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THE CITY OF Attachment 2 pLEASANTONC City of Pleasanton 2020 Additional Monitored Legislation This list represents bills that the City is continuing to monitor during the legislation session. Housing Legislation SB 1385 (Caballero): The Neighborhood Homes Act This bill died in the Assembly Local Government Committee. The committee Chair opposed the bill and proposed amendments. Those amendments were not accepted by the author and the bill will not be continuing this year. This bill would make housing an allowable use and allow for streamlined ministerial approval of housing projects, meeting certain criteria, on land zoned for office or retail commercial use when the site has been vacant or severely underutilized. Determination of a site as "underutilized" would be based on at least 50% of available square footage being vacant for at least three years. Typically, allowing housing on a commercially-zoned property requires a discretionary zoning change, allowing for deliberate and thoughtful consideration of design, site planning and mitigation of impacts that can occur when introducing residential uses into predominantly commercial areas. This bill would remove this local control and discretion. Further, this bill could impact economic vibrancy of the commercial/retail sector in the future, and impact sales tax revenue, by reducing the amount of amount and availability of commercial property. And, the bill could reduce or impact convenient shopping opportunities for residents, by encouraging conversion of neighborhood shopping centers into housing, potentially increasing distances residents need to travel to shop or dine. AB 1279 (Bloom) Planning zoning: housing development: high opportunity areas. This bill was held in committee and is not moving forward this legislative session. This bill would require local jurisdictions to approve, by right, housing projects of up to 120 units, within areas designated as "high opportunity." HCD would be required to identify and map these areas by January 2022. Depending on the size and other characteristics of the projects, they could be constructed to a height of 40 or 55 feet. Some limitations would apply, including minimum affordability requirements, and protections against displacement of existing residential uses. The bill could significantly affect the City of Pleasanton, which is very likely to fall within the definition of a "high opportunity" area, and would do away with local discretion to approve large, high density housing projects on eligible sites within the city, and preclude any environmental review or application of most local zoning controls. More broadly, the bill does not provide any certainty as to the criteria that would be used to define "high opportunity" areas, and relies on poorly defined parameters as to which 1