Santa Clara County housing plans approved by state

Santa Clara County’s state-mandated housing plans have been approved — nearly two years after the deadline.

The Board of Supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday to approve the county’s housing element, which details how officials plan to meet state housing goals over the next eight years to account for population growth and other community needs. The California Department of Housing and Community Development sent a letter to county officials Dec. 31, 2024, approving the latest plans.

The deadline for cities and counties to have their 2023-2031 housing element approved was Jan. 31, 2023. All 15 municipalities in the county have had their plans approved, though most approvals came in late.

The drawn-out delay left the door open for nearly 40 builder’s remedy applications for new housing developments in unincorporated parts of the county, whose design and scale don’t need to follow local zoning laws because they were submitted while the county was out of compliance with the state. Supervisors balanced their collective sigh of relief with the reality that those applications won’t go away with their newly-approved document.

“It doesn’t mean they get deleted or have to start all over — they get to complete their project,” Supervisor Sylvia Arenas said at the meeting. Her district in South County accounts for a bulk of Silicon Valley’s pending builder’s remedy applications. “Lucky us.”

Santa Clara County’s housing element only pertains to unincorporated, partly agricultural regions. Officials need to plan for 3,125 more homes by 2031, 1,305 of which must be affordable to residents making less than 80% of the area median income. In Santa Clara County, that’s $146,100 for a family of four.

The state previously denied the county’s housing plans, citing a need for more details on housing accessibility programs, especially targeting racial equity.

Multiple county supervisors voiced ire about their experiences dealing with the state. Arenas said almost every municipality had some level of feedback from the state that made them “pull their hair out.”

“This whole process for all jurisdictions has been unbearable, to be frank,” Supervisor Margaret Abe-Koga said at the meeting.

Many of the county’s pending builder’s remedy projects are for single-family homes on large plots of undeveloped land, which SV@Home Director of Policy Alison Cingolani previously said is often cheaper to build and more profitable for developers. Much of that undeveloped land is protected in the county’s housing element, which prioritizes urban infill land for new housing.

A San José Spotlight review of county builder’s remedy applications shows at least 20 projects, if built as proposed, would pave over land zoned for agricultural use near Morgan Hill and Gilroy in unincorporated South County. The projects would total more than 6,500 homes across at least 330 total acres of land, with 4,300 single-family homes and 1,200 affordable homes.

It’s one reason Arenas last month proposed creating an Office of Economic Development and building a regional brand identity around South County agriculture, as orchards and crops become strip malls and offices. Proponents argue it could make farmland more commercially viable — and breathe life into the sweeping rural landscape as a major destination for fruit picking, wine tasting and weddings.
While builder’s remedy projects skirt certain zoning laws, they still don’t happen overnight. County officials said most of the projects they’re seeing spring up in rural areas would need environmental review, which would take a few years. Then those projects would still need public hearings and review by the Santa Clara County Planning Commission and supervisors.

“Even as those projects will continue to move forward, there’s still an opportunity for our community to reflect their concerns, wants and needs,” Arenas said.

Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at [email protected] or @SakuCannestra on X. Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X.