A San Francisco-based public interest law firm has sent a “demand letter” to Pleasanton officials urging them to move quickly to rezone 30 to 40 acres of land for high density apartments and homes for those at the state-designated very low, low and moderate income levels.
Richard Marcantonio, managing attorney for Public Advocates, Inc., also asked City Manager Nelson Fialho to set up a meeting “within the next 30 days to discuss the unlawful policies and actions that have excluded affordable housing opportunities for lower-income families” in Pleasanton.
Writing on behalf of Urban Habitat, which Marcantonio described as “an environmental justice organization with a mission of promoting affordable housing,” the attorney said the city can avoid a lawsuit by removing barriers his organization views as in the way of new housing affordable to low and moderate income families.
Fialho, who received the 14-page letter Tuesday, said he and City Attorney Michael Roush will review the material in the coming week, and then draft a response.
Marcantonio said that Pleasanton assured the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) in 2003 that it would meet the HCD’s and the Association of Bay Area Governments’ (ABAG) “fair share” housing numbers shortly. Besides rezoning land to specifically accommodate subsidize and low-income housing, it would also raise the 350 limit it had imposed on yearly building permits to allow for this development.
“Three years later, it (Pleasanton) has still not fulfilled that promise.”
That failure, according to Marcantonio, prompted HCD to take the “unusual step” last year of decertifying the city’s state-mandated housing plan.
According to HCD, Pleasanton’s share of the Bay Area region’s need for affordable housing stands at over 2,400 homes, of which 729 must be affordable to very-low-income households–families earning no more than $40,000. Since 1999, however, only 20 homes for this income group have been built in Pleasanton.
Marcantonio said that for the past several years, developers proposing to build affordable housing on vacant land within Pleasanton’s urban limits have been consistently discouraged.
“The entire Bay Area region depends on every local community to do its share,” said Lila Hussain of Urban Habitat. “We are calling on Pleasanton to lift its ban on affordable housing for families.”
Marcantonio said the city blocks affordable housing development not only through its zoning policies, but also by limiting the issuance of building permits to only 350 per year. Its housing cap restricts the total number of homes to 29,000, a rigid ceiling that the city is quickly approaching.
“Pleasanton has hundreds of acres of urban land suitable for residential development, including several areas within walking distance of the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station, as well as infill sites adjacent to existing higher density development,” Marcantonio wrote Fialho. “It has accumulated over $7 million in its lower-income housing trust fund, a sum it expects will more than double in the next several years.
“Despite this wealth of available land and funding, however, the city’s regulatory hurdles have blocked efforts by developers to build the needed affordable housing,” he added.
In his report, Marcantonio also attacks the city’s residential housing cap of 29,000 units. The cap was adopted by the City Council when it approved the 1996 General Plan. Although the plan, itself, did not go to voters, proposals for the housing cap and growth management restrictions did, and were approved overwhelmingly. Only recently, as residential building nears the 29,000 unit cap, with about 2,500 housing units left to build, have changes in the housing cap been discussed.
Several members of the city’s Economic Vitality Committee discussed raising the cap to allow for more affordable housing, and the issue was raised just last week at a meeting of the Economic Development Committee of the Pleasanton Chamber of Commerce.
Considerations are also being given to allow an 800-unit residential complex proposed for the Staples Ranch area to proceed with units in the affordable and skilled nursing portions of the project to be excluded from the housing cap count. Other assisted living complexes where residents have common dining facilities and no full kitchens, already are exempted, including the 200 senior units at Ridge View Commons.
But Fialho said that the so-called “fair share” numbers produced by ABAG and backed by HCD could put the city over its cap if all current development plans continue and those affordable units are built. The dilemma would increase in 2009 when a new set of ABAG numbers will be determined, which is expected to greatly increase the state’s demand for more affordable housing throughout the Bay Area, including in Pleasanton.
As for a possible lawsuit challenging the housing cap, Fialho said that it could come down to a court’s decision over which law prevails: the city’s 29,000 housing cap that was approved by voters, or a state mandate that has yet to have the force of legislation behind it.
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