10 ATTACHMENT 8 - Laserfiche WebLink

070253\14264881v7 5 levels. As the City’s prior environmental review shows, there are no environmental constraints that would prevent the development of housing on the Steelwave Site. 3. The Steelwave Site would balance out the City’s heavy reliance on nonvacant sites in the Inventory. The Housing Element Law allows cities and counties to rely on nonvacant sites to meet RHNA obligations. However, in such a case, the Housing Element must consider the realistic residential capacity of those sites and must include analysis indicating whether existing uses on those sites would impede residential development.10 For the City’s Housing Element Update, planning staff and the Planning Commission have recommended to Council a suite of sites that are overwhelmingly nonvacant. Approximately 84 percent of all units recommended for inclusion in the Inventory occur on nonvacant sites. For almost 40 percent of those units, the property owner has expressed no interest in residential development.11 While a variety of factors may be considered to determine whether existing uses on these sites would impede residential development, it could be quite challenging for the City to demonstrate that approximately 1,600 units of housing could be developed on nonvacant land, held by uninterested property owners, before the end of the Housing Element Update planning period. By relying so heavily on nonvacant sites—and in particular on nonvacant sites with no owner interest in residential development-- the City risks noncompliance with the Housing Element Law. Including the Steelwave Site in the Inventory would balance out the prevalence of nonvacant sites in the inventory and reduce this risk. D. The Steelwave Site’s proposed 240 units of affordable housing would help the City meet Housing Element Law requirements regarding lower income housing. The Housing Element Law’s scrutiny of nonvacant sites is even more acute when those sites are proposed for lower income housing. Where a city or county relies on nonvacant sites to accommodate 50 percent or more of its lower income RHNA, it must demonstrate that existing uses on those sites do not “constitute an impediment to additional residential development” during the planning period covered by 10 Government Code § 65583.2(c) & (g)(1). To be considered vacant by the State Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), a site must be “without any houses, offices, building, or other significant improvements” such as parking lots. (State Department of Housing and Community Development, Housing Element Site Inventory Guidebook (June 10, 2020), p. 24.) “Underutilized sites are not vacant sites.” (Id.; emphasis in original.) 11 City of Pleasanton Housing Element Update 6th Cycle (2023-2031): Preliminary Sites Inventory (December 8, 2021) (see scoring summary table).