The more than 1,000 homes planned for Santana Ranch make it one of the cornerstone developments in the county’s new Housing Element.
The more than 1,000 homes planned for Santana Ranch make it one of the cornerstone developments in the county’s new Housing Element.

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Days before the San Benito County Board of Supervisors gave its final approval to the county’s housing plan on Jan. 13, a group of former Hollister officials urged the state to take a closer look at it.

In a letter to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, former mayor Mia Casey, former councilwoman and planning commissioner Carol Lenoir, former city manager William Avera, and attorney Clark Stone requested on Jan. 8 a “heightened review” of the county’s Housing Element, the state-mandated document outlining how the county will meet its housing needs. They argue the plan relies too heavily on Hollister’s infrastructure and fails to consider the impacts it could have on the city. 

“I just want to see better planning,” Casey told BenitoLink. “This is going to change Hollister, and I don’t think people are aware of that. It’s going to change the character of our town.”

All cities and counties in California have to update their housing element every eight years. Today, San Benito County, as well as San Juan Bautista and Hollister, are among the few remaining jurisdictions—57 out of 539—without state certification, after missing the deadline by two years. As county officials explained, this has cost the county access to millions in state grants and reduced control over local development decisions. 

Each cycle, jurisdictions are assigned a number of units to plan for, and for the current one, the county must plan for more than 700. To meet that target, the county’s main strategy, as its consultants have explained, was to locate them in what urban planners call “county islands,” which are pockets of county land surrounded by the city of Hollister.

“It just makes sense,” Kimley-Horn consultant Bryant de la Torre told the San Benito County Planning Commission in May. “Everything around it is developed, so it would make sense to add some houses.”

The green sites represent parcels the county plans to rezone to plan for the required housing, while the yellow ones are what the county calls “pipeline projects”—developments already in the planning process; some have been approved and others are still under review.
The green sites in this photo represent parcels the county plans to rezone as part of its plan for required housing, while the yellow ones are what the county calls “pipeline projects”—developments already in the planning process.

County islands are at the heart of the former Hollister officials’ critique. They argue that because these parcels are surrounded by the city, Hollister would bear the burden of increased demand for utilities, traffic and emergency services that come with the higher-density housing the county plans for those areas. They say there’s no agreement on how this would work.

“The plan does not include executed service agreements, funded capital improvement plans, or guaranteed capacity tied to these sites,” the letter states. “From a practical standpoint, this places the City in the position of bearing impacts—traffic, utilities, emergency services, and neighborhood compatibility—without having participated in binding service or growth agreements.”

In early 2025, the San Benito Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) released a countywide review of wastewater services, pointing to some of those concerns. It found that several unincorporated areas depend on the city of Hollister for wastewater treatment and warned that Hollister’s system is operating near capacity, which is a major constraint on future growth and new development.  

Casey told BenitoLink that the Housing Element offers no explanation about where services would come from if the selected parcels are developed.

“The county does not own a sewer plant or the water pipes,” Casey said. “So they don’t really have the infrastructure to build, and there are no agreements in place between the city and the county. It just feels like a lot of paper but not really any substance as to how it will be achieved.”

The letter also raises concerns about the strain new housing could place on emergency services, particularly fire protection.

“The Housing Element does not evaluate whether local fire protection agencies currently have the equipment or ladder-reach capability to safely serve multi-story residential structures permitted under the proposed zoning,” the letter states. “Nor does it identify funding, timelines, or mitigation measures to address this limitation.”

Both the city and the county housing plans, according to the letter, rely on “the same constrained infrastructure systems, including sewer treatment facilities, regional roadways, groundwater basins, schools, and emergency services.” 

Casey said the group has not received a response from the state. BenitoLink asked the California Department of Housing and Community Development if it had received the letter, but did not receive a response before publication.

State officials are expected to certify the county’s Housing Element in the coming weeks. In the meantime, the Board of Supervisors’ approval unlocked more than $11 million in state grants for road improvements.

Supervisors are expected to decide which road projects will be funded at their Jan. 27 meeting.

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