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.   

They asked four questions for people's input, same questions across 5 breakout groups: (1) What are the biggest challenges around housing in SL (2) What groups are most impacted, (3) What policies would you suggest, (4) What existing policies are working well and to be expanded upon.

Not much talk of overall supply, SFZ, or streamlining MFH, except from me. Some support for increasing inclusionary zoning. Most participants seemed to think "housing" equated to "the homelessness problem" and made generally okay comments about more housing, shelter, supportive services, etc. Some support for missing middle and workforce housing, but without specific policies for it (except perhaps subsidizing it). A couple of people lamenting the difficulty of building more in general, referencing cost of construction. 

One gripe referencing a meeting earlier this week where a developer who's put in for two SB35 developments, both mostly studios, 470 affordable and 710 total when both put together over the two, requested a 35% waiver of the park fee which I believe is our only standard impact fee, on the grounds that that fee's nexus study assumes 2 people per unit and this was going to have 1.25 because studios. This waiver was shot down by council and staff pulled it. The commenter tonight griped about excessive density of these projects ("packing them in" or something like that) and about how ridiculous an assumption it was that 1.25 people would live in a studio on average, saying it would be 2 to 5.

No overtly anti-housing comments. Some grousing about market rate housing and developers.

City staff were mostly realistic, but misleadingly made it appear that we might be meeting our 2022 RHNA goal, when in fact our progress is abysmal (showed a calculation of 98% met including all the pipeline projects). Said there would be a focus on vacant and underutilized sites (as usual) and that Bay Fair BART TOD would contribute a good deal of development potential (probably correct, that TOD plan was just passed and is pretty good). They mentioned the AFFH requirement on their own. 

They said in 2007 potential for over 3,000 homes had been projected in the downtown area, and only 500 or so had been built since; annoyingly, they framed this like a positive for the HE, as if there was a lot of "room left", as opposed to an indictment of strategies to date.

The Planning Director Tom Liao incorrectly mentioned SB9 had made 4 to 10 units legal; I emailed him after to correct him, and he accepted my correction.

Since the least production either real or in pipeline, has been in moderate-income housing, both staff and commenters put some focus on the question of how to achieve that. Staff noted that only 10% of people working in San Leandro lived in the city. The term "missing middle" was used a fair amount, and people asked if missing middle was a way to get workforce housing, but also talked a lot about means of subsidy or deed restriction to moderate income levels. Liao (correctly IMO) noted that there is a preference to use limited housing funds for low-income rather than moderate-income.

Some commenters complained about developers feeing-out of inclusionary requirements; one person said in-lieu fees should be jacked up to Hayward levels (22k?) to dissuade developers from doing this.

One other highly pro-housing comment besides mine; I got in touch with the commenter.

I unfortunately arrived too late, but I actually talked to the Senior Housing Specialist about this in a separate meeting, so I have more details than just the City Council meeting. Here's the three main reasons we're behind: 

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1. 2020 production took a hit (rents/construction costs too out of sync, 600+ unit market rate development on pause), though ADUs are going up like 3x pace of previous years

2. 2 SB35 projects in progress, including 250/500 units at Bayfair (which is slated to add maybe ~2k units overall in the next decade) - larger TOD Bayfair plan currently stalled around calls for stronger protections for a nearby mobile home park, which would be displaced under the current plan 

3. Likely will struggle to reach RHNA goals due to above, but open to convo about missing middle zoning for next cycle 

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Sr. Housing Specialist Maryann Sargent & planner Avalon Schultz (who I met with) seem to appreciate the support on housing plans, but they have a big backlog to work with. I appreciate their work, and we should support them while pushing for more ambitious RHNA targets.