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Mr. Dolan then presented the portion of the staff report on the Regional Housing Needs <br />Allocation (RHNA). He stated that what has really attracted the most attention in this <br />Housing Element update has been the numbers, which is not really a big surprise <br />because the numbers translate into zoning and housing sites. He pointed out that while <br />most people understand that there are certain things the City needs to do to meet State <br />law and the City's own housing needs, they tend to have pretty strong opinions about <br />where our housing sites should be located with respect to their own neighborhoods. He <br />then displayed the Estimated Current RHNA Capacity table below which summarizes <br />where the City currently is with respect to its housing inventory and describes all the <br />numbers related to the various income categories that the City is required to address <br />within the Housing Element. He clarified that for the purposes of the Housing Element, <br />those income categories really translate primarily in terms of the zoning into density <br />requirements. He explained that the Very- Low- Income and the Low- Income categories <br />with 30+ units per acre are where the City needs to provide sites to meet those <br />numbers, and added that staff has determined that the City can meet the <br />Moderate - Income category with zoning at 23 units per acre, and the zoning on the <br />Above - Moderate - Income does not really matter. <br />Mr. Dolan continued that staff has calculated on this table what the City already has in <br />its inventory relative to its RHNA requirements. He noted that one of the things that <br />everybody has been well aware of is that because of the large number of rezonings the <br />City had done in the last cycle, combined with RHNA's reduced assignment to the City <br />this cycle, the City ended up with what has been referred to as a surplus. He explained <br />that when the numbers on the bottom line of the table are added up and what is <br />available is taken into account, the total surplus number that has been quoted by <br />several people is 1,292 units, which represents what the City has zoning for, above <br />what RHNA indicates the City has to have. He pointed out, however, that that number <br />really is kind of an imaginary number that does not have a lot of value in a real -world <br />discussion of what the City is confronted with, because the bulk of the surplus comes in <br />the Moderate - Income category, which only exist because the City has projects that has <br />been zoned for in the last Housing Element cycle and for which projects have been <br />proposed but have not yet been built, which then get to be counted in the inventory. He <br />cautioned that there is not all this extra capacity, and as soon as those projects are <br />built, that surplus goes to zero. He noted that, in effect, the only real number that <br />should be talked about in terms of a surplus is the 375 in the column to the left, in the <br />higher- density housing category, the category people are more concerned about in <br />general. <br />Mr. Dolan stated that the City has to submit an inventory to the State documenting that <br />the City has met its need. He indicated that at the last cycle, the City had to rezone <br />70 acres to get to the RHNA number, with a little cushion of about 240 units in the event <br />the State did not feel it could support the City's inventory as presented, based on certain <br />questions about sites. He then displayed the RHNA Low- and Very- Low - Income <br />Capacity table, which shows the different sites and numbers for the low- and very-low- <br />income categories. He noted that these are the numbers the Planning Commission and <br />the City Council should look at if they want to reduce the surplus to get closer to the <br />PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, August 13, 2014 Page 13 of 32 <br />