PC 042711 - Laserfiche WebLink

Ms. Patel stated that there is no question that many concerns and perspectives have been considered so far in this process; however, she and her community feel that one very important concern has not been fully addressed. She indicated that it appears that in the attempt to determine where to add new affordable housing, the City has not taken a step back to really look at where affordable housing already exists in town. She noted that this is a very important step because in order to determine where to add new affordable housing, the City needs to make sure there is not already high concentrations of affordable housing in those areas since adding new affordable housing in those areas will only exacerbate the problem. Ms. Patel stated that they did some research to determine where affordable housing already exists and 22 square miles, there are currently 768 existing affordable housing units, 40 percent of which are within one-half mile of Site 7. She indicated that she is certain the Commission can understand why they feel so strongly that the Commission should not consider adding a single additional unit of affordable housing in an area that already carries such a high concentration of affordable housing. She added that they did more analysis and found that no other site in the City has anywhere near this high concentration, and as such, this problem is unique to Site 7. Ms. Patel stated that given this information, it is very evident that it would be a bad decision to add more affordable housing in Site 7. She added that this would be a as detailed in the General Plan: Pleasanton is a well planned, balanced community with desirable neighborhoods. She noted that there is no way this vision statement can be made a reality if more affordable housing units are added in an area that already carries 40 percent affordable housing units, and the reality will be that the City has knowingly created an ill-planned, unbalanced community with an undesirable neighborhood. Ms. Patel stated that at this point, they feel they still have a way to rectify the situation. She indicated that there are currently 100 acres being evaluated, and only 70 acres need to be sent to the State. She respectfully and firmly asked the Commission that, given this information, Site 7 be taken off of the consideration list. She then gave the Commission a handout with information that corroborates their numbers. Chris Buescher stated that who spoke earlier regarding Site 12 . He indicated that most people talked about their neighborhood and how they would be impacted, but he is taking a different viewpoint: how it impacts the actual low-income families and the reasons why Site 12 would not be a good site for them to live in. Mr. Buescher noted that access to and from the site on Santa Rita Road is extremely dangerous as Santa Rita Road is one of the busiest streets in the area. He stated that based on one of the comments made that exit from the site will be through Valley Avenue, he drove from the site down to Valley Avenue. He indicated that people will PLANNING COMMISSION REGULAR MINUTES, April 27, 2011 Page 14 of 40