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At the March 11 meeting of the San Benito County Board of Supervisors, Associate Planner Stephanie Reck delivered an update on the housing element of the county’s General Plan. While the county surpassed its goals for planning for market rate homes in less than two years, it’s still behind when it comes to low income housing.
Reck said that in order to meet goals stemming from state mandates, the county still needs to plan for 536 homes for very low, low and moderate income earners.
Every jurisdiction in California has to comply with a housing element in which they identify where housing can be built to meet the needs of their communities.
The process is supervised by the California Department of Housing and Community Development, which assigns each city and county the number of units they need to plan for. San Benito County was given a total of 5,005 units, which the Council of San Benito Governments distributed among the cities of Hollister and San Juan Bautista as well as unincorporated parts of the county.
Hollister was assigned 4,163 units, while San Juan Bautista was assigned 88 units. The county was assigned 754 units of which 246 must be for very low income, 198 for low income, and 103 for moderate income households. The county was also ordered to plan for 207 market rate homes.
So far, San Benito County has planned for 222 units. Out of these, 11 are for very low income households, which Reck said came from a project for transitional and permanent housing at the migrant center. The remaining 211 are for higher income households, and most of them—171—are part of the Lands of Lee project, which was approved last year.
Housing element overdue
The county was supposed to submit its housing element by December 2023, but failed to do so. Beck said the county had submitted its most recent revision on March 4 and were waiting for approval. But the delay in the housing element, as BenitoLink previously reported, has enabled two developments in agricultural and rural lands to proceed under the so-called “builders’ remedy,” a provision in state law that makes it harder for jurisdictions to reject developments that provide affordable housing, even if they violate zoning rules.
San Benito County Director of Planning Abraham Prado said the fact that a development project is using the builder’s remedy doesn’t mean it is “automatically approved.”
“Because of the lack of the current housing element being updated, we do fall into builders’ remedy,” he said. “However, there is still a process for each development or application that’s received to be able to go through.”
Prado also said that there are “quantifiable reasons” for which a jurisdiction can “potentially reject” a builder’s remedy project. One of them, he said, could be the lack of a sanitary sewer system. Unincorporated areas of San Benito County greatly depend on the city of Hollister for their wastewater services and, according to Prado, the city is reaching its limit for what it can provide.
“Hollister is coming to the point where they are currently serving their existing development, and it appears that they can serve part or all of their approved, but not yet built development,” he said. “But it appears that they’re having issues to be able to serve any additional development after that.”
If the city cannot provide more sanitary services, then no more developments can be planned for the unincorporated areas. According to Prado, this could allow the county to reject a builder’s remedy project without risking a state lawsuit, as has happened to other counties in California.
“Not that we’re looking into it specifically, but we’re working with county council on this, and the lack of sanitary sewer system can potentially be one of those reasons [to reject a builder’s remedy project],” Prado said.
Supervisor Angela Curro said the Board of Supervisors was working with 29th District Assemblymember Robert Rivas and state Senator John Laird to address the county’s housing quotas and service limitations. “We need to make sure they understand, without this infrastructure, we can’t meet these numbers,” she said.
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