In a June 6 presentation by Resource Management Agency Planning and Building Director Abraham Prado outlined San Benito County’s 2035 General Plan Housing Element to a joint session of the San Benito County Board of Supervisors and Planning Commissioners. County officials also were briefed on upcoming projects aimed at tackling homelessness.
According to the 2035 General Plan, the Housing Element is the major local housing strategy document intended to provide residents and public officials with an understanding of the housing needs of the unincorporated areas of the county. According to the general plan, when supervisors adopted the General Plan in July 2015, the Housing Element had already been in effect since 2014 to meet state-mandated housing goals, which requires communities to update on a periodic basis in order to continue to meet housing needs.
Prado said June 7 was the kick-off date to begin assessing all the Housing Element’s components. By August, he said the county plans to conduct its first workshop to develop an administrative draft of the amended Housing Element to be ready for review by the county between October and December. He said the public will be able to review the document between December and January 2024, and it will be finalized by February 2024.
He said the county will be working with the state throughout the process in order to assure the Housing Element is certified by the state, which will give the county access to state grants and alternative funding sources.
In September 2021, California’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) issued a Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) of 5,005 units to the Council of San Benito Governments for the planning period of June 30, 2023 to Dec. 15, 2031.
Of the 5,005 units, 4,163 were allocated for Hollister, 88 for San Juan Bautista and 754 for the unincorporated area of the county. The units for the unincorporated county were to be allocated as:
- 123 extremely low income units (a family of four that makes 15%-30% of the county median income of $95,606)
- 123 very low income units (30%-50% of county median income)
- 198 low income units (50%-80% of county median income)
- 103 moderate units (80%-120% of county median income)
- 207 above moderate units
Prado said the need is to figure out where these units can be located in the county.
“They need to be in areas where there could be potential infrastructure,” he said. “We are going to be holding at least two meetings, but we will give updates from time to time to the commission and the board.”
He said the first community workshop will take place between August and October, while a second workshop is planned between December and January 2024. He said there would hopefully be another joint study session toward the end of the year so the staff could bring back the amendment with the members’ recommendations at the end of their recommendations, followed up by public hearings to discuss the various aspects of housing. He said the county will notify the public when the meetings are scheduled to happen by email and fliers.
Planning for homeless housing
In conjunction with planning for the 754 units, RMA director Steve Loop outlined the county’s Health & Human Services Agency’s efforts to apply for a $6 million to $8 million Homekey grant to build 50 individual, 600- to 1,000-square-foot homes or a 52,000-square-foot, four-story apartment building for chronically homeless families and individuals on four acres along North Chappell Road.
During public comments, Gabriel Torres, vice president of operations for Community Housing Improvement Systems and Planning Association, Inc. (CHISPA) and former member of the Hollister Planning Commission for 10 years, said CHISPA had been working closely with Prado on the housing element amendment. He wanted the new board and commissioners to know that CHISPA has been involved in numerous housing projects in the county for several years.
“We have three developments in Hollister,” he said. “We have a multi-family apartment complex that we partnered with the county on Buena Vista Road. We have a single-family subdivision on Buena Vista Road that was targeted to moderate income families. So we did target county employees, city employees, hospital employees and school district employees.”
He continued, “Our goal was to provide housing for the locals and folks who couldn’t afford the $600,000 [houses] that were being built. And we recently completed another project here, a 49-unit senior apartment complex.”
Supervisor Bea Gonzales asked Torres if there was any way to guarantee local residents would be housed in CHISPA units to the exclusion of others outside the county. He said CHISPA must comply with state fair-housing guidelines concerning multi-family developments, though there have been instances when locals were allowed to apply first during an initial two-week period, after which the general public could apply. In this way, he said no fair housing laws were violated.
Real estate agent and former Hollister city councilman Karson Klauer cautioned the group to be aware of what the Hollister City Council was doing with its General Plan update.
“It’s going to affect everything that you want to do because they have a policy goal that says essentially you aren’t going to build that density and you’re not going to have access to public utilities that you don’t already have,” he said. “So we can sit here and plan, but the city’s not going to let you have sewer service going forward. You’ve talked for two hours about zoning and different things. Well, if they say you can’t build anything, your zoning doesn’t matter.”
Resident Christina Chavez-Wyatt advised the group not to assume that there is a lack of interest in the topic just because the public wasn’t actively participating in the meeting.
“Concerns for growth are largely influenced by traffic and out-commuting as approximately 60% or more of our community residents commute to work outside of our county,” she said. “California is deep into a housing shortage that’s fueling homelessness, poverty and inequality. Since the last recession ended in 2010, the various entities created at least 722,000 jobs but only 106,000 housing units. That imbalance has pushed people far away from where they work. It’s forcing them into welfare zones, and in our community resulting in soul-numbing commutes, frustration, confusion and anger.”
In 2014, the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments (AMBAG) prepared its Regional Growth Forecast, giving a picture of population, housing, and employment growth through 2035. The figures developed by AMBAG began with a projection of job growth in the region based on past trends combined with present concentrations of industry sectors found in Santa Cruz, Monterey, and San Benito counties. These population projections became a basis for projecting growth in housing.
The annual growth rate for the county in 2014 was 1.5%, according to the 2035 General Plan, and was projected to grow by 47.16% by 2035. The number of housing units in the county was projected to grow from 17,870 in 2010 to 25,057 in 2035, a 40.22% increase. It was believed that the population by 2035 would increase by 1.6% from 55,269 in 2010 to 81,332. According to the U.S. Census, on July 1, 2022, the population in the county was 67,579 and the number of housing units was 21,437, meaning the county is 3,620 units shy of meeting the projections for 2035.
Related BenitoLink stories:
Supervisors, Planning Commissioners briefed on General Plan land-uses | BenitoLink
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