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A month after the San Benito County Planning Commission rejected the county’s long-term housing policy, the San Benito County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved it on Dec. 16.
That approval is crucial to unlocking millions of dollars in state funding, regaining control over local development, and planning housing for the community’s most vulnerable residents, said Abraham Prado, the county’s director of Planning, Building and Code Enforcement.
Prado told the board the 300-page document was the result of years of public meetings gathering community input “to address those real-life, tangible and, on many occasions, unfortunate conditions” some county residents face due to the lack of affordable housing. “We heard them loud and clear,” Prado said.
The policy, known as the Housing Element, is required under California law. Cities and counties must update it every eight years to show how they will meet their community’s housing needs. Today, San Benito County is among the few remaining jurisdictions—67 out of 539— without state certification after missing the deadline by two years.
County planners and the supervisors first approved the Housing Element in the spring, more than four years after the county first started working on it. That first approval triggered the rezoning of 12 parcels from agricultural or rural to higher-density residential use to accommodate the more than 700 units the county is required to plan for, a necessary step toward securing full state certification.
Without a certified Housing Element, the county is exposed to litigation and has already suffered financial losses. Prado told the board that county agencies couldn’t access more than $3 million in state grants which required a compliant plan. He added that next year officials were preparing to request more than $11 million in additional funding for road improvements and other infrastructure, but couldn’t do so without a certified Housing Element.
Remaining out of compliance also leaves the county subject to what’s known as the builder’s remedy, a state rule that limits the ability of local governments to deny developments that include affordable units, even when they conflict with local zoning.
The Housing Element is scheduled for a second reading—required for final approval—on Jan. 13. If approved, the plan is expected to receive state certification by the end of winter, bringing San Benito County back into compliance and out of the builder’s remedy.
Because San Benito County still lacks certification, developers have already proposed 13 projects totaling more than 2,600 units on land currently designated as rural or agricultural, Prado said.
After the spring approval, the Housing Element was set to move forward until it hit a snag in November, when owners of the parcels the county was planning to rezone said they had never been notified.
After hearing their concerns, the Planning Commission voted 4–1 to reject the plan.
Two of the three property owners who spoke at the Planning Commission meeting also addressed the supervisors on Dec. 16, reiterating that they had not been notified early in the process about the rezoning. They also raised concerns about how potential development could affect traffic, privacy and noise.
Prado told supervisors that parcels rezoned for higher density residential use could be returned to their previous zoning.
Of the 754 units the county is required to plan for under its regional housing needs allocation, he said, most are already accounted for through projects approved in prior years. The county is still short, however, of planning for 168 units for lower-income households.
“If the county does end up meeting its regional housing needs allocation and a property owner comes in and says, ‘I’m thinking of having a different zoning designation,’” Prado said, “the county will work with the property owner—and with the state—to make sure that if any change occurs, we would continue in substantial compliance.”
Supervisor Kollin Kosmicki urged the county to “move forward aggressively” to meet the affordable housing requirement, and then work with the property owners who may want to rezone their land again. Kosmicki suggested that the county could use one of the parcels it owns and is slated for rezoning to build affordable housing there, and thus meet the state requirement.
Supervisors and county staff also reassured residents that the rezoning didn’t mean the parcels would be developed.
“This rezoning does not force anyone to sell their land, it does not require anyone to build housing, and it does not change existing lawful uses,” Supervisor Mindy Sotelo said. “Development remains a choice always.”
Supervisor Ignacio Velazquez echoed this point, and said that if a developer does pursue a project in one of those parcels, “we’re going to make sure we’re holding them to high, high standards.”
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