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CAPER 17 OMB Control No: 2506-0117 (exp. 09/30/2021) CR-35 - Other Actions 91.220(j)-(k); 91.320(i)-(j) Actions taken to remove or ameliorate the negative effects of public policies that serve as barriers to affordable housing such as land use controls, tax policies affecting land, zoning ordinances, building codes, fees and charges, growth limitations, and policies affecting the return on residential investment. 91.220 (j); 91.320 (i) The City continues to work towards eliminating housing constraints that are identified in its California State-certified Housing Element of the General Plan that serve as barriers to affordable housing. In the fall of 2021, City staff launched the Housing Element update for the planning years 2023 through 2030. Next year’s CAPER will have more details on the final adopted version of this document. The first year of “Building Homes and Jobs Act” Planning Grants Program (SB 2, Atkins 2017), the State provided funding for the City to evaluate the General Plan and Zoning Ordinance. The City proposed to develop objective design and development standards intended to stimulate high quality multi-family residential and mixed-use development. The Multi-Family Development Standards Project will establish new objective design and development standards for each Zoning District that accommodates multi- family and/or mixed-use development. Objective standards will provide property owners and developers with greater predictability and will help streamline the development review process in accordance with recent changes in state law. The project is currently reviewing design options that can serve as housing prototypes. Those prototypes will then be used to update building design standards that are acceptable to the community. The intent of this project is to signal to housing developers what the City wants to see in their proposed multi-family residential and mixed-use developments thereby creating predictability and saving time in the entitlement process. Other steps of this project include an analysis and assessment of the design prototypes that will result in a Development Constraints Memo and Site Test Fit evaluation. The Multi-Family Development Standards project is scheduled to advance to public hearings for consideration of Zoning Amendments in the fall/winter of 2021. The City Council approved an update to the General Plan (2035 General Plan) in September 2016. Key features of the updated General Plan included increasing mixed use and residential density particularly in the City’s projected growth center downtown. Additionally, the General Plan created new land use categories which allow for higher density residential/mixed use development on affected industrially zoned parcels that are in close proximity to the San Leandro BART Station (Industrial Transition Land Use) and parcels near the Bay Fair BART station (Bay Fair TOD Land Use). The City also updated its Zoning Code in September, 2016, as an effort to create more flexibility to meet market demands while ensuring compatibility with existing neighboring uses. The 2016 Zoning Code update brought the zoning in certain areas of the City into conformance with both the 2007 Downtown Transit Oriented Development Strategy and 2035 General Plan Update. The Code was further modernized in March 2020 with a re-chaptering to make the Code more accessible and user-friendly, including the addition of new hyperlinks and cross-references of state statutes. This update also included codifying the State’s Accessory Dwelling Unit requirements.