Here the City of Sonoma is asking the Judge to “Notice” aka look at, the exhibits they include. The exhibits are the legislative record of the 1990 amendments to the HAA.
When the HAA was initially passed in 1982, it was very simple, it was just section (j). It applied to all proposed housing, and just said, ‘cities, you have to follow your own zoning.’ In 1990, affordable housing developers added sections that apply to subsidized housing. These sections go farther than just requiring cities to follow their own zoning, they also describe circumstances where subsidized housing must be approved even if it doesn’t comply with local zoning.
The City of Sonoma is including this because they think it shows that the HAA is a law that is supposed to apply to subsidized housing. In this case however, we are not using any of the sections that were added in 1990. We are using section (j), the original 1982 section that applies to all housing proposals, including market rate.