The rezoning described in Action 5.4 was adopted by the City Council concurrently with the Housing Element in December 2022.

The City has been heavily engaged in Housing Element commitments on a number of fronts.  Per the approved Housing Element, the City of Piedmont established a timeline to accomplish rezoning by March of 2024.  The City has since satisfied HCD rezoning requirements.  Piedmont’s Housing Element is currently in compliance with Housing Element Law.  

With reference to the Housing Accountability Act, in particular, the City hosted a Housing Legislation Primer on August 5th to educate the community and interested parties on changes to the legislative landscape.  Presentation materials can be found at https://www.piedmontishome.org/event/city-council-meeting-3-f927z-dsnb6-8kst9-acfpy-n5sze-8e9ah.   

Oakland is going to do upzonings associated with its housing element, but as of today 6/8/22, it hasn’t decided where. 

The Oakland housing element describes AFFH is an analysis, which is wrong, it’s more than that, AFFH requires action. 

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all of the site inventory sites don’t require an upzoning, which means the 3 year rezoning doesn’t apply. 

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jeff levin from EBHO made a whole speech. we should get involved w their  letter 

The inventory is being prepared, and the presentation included showing the incomes of various residents, and other overlays of Oakland.

Overall, there was a lot of desire to build for affordability, for all residential types, for considering the dangers of displacement (vs gentrification).

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Various public comments - How do we deal with empty storefronts (in the age of Amazon), and first floor opportunities of mixed use spaces. Also Pleasant Valley and Broadway is a big empty lot, and there's a big space downtown. Lots of fancy apartment buildings are going up.

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After public comment was given, some various thoughts by different commission members:

Consider first-floor vacant spaces.

- Sugrue - How do we get the overlay into the hills more? Even acknowledging fire danger, the hills probably shouldn’t get off scott-free.

- Renk - ... Pleasant Valley and Broadway feel like opportunities. Seems like Oakland does better around policies.

- Fearn - Typology of units is a real critical point. “A unit is not simply a unit.” Our inventory should reflect a broad range of housing types. We need middle housing. Can we make “form-based zoning” in downtown precise plan? Let failed experiment of sb-6 be a guide. We should consider housing on strip malls, etc. Related to inclusionary vs fee, "I lean toward flexibility". I’d be surprised if we do, but I have some questions: we have 6000 units, but 50k new people. Would like more understanding of income changes. We have a lot of data around median and upper prices. Wish we could track: what’s the nominal rent? You have to have X dollars. Is there any way we can get smart to understand what price pushes people onto the streets?

-Limon - Related to in-lieux fees, the cost of construction doesn’t add up to meeting our goals, so what else can we do with fees? 

-Manus - Can you validate that we can't use density bonus toward RHNA? (NOTE: Didn't quite understand what was being said, so probably somewhat mischaracterized)

- Kaminski (planner) - Having had discussion with HCD, I don’t know that we can rely on that [density bonus]. 

- [someone else, maybe city attorney or planner?] - HCD doesn’t want cities to rely on a city using the density bonus to add on top of a Mullins density. It’s worth talking to HCD to understand better what “density bonus” means. We can’t rely on it, but we’re supposed to demonstrate realistic capacity. If buildings we’re making are using density bonuses, then that is becoming realistic.

-Manus - Oakland’s different than other CA cities. It’s denser than others, so that might affect the density bonus stuff from the state.

-Rajagopalan - Sugrue asked about Oakland hill options, and I want to follow up on that.

-Sugrue - There are spaces near merritt college, potential open-space. Perhaps along skyline boulevard. He’s happy to dig deeper on maps.

-Manus - We’ve gotten a very robust briefing. What’s next? Will we see this sooner>

-Rajagopalan - We’ve got various survey opportunities. As of now, the plan is to come in front of the commission before key milestones.

-Sugrue - Any coordination with OUSD? As housing and opportunities appear, what would that look like from the housing element side?

-R - As far as new sites, we don’t have any, but we’re in close contact with them.

-Manus - Is there an abandoned HQ site considered?

-R - There are two sites. We don’t have the HQ ccurrently, so thanks for offering it up.