Understanding the “High Opportunity Area” Designation – and Why It Matters

If you’ve been following housing and planning discussions in our city, you may have heard the term “High Opportunity Area.” It’s a state and city planning designation that aims to guide development into neighborhoods believed to offer the greatest potential for upward mobility—places with strong schools, good access to jobs, and a high quality of life.

Under this system, developers who build in High Opportunity Areas may qualify for additional density incentives—meaning they can build more units than zoning might normally allow. The idea is to encourage more housing where opportunity is already abundant.

But this approach raises important questions:

• Does it focus too much on certain neighborhoods, instead of working to improve access to quality education, jobs, and resources in every community?
• Are the rankings themselves accurate?

The State’s official opportunity map, created by UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute, uses data on things like educational outcomes, economic opportunity, and environmental quality to score neighborhoods. You can explore it here:
2025 State Opportunity Mapping Tool

A closer look at the map reveals surprising results—with some modest, lower-profile neighborhoods ranking as “higher opportunity” than well-known, affluent areas. This raises concerns about how the metrics are calculated.

For example:

• If employment rates are a major factor, the system may not distinguish between unemployed residents and those who are retired, skewing results.
• Household income data might be influenced by how certain populations—such as live-in staff or multi-family households—are counted.

This isn’t the first time planning metrics have come under scrutiny. Just as the formula for calculating RHNA housing allocations has been criticized for double-counting certain factors, the opportunity mapping system may also rely on assumptions that deserve a closer look.

Whether these issues, if confirmed, would change policy is an open question. But at a minimum, they call for greater transparency about the methodology and a serious conversation about how housing incentives are shaped.

If we truly want to create a city where opportunity is accessible to everyone, we need to make sure our planning tools reflect real-world conditions—and don’t unintentionally reinforce existing inequities.

The topic of the City’s use of the High Opportunity zone designation to direct development by providing  added density incentives for those seeking to build in those areas (as opposed to improving access to good education and jobs in all communities) came up during this morning’s PlanCheck meeting.

I referred participants to both the City’s website page regarding this topic and also included the direct link to the State map:

https://belonging.berkeley.edu/2025-ctcachcd-affh-mapping-tool-nc

When checking the website address, I decided to take another look at the map that was compiled by UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging program.  I was very very surprised to see that my neighborhood south of Santa Monica Blvd. rated as a higher opportunity area than the Westwood area north of Wilshire.  It is even higher than nearby areas in the Holmby Hills, Bel Air and Beverly Hills.  They rate a “7” while we in the flats in much more modest homes score an “8.”  All the areas are fairly transit accessible. I find that difference in ratings a bit bizarre…. and wonder whether a closer look at this stuff is warranted.

If the difference has to do with percentage of people with jobs, then I would suggest that the difference in rating could be because the metric fails to take into account all those who have retired and are not reported as working.  Do they differentiate between retired and not working?  

Other items may be worth doing a bit of a dig (which none of us have time to do right now).  Could income figures for areas such as Bel Air & Holmby Hills include data for resident house-staff?  

Just as the calculation to determine RHnA is based on a faulty formula that double counts one of the factors, could the opportunity mapping be based on problematic calculations and assumptions?  (And would it matter. if uncovered…?)  The programs at UCB have shown their biases in the past.