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San Juan Bautista’s Planning Commission voted Jan. 6 to recommend the City Council approve its sixth cycle Housing Element and submit it to the California Department of Housing and Community Development for final certification.
The measure now goes to the City Council for adoption at its Jan. 20 meeting, after which it would be sent to the Department of Housing and Community Development for approval.
Housing elements are state-required documents which outline how a city or county will address housing needs for various income levels during a given planning period by means of a “Regional Housing Needs Allocations” (RHNA) as set by the San Benito County Council of Governments.
According to City Planner Arielle Goodspeed, the Housing Element consists of four main parts: a housing needs and fair housing analysis, a review of constraints, an inventory of housing sites and a housing plan for future decision-making
“It serves as the city’s primary housing policy document,” Goodspeed said during her presentation to the Planning Commission. “It identifies sites to meet the city’s RHNA, supports affordable housing and removes barriers to housing development.”
San Juan’s RHNA allotment is 88 housing units spread across different income categories with at least 32 earmarked as low- to very low-income. However, housing elements never include approval of specific projects or construction within the city.
According to the new Housing Element, the city has identified 24 parcels totaling approximately 17 acres of infill within city boundaries, which could potentially accommodate 156 housing units based on ”site size, constraints, and realistic capacity.”
Goodspeed said that none of the properties will require changes to current land use designations to meet these goals. “I just want to emphasize that no rezoning is being done on these sites,” she said.
Goodspeed said the housing element qualifies for a “common sense exemption” from the California Environmental Quality Act because it is a policy document that does not directly approve construction.
San Juan, Hollister and San Benito County are currently listed as “out of compliance” with the state housing mandate, according to the California Department of Housing and Community Development website.
Being out of compliance triggers the “builder’s remedy,” a provision limiting a local government’s ability to deny proposed housing developments that include a specified portion of affordable units.
The site lists that San Juan’s draft, which was proposed for adoption at this meeting, was submitted on Dec. 10 and reviewed on Dec. 31.
San Benito County is listed as having adopted a housing element on Dec. 16, and that document is now under review. Hollister is listed as having submitted a draft housing element on Dec. 17, which is also under review.
San Juan did not submit a “timely” housing element for the fifth cycle (2015–2023), resulting in a failure of compliance. The city eventually submitted it on Dec. 10 and received a notice of substantial compliance from the state on Dec. 31. This was supported, in part, by the permitting of 106 housing units between 2019 and 2023, none of which count toward the current RHNA number.
The Housing Element passed with a 3-0 approval from Commissioners Elise Brentnall, Dan DeVries and Eddie Sanchez. Commissioner Chris Martorana was absent from the meeting, and the fifth seat on the commission is vacant.
At the start of the Planning Commission meeting, DeVries was reelected as chairman and Sanchez as vice chairman by unanimous vote for a one-year term. An ad hoc committee consisting of DeVries and Martorana to oversee construction of the recently approved The Alameda gas station was also formed in a unanimous vote.
The meeting was preceded by a Historic Resources Board meeting, at which Brentnall was elected chair and Martorana vice chair, both for one-year terms.
Commissioner Dan DeVries paid tribute to Georgana Gularte, who died on Dec. 21. Gularte had been a founding member of the San Juan Bautista Historical Society in 1965 and maintained a passion for the town’s history until her passing.
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