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Citizens for a Caring Community October 11, 2013 Mayor Jerry Thorne Pleasanton City Council Pleasanton,CA 94566 Re: Agenda Item 11 Selection of a Preferred Plan For the EPSP EIR Dear Mayor Thorne and City Council members, Thank you for the opportunity to participate in the process. For a complete record of our previous comments, please see your Staff Report's Attachment 10, beginning with CCC's letter to the Planning Commission regarding the EIR. In addition,we would like to offer some other comments on the staff report and attachments before you: Staff Report, page 5: The Table of zoning needed to accommodate RHNA through 2030 says that no additional land needs to be zoned 30 units/acre for low and very low income housing through 2022. It then estimates the need to zone land for 1,107 very low and low income units through 2030.This estimate could well be wrong. 1)The EPSP calculates the total amount of Below Market Rate(BMR) housing to be only 15% of the total units built at 30 units/acre in the EPSP area. Unless the City finds a way to dramatically increase the percentage of very low (<50%AMI) and low(<80%AMI) income housing yielded by 30 unit/acre development beyond the current 10%or so,all the remaining"luxury apartment", and market rate residential development will become identifiable as a contributing factor to Pleasanton's need for additional affordable housing. Add to this the affordable workforce housing need created by the considerable amount of commercial and industrial zoning proposed in all the EPSP options, as well as the other luxury 30 unit/acre apartment complexes approved over the last year, and the estimate for 2022-2030 could double or triple. Attachment 2,page 8, Planning Commission minutes: "Ms. Stern explained that the second column represents the City's RHNA allocation for the 2014-2022 Planning Period, which adds up to just over 2, 000 with about 1, 100 of those units in what they term in income levels as Very-Low-and Low-Income, and what the City looks at in terms of density levels. She continued that what the State has allowed the City to do is to indicate where it plans for housing or to zone for housing within a particular density level and then allocate that to a particular income level that the State provides." State law does not intend density alone to provide affordability. Zoned land provides an entitled location for cities to facilitate and implement needed affordable and workforce housing programs.Turning over land zoned to provide affordability exclusively to market rate developers with a known track record of providing no more than 10% lower income workforce housing violates the spirit and intent of the law. It's a policy that constitutes a willful and intentional exclusion of this portion of the local workforce from residency in Pleasanton.