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Memorandum
To: Brad Raulston, Town Manager, Town of Yountville
From: Matt Kowta, MCP, Managing Principal
Date: 3-11-26
Re: Yountville Commons Market Research Options
This memo discusses some options for additional market research to help with refining the Yountville Commons (YC) project unit mix, beginning with context for the discussion, followed by a listing of options to gather additional information, ordered by cost from lowest to highest.
Ultimately, there is no guarantee that any of these methods would yield statistically reliable representation of the Yountville workforce; rather these methods would provide additional information to further inform our understanding of local workforce housing needs.
Context
The YC project concept is evolving to focus on a first phase of around 40 housing units that can be implemented using local funds. There is a significant local housing affordability gap, and this is a small first phase relative to a local workforce that may number around 3,000 persons. Considering these factors, whether the project targeted 100 percent studios or 100 percent two-bedroom units, or some combination of unit sizes, the project is very unlikely to over-supply any single unit type. Diversifying the unit mix will, however, reduce the risk of oversupplying any single unit type by allowing the project to cater to a broader range of employee household types and sizes.
The Town of Yountville seeks to balance the goal of meeting employee housing needs with the goal of creating an economically efficient project (i.e., most efficiently uses local resources).
We learned from analyzing Scenarios 1 and 2 in my memo for the February 17th study session that increasing the proportion of larger units tends to reduce efficiency from a financial feasibility standpoint (less rent per square foot), so the goals of balancing employee housing needs and economic efficiency also point to providing a reasonable mix of unit types, making marginal adjustments to the mix of larger units and smaller units to achieve the desired financial results. Implementing the first phase of the project and developing a track record of leasing and operating YC housing units will provide the Town with very valuable experience and data that can inform planning for unit mixes and targeted affordability levels for subsequent project phases.
2 Potential Market Research Tasks
The following describes potential additional market research tasks that the Town can consider as methods to gather additional information that will help in refining the housing unit mix for YC. The options are ordered from least cost and time to implement to highest. The options are not mutually exclusive. One or more options could be implemented to obtain complementary information.
A. Additional 3rd Party Data Collection
The experience of other affordable housing projects within the area and the knowledge of property managers can be useful to inform and validate the proposed unit mix. The YC plan refinements could incorporate information from outreach to different multifamily rental housing operators to seek information about unit types, income levels targeted, occupancy rates, and waiting lists. A third party is in the process of collecting some of this information in conjunction with disparate impact analysis supporting the proposed local employee preference policy. Additional research could build off this third party research to collect additional details.
This would provide additional, objective data to inform unit mix. It would involve a lower level of effort and time to complete. Estimated BAE cost: $2,000-$2,500 B. Employee Focus Group
Town survey and focus group efforts to date have focused on understanding workforce housing needs from the employer standpoint. An employee focus group session would provide the opportunity to have local workers answer basic questions about their housing needs and preferences and then ask follow-up questions to gain a deeper understanding of their reasons for their answers. It may be desirable to conduct at least one session in Spanish as well as one in English, to gain representation across the worker cohorts.
This would provide additional, qualitative information to inform the YC housing unit mix. It would involve a medium level of effort and time to complete. It would also require cooperation from local partners to recruit focus group participants, as well as a bi-lingual facilitator to for a Spanish language focus group. Estimated BAE cost: $6,000 to $7,500; would require additional support from local partners for employee recruitment, which should be handled in a manner to target participation from employees with a representative range of perspectives.
C. Online Employee Survey
Hosting an online employee survey would be a means to gain input from a larger number of local workers than a focus group, but a written survey provides less ability to understand why respondents give certain answers (i.e., limited ability to ask follow-up questions). Online surveys also can create barriers to participation if employees are not comfortable with the technology, concerned about sharing personal information online, etc. Unless questions are kept extremely simple, an online survey can introduce concerns about how well respondents understood the survey questions and the accuracy of their responses. 3 At least one employer (The Estate Yountville) has already conducted their own simple employee survey and shared results with the Town. Rather than having individual employers conduct their own surveys, it would be most ideal to conduct a single survey so that all respondents are asked the same questions. This would greatly streamline the compilation and analysis of survey results.
An online survey should be hosted on a platform such as SurveyMonkey that can prevent multiple responses from the same IP address and compile all responses in one database, to facilitate analysis. Ideally, the survey would be offered in both English and Spanish. Care should also be taken to encourage broad participation across businesses, industry sectors, and job classifications. An outreach strategy should include collaboration with employers (potentially via the Chamber of Commerce) to gain their cooperation in pushing a survey invitation out to all of their employees. This could include bilingual flyers explaining the survey, with a QR code linking to the online survey. The Chamber could provide the flyer digitally to Chamber members and Chamber members could forward it on to their employees. In addition, it would be ideal to conduct more general outreach in the community to inform local workers of the survey and the importance of getting employee input on Yountville Commons so that the survey gains participation from workers who are employed in businesses that may not already be engaged with the Yountville Commons planning process and/or the Chamber. In addition to posting the survey flyer/invitation in via local median/social media channels, hard copies of the flyer could be posted in public and private spaces around Yountville where it would be visible to local workers.
An online employee survey would provide additional quantitative data that would be useful to inform the YC unit mix, but it is not likely to yield a statistically representative sample of local workforce across industries, job types, pay levels, worker demographics, etc., due to selfselection of participants. Implementing an online employee survey would require a high level of effort and time, and would also require engagement with local partners for effective implementation. Estimated BAE cost: $10,000 to $12,000; would require additional support from local partners for employee recruitment.
D. In-Person Employee Survey
An in-person employee survey, administered one-on-one by trained survey takers would help to alleviate some of the concerns outlined above regarding an online survey. Survey administrators can assure participants of confidentiality of their responses and can interactively work with respondents to ensure they understand the questions and give accurate responses; however, this is very labor intensive. Most likely, an effective outreach strategy would require working with local employers to gain permission to survey their workers at their workplace, before or after work shifts, or during break times. This is logistically intensive and requires an extended time-frame to coordinate schedules.
4 Like an online survey, an in-person survey would enable input from a larger number of employees than focus group, but less ability to understand why they give certain answers due to the need to stick to a uniform survey script. An in-person survey could potentially ask more complicated questions than an online survey, because the survey takers could explain questions to participants, offer clarifications, and work with the participants to make sure that accurate answers are given.
Depending on how survey responses are recorded (e.g., on paper survey forms), there may be a need to undertake data entry once surveys are completed, whereas data entry is concurrent with an online survey. Ideally, bilingual surveyors would undertake the survey effort under the direction of a survey manager. Because the in-person survey could involve targeting specific employer workplaces to conduct employee surveys, there would be some ability to stratify the survey sample and gain responses from a more statistically representative sample of workers than would be the case with the self-selection that occurs with an online survey; however, this is quite labor intensive and may ultimately prove infeasible given the relatively small size of the Yountville workforce.
Like an on-line survey, an in-person survey would provide additional quantitative data to inform the housing unit mix at YC. In-person survey results may be more reliable than online survey results; however, the trade-off is a requirement for more time and budget. This would require a very high level of effort and time to complete. Estimated BAE cost: $65,000 to $75,000; would require additional support from local partners for employer/employee recruitment and coordination, plus need local partner to provide bilingual surveyors.
Market Research Scope and Budget Options
The following market research scope and budget options are provided as examples of potential combinations of market research tasks outlined above. These options are not exhaustive, but illustrative of direction that the Town Council could provide, representing a range of costs and level of effort, from low to high. The budget amounts represent cost estimates for BAE’s work that would be refined and finalized in collaboration with the Town Manager as specific task orders are defined under the Town’s on-call contract with BAE. For an in-person survey in particular, there would be significant additional costs involved with securing the services of an organization that could provide bilingual surveyors to conduct inperson outreach and surveying.
Option 1
A. Additional Third Party Data Collection $2,500
B. Employee Focus Groups (2) $14,000
Total BAE Cost $16,500
5 Option 2
A. Additional Third Party Data Collection $2,500
B. Employee Focus Groups (3) $21,000
C. Online Employee Survey $12,000
Total BAE Cost $35,500
Option 3
A. Additional Third Party Data Collection $2,500
B. Employee Focus Groups (3) $21,000
D. In-Person Employee Survey $75,000
Total BAE Cost $98,500
These options could be further refined, such as increasing or decreasing the number of employee focus groups (e.g., about $7,000 per focus group).