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to year in the Report, it also functions as a monitoring mechanism, keeping track of the number of units constructed compared to regional housing goals, and projecting the amount of additional housing likely to be constructed over the upcoming years. This information allows the City to determine Growth Management allocations for the year; every year a separate determination is made based on all of these factors. However, the lower- income units carry over from year to year. In order for the City to better ensure that a sufficient number of permits are available to accommodate its regional housing need throughout the planning period, the I lousing Element contains a policy to continue to use the Growth Management Report to monitor the numbers and types of units at all income levels (Program 34.6). The Growth Management Report will continue to be used to inform decision - makers of the City's progress in meeting its housing goals and to guide them in making housing allocations sufficient to meet the City's housing needs. Although the existing Growth Management Ordinance, which calls for decreasing the annual residential building permit allocation, is a constraint to meeting the City's regional housing needs, the General Plan allows up to 750 units per year, giving the City Council the legal authority to issue a sufficient number of building permits to meet the City's housing goals. Housing Element Program 34.5 states that the Growth Management Ordinance will be amended to provide a mechanism to override its annual allocations to approve projects, especially affordable- housing projects, to meet its total regional housing goals; this will enable the City to allow larger high- density housing projects with large percentages of affordable housing to be approved. Due to the potential of such projects to add large numbers of housing units of all income categories, particularly moderate -, low -, and very -low- income units, this approach is considered to be a quite feasible method for the City to accommodate its remaining regional housing need. Furthermore, one or two years of such overrides can easily allow the City to reach its housing goals, especially when considering the number of units already approved with Growth Management allocations. The projects listed on Table 1V -15 constitute 864 units which have been approved and which have growth management approval in the sense that they are classified as "first -come, first- served" projects, a category which allows up to 100 units per year to obtain building permits without needing specific growth management reservations. Historically and as projected for the remainder of this planning period, these projects would fit within this limit and would be able to build without constraint. In addition, the 557 units shown as "approved" in Table IV -16 have either received their growth management allocations or are similarly first -come, first- served projects. These 1,421 units (864 + 557) represent almost 60 percent of the City's remaining housing need for the planning period. As a result, as long as economic conditions encourage the building industry to build approved units as well as those units likely to be approved in lands expected to be converted to residential use, the City will be able to achieve its build -out projections and to meet its regional housing needs at all income levels. - .. 64