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During the Housing Element Update, the City Council, Planning Commission, Housing Commission, and the public will have the ability to provide input on each key project milestone. Background: 4th and 5th Cycle Housing Elements Pleasanton has had a long-standing commitment to carefully managing growth, reflected in policies in the General Plan and two measures approved by local voters in 1996 to establish an Urban Growth Boundary, and to adopt the Residential Buildout Initiative, also known as the "housing cap," which established a 29,000-unit cap on residential development in the Pleasanton Planning Area. Based on litigation filed against the City in 2006, the housing cap was ultimately found to be in conflict with State mandates around the Housing Element, and the City was required to remove it from all policy documents. The City also entered into a settlement agreement with parties to the litigation3, that was in part fulfilled with adoption of the Housing Element update in 2012. This included an inventory of sites sufficient to meet the City's share of the regional housing need for the 2007-2014 planning period (4th Cycle), including over 4,100 residential units. The 5th Cycle Housing Element, which was adopted in 2014 for the period of 2014-2022, reflected a substantially lower RHNA than the 4th Cycle, principally due to the slow-down in housing production during the great recession. Since so many housing sites had been identified in the 2007-2014 Housing Element, the City was able to rely on the prior inventory to meet its lower 5th Cycle RHNA, without identifying new high density housing sites. As a result, many of the sites included in the current inventory have been included in two Housing Element Cycles, which as discussed later in this report, has implications as to how they may be counted in the upcoming 6th Cycle. Annual Planning Report and Progress Towards RHNA Each year, the City is required to provide an Annual Planning Report (APR) to the State, which reports housing unit production compared to RHNA targets, as well as describes the status of the various policies and programs included in the Housing Element. The City Council agenda report for review of the 2020 APR is included as Exhibit B, for reference. Tables 1 and 2 in this report, below, summarize the RHNA and the overall production of housing for the current and prior cycles. In the current (5th) Cycle, a total of 353 affordable (very-low, low- and moderate-income) units have been produced thus far, which is about 23 percent of the total allocation of 1,514 units. In contrast, 1,310 above-moderate (market rate) units have been produced to date, more than twice the RHNA allocation of 553 units. One specific challenge for the upcoming Housing Element will be to meet the allocation for below-market-rate units, given past production trends and the large increase in these categories. Also, as an important note, the remaining "unbuilt" units in the 5th Cycle do not get added into the 6th Housing Element Cycle, which reflects a new allocation and target for the forthcoming planning period. Urban Habitat Program and Sandra De Gregorio filed a lawsuit against the City in 2006. In 2009,the State Attorney General intervened in the Urban Habitat Litigation and filed a separate lawsuit challenging the Environmental Impact Report that the City certified in 2009 pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act(CEQA)when it adopted an updated General Plan (General Plan/CEQA Litigation). The two suits were ultimately addressed in a single settlement agreement to resolve all remaining legal issues. Housing Element Update Planning Commission 3of13