mechanisms for underserved and underrepresented households, and how might 5-to-10 unit housing projects fit into the larger context of local housing programs?

Why is this topic, specifically, important to you?

This research project builds off of previous research that I completed during my summer internship with the San Francisco Planning Department on small multi-family housing strategies. After completion of my internship, we realized that additional opportunities existed for future research related to promoting small scale housing development.
I find this topic so important because encouraging small multi-family housing typologies in the current housing landscape is an understudied approach to expanding the supply of housing and creating new opportunities to solve existing housing challenges. Smaller scale housing development can offer both environmental and economic benefits, and diversify housing choices to meet the needs of changing demographics and household preferences. However, this type of housing is typically referred to as “missing” because very few of these developments have been built since the mid-20th century – largely due to zoning constraints.

Who are the partners involved in this project and how will you be working with them?

This project’s main partner is the San Francisco Planning Department, and will also involve working with local builders and contractors, financial lenders, academic researchers, and local housing experts vocal in advocating for this scale of development to identify potential opportunities or challenges with encouraging development of 5-to-10 unit projects.

How do you hope that this project will impact the field moving forward?

I hope that this project will provide a better understanding of the feasibility of 5-to-10 unit projects, and inform local and statewide housing policies. In a greater sense, I hope that my research findings will encourage the creation of more affordable and accessible housing in California. I believe that such work can help to reverse the legacy of exclusive planning policies and practices by revising existing policies. In doing so, we can better streamline and incentivize development to maximize opportunities on single-family properties and address the critical housing supply and affordability deficits.