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Nearly two months after approving its long-term housing plan, the San Benito County Board of Supervisors received an update March 24 on the county’s 2025 housing progress and whether it is meeting its goals.
According to the report, the county has exceeded its planning goals for higher income homes, but it is still falling short on planning for lower income housing.
Planning Director Abraham Prado told the supervisors that his department processed more than 500 building permits last year, including 106 single-family homes and accessory dwelling units, which are basically smaller houses on the same lot as a single-family unit.
Most of those permits, Prado said, were for home modifications such as adding a shed, rather than new construction. The 106 units—93 single-family homes and 13 ADUs—were all approved years ago and are for higher income households.
“These are projects that were approved 10 years ago, or even prior to that, are now essentially just moving forward,” Prado said.
Every city and county in California must submit an eight-year housing plan to the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). Known as the Housing Element, it’s a chapter of each jurisdiction’s general plan and the only one required to be updated every eight years.
HCD assigns each jurisdiction a housing quota. San Benito County has a quota of 5,005 units, which the Council of San Benito County Governments divided among Hollister, San Juan Bautista and unincorporated areas of the county. Hollister received 4,163 units, San Juan Bautista 88 and the unincorporated areas 754.
Those 754 units are divided among all income levels: 246 very low income, 198 low income, 103 moderate income, and 207 market rate units.
The 106 units approved in 2025 are all for higher income households, and come from developments such as Santana Ranch, Fairview Corners and San Juan Oaks. Adding the units finished in 2023 and 2024, the total surpasses by more than 100 the required units for above moderate households.
Of the 444 units allocated for lower income households, the county can count as completed a total of 11, all from a project at the migrant center funded by HCD.
The state certified San Benito County’s Housing Element in February, more than two years behind schedule. Prado attributed the delay to a staff shortage which led to no work being done before the summer of 2023, just a few months before the deadline. That delay triggered a state provision called the Builder’s Remedy, which allows developers to propose housing projects in areas not zoned for them.
County Counsel Gregory Priamos told the board that seven such projects were proposed on agricultural and rural lands under the Builder’s Remedy. According to the planning department, these projects total more than 2,000 units.
But a proposal is not a guarantee of construction since, as Priamos said, state law allows the county to reject or scrutinize these projects under certain conditions, such as when a project is proposed near resource-preserved lands or in areas lacking adequate wastewater infrastructure.
“The board does not lose all of its local land use authority,” Priamos said. “There are statutory exceptions that allow the board to scrutinize the projects within the scope of the law.”
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