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BACKGROUND In October 2010, the City Council confirmed an 11-member Housing Element Task Force with the mission to oversee the update of the City's Housing Element. After nine Task Force meetings, four community workshops, input from housing experts, and extensive community input at Task Force and community meetings, and via e-mail, the Housing Element Task Force recommended a draft list of potential sites for rezoning and goals, policies and programs for the 2007 to 2014 Housing Element. Following review and discussion at its meeting on July 19, 2011, the City Council authorized staff to submit the Draft Housing Element to the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) for its 60-day review. HCD provided the City with comments on the Draft Housing Element in a letter dated October 14, 2011 (Attachment 4). Staff has addressed those comments with additional background information, analysis and suggested amendments to the Goals, Policies and Programs. The attached Draft Housing Element (Attachment 2) is the version sent to HCD in August 2011, with changes to address HCD's comments shown in redline. In January 2012, the City Council approved a General Plan amendment, Specific Plan amendment and rezoning for nine sites to allow multifamily residential development on those sites sufficient to meet the City's share of the regional housing need for all income groups. In the attached Draft Housing Element, these sites are now included in the Housing Sites Inventory shown in Appendix B. The adoption of the updated Housing Element of the General Plan is the last item to be completed as required by the settlement agreement in the matter of Urban Habitat Program v. City of Pleasanton. As required by State law, the adopted Housing Element will be submitted to HCD for a 90-day review to determine if HCD finds that that the Housing Element as adopted substantially complies with the requirements of State housing element law. HOUSING COMMISSION DISCUSSION The Housing Commission reviewed the Draft Housing Element on November 17, 2011. At that time, staff discussed with the Commission HCD's comments on the City's inclusionary zoning ordinance, units at-risk of converting to market rate units, meeting the needs of extremely low income households, and proposed amended language for the following programs: 6.2 Affordable rental second units; 9.1 Review and revise the Growth Management Program, 9.4 Providing incentives for lower income housing development, 17.4 Use of Lower Income Housing Fund, 25.1 Encourage housing for lower income households on HDR sites; 25.2 Support of non-profit housing providers; and 38.3 RFP for housing for lower income households. (See the Housing Commission Agenda Report and Draft Minutes in Attachment 4.) The discussion with the Housing Commission included questions about counting the non-rent-restricted units on the two BRE sites and the need to zone additional acreage at 30 units per acre (which was done as part of the actions on rezoning taken by the City Council), a question about the completion of the Growth Management Program review, a request to make the language in Policy 22 stronger (which is reflected in Attachment 2), the consensus of the Housing Commission that all HCD comments Page 2 of 6