State deems Pleasanton’s latest Housing Element to be non-compliant

Pleasanton’s 2023-31 Housing Element is back under review as city staff are now working to address comments the city received last week from the California Department of Housing and Community Development in determining the document to be non-compliant.

“Throughout the development of the city’s 6th cycle Housing Element, staff and the City Council were deliberate in identifying housing sites and presenting policies that would result in a compliant element,” City Manager Gerry Beaudin said in a statement to the Weekly. “While HCD has noted areas for additional information or refinement, the city continues to be confident that the quality of the adopted Element will lead to its certification.”

The City Council had adopted its state-mandated Housing Element on Jan. 26 after years of deliberation on which occupied and vacant sites to zone in order to meet the city’s assigned Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) counts for new residential units within designated affordability categories.

The document serves as a plan to address Pleasanton’s mandated RHNA tally of 5,965 new units — 2,758 of which are targeted toward lower-income households — over the next eight years through the rezoning of 19 sites for housing.

The city had resubmitted the Housing Element on Feb. 14 so that state officials could review and approve the document. And while HCD officials found that most of the document complied with State Housing Element Law statutory requirements, a notice letter from HCD sent to Beaudin on April 10 noted that the city needed to make some additional revisions in order for the document to be certified.

“The comments address three major topics: information to demonstrate viability of some of the non-vacant housing sites; program modifications to address environmental and regulatory constraints to housing development; and enhancement of Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) policies and programs,” assistant city manager Pamela Ott told the Weekly. “Staff is currently reviewing the comments provided by HCD and will be meeting with their staff in coming days to discuss comments and the scope of needed revisions.”

Ott said that staff will be resubmitting the Housing Element as soon as possible, but that the timing of that will depend on the nature and the scope of the revisions that staff need to make.

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In terms of the sites inventory, the changes that HCD outlined in the notice letter are that the city needs to better demonstrate the potential for redevelopment at specific sites such as the 10.68-acre Pleasanton Unified School District headquarters on Bernal Avenue and the 7-acre PUSD Vineyard site, located between Thiessen Street and Manoir Lane.

“The element includes a site-by-site assessment of the extent existing uses impede additional development and, in many cases, the element demonstrates the potential for redevelopment,” according to the April 10 notice letter from HCD. “However, in other cases, the element does not describe affirmative owner interest or should further evaluate the extent existing uses impede additional development.”

Other examples listed in the letter include the Hacienda Terrace and Muslim Community Center properties, which the Housing Element originally described as being viable sites due to the owners being interested in “evaluating future development or interested in rezoning.”

“These are not affirmative statements of interest in residential development in the planning period,” the notice letter states. “The element should either clarify interest or include additional analysis to demonstrate the potential for redevelopment.”

Apart from providing more evidence and context into potential sites for redevelopment, HCD is also looking for more clarity on the timelines for developing housing on those sites.

As for program modifications for the planned unit development process, the notice letter also outlined issues that might arise depending on the results of the city having to re-analyze its sites list.

Kevin Burke, of the pro-housing advocacy group East Bay for Everyone, explained why he thinks HCD did not like Pleasanton’s development process, based on the notice letter.

“Pleasanton forces mixed-use and lower-density developments to go through a planned unit development process where it can impose basically arbitrary discretionary standards,” Burke told the Weekly. “HCD does not like this and wants to give developments a pathway using ‘objective’ standards — something written down where you and I can agree whether a building complies or not.”

“No taller than 30 feet is objective,” he added. “Compatible with other neighborhood uses is not objective because we can disagree.”

The notice letter finally recommended that the city should relook at the document’s fair housing opportunities and consider “areas of relatively higher income in addition to highest resource and concentrated areas of affluence.”

“While the element includes meaningful actions toward affirmatively furthering fair housing (AFFH), these actions should add or increase numeric targets and geographic targeting should be fine-tuned to better promote inclusive neighborhoods,” the notice letter states.

According to the letter, promoting housing mobility removes barriers to higher opportunity areas and enhances access to housing choices.

“Among other factors, the city is predominantly a racially concentrated area of affluence, higher resource and highest median incomes in contrast to the rest of the region,” the notice letter states. “As a result, the element should include a significant and robust suite of actions (not limited to the RHNA) to promote housing mobility and increasing housing choices and affordability throughout the City.”

While Pleasanton staff continue to work on addressing these and other issues in the notice letter including water supply certainty due to the increase in housing and other environmental constraints such as easements and property conditions, Burke said that the city must take note that they are now subject to the builder’s remedy.

The builder’s remedy has been a big talking point in the current Housing Element cycle throughout the Tri-Valley. It means that if a jurisdiction fails to adopt a compliant update by the statutory deadline — Jan. 31 for the Bay Area municipalities — local governments could lose the authority to deny certain development proposals based on inconsistencies with their zoning and General Plan requirements, if presented with a proposed development that meets state affordable housing rules.

“They also cannot receive a number of different affordable housing and transit grants from HCD, which are only awarded to cities with compliant Housing Elements,” Burke said.

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