Hous­es of wor­ship in Pasade­na, Cal­i­for­nia will now be able to build up to 75 units of hous­ing on their prop­er­ty, accord­ing to an arti­cle in The Real Deal. The city coun­cil vot­ed to amend the city’s zon­ing code to allow res­i­den­tial devel­op­ment on land tra­di­tion­al­ly zoned as com­mer­cial.

“Projects would be lim­it­ed to 36 units an acre, with a max­i­mum of 75 hous­ing units, with a min­i­mum of 80 per­cent of the hous­ing set aside as afford­able.” The rest of the units would also have income require­ments, lim­it­ing them to house­holds earn­ing up to 150 per­cent of area medi­an income (AMI).

The amend­ment excludes areas such as Pasade­na’s Cen­tral Dis­trict, “where the com­mer­cial ‘char­ac­ter’ of the dis­trict is a pri­or­i­ty and where high traf­fic com­mer­cial areas ‘detract from hous­ing com­pat­i­bil­i­ty.’”

The move is part of the city’s plan to meet its afford­able hous­ing needs, par­tic­u­lar­ly the 9,400 new units required by Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Region­al Hous­ing Needs Assess­ment, which tasks cities with spe­cif­ic goals every eight years. A sim­i­lar mea­sure, intro­duced in the state leg­is­la­ture by State Sen. Scott Wiener, would over­ride local zon­ing codes to allow reli­gious insti­tu­tions to build afford­able hous­ing by-right.