Santa Clara County Ready to Approve Plan for 3,100 Homes

Two years after it missed its deadline, Santa Clara County is poised to finalize plans to build 3,125 homes over the next six years — plus dozens of state builder’s remedy projects in rural areas.

The county spanning from Palo Alto to Gilroy told state housing regulators last month that its state-mandated planning blueprint met all of the “statutory requirements,” the San Jose Mercury News reported. The county’s Board of Supervisors is slated to vote on the plan on Jan. 28.

The 1,300-square-mile county was supposed to have certified its Housing Element plan by Jan. 31, 2023, outlining how to rezone unincorporated areas to build more homes.

A failure to meet its housing deadline opened the county up to the state builder’s remedy, a legal loophole that allows developers to bypass local zoning rules if they include at least 20 percent affordable housing in uncompliant cities and counties.

Since the deadline, the county has received more than 30 preliminary builder’s remedy applications. They’re not the towering apartments or condos expected by housing advocates. Instead, they’re entirely new subdivisions of single-family homes.

Some say the long delay in getting its state housing blueprint approved could lead to builder’s remedy projects in rural areas prone to wildfires and floods, including orchards, pastures and vineyards.

Supervisor Otto Lee, president of the board, said “it’s become like the Wild West because of the builder’s remedy process.”

“Going outside the planning process creates real dangers for our community like urban sprawl, pollution, water shortages, traffic congestion and fire risks,” Lee said in a statement. “We can’t have the wrong type of housing in the wrong places and end up without the affordable housing we need.”

Alison Cingolani, the director of policy for the pro-housing nonprofit SV@Home, added such projects “abuse the intent of the builder’s remedy.”

“Builder’s remedy is intended to result in housing in jurisdictions that have historically not aided housing development,” Cingolani told the Mercury News.

“They were not intended to convert agricultural and open space land or place housing in places where it’s going to be sprawl or increase greenhouse gas emissions as folks are forced into long commutes.”

The county might have some recourse, according to Alice Kaufman, the policy and advocacy director for Green Foothills, an organization dedicated to preserving open space.

State law says that cities and counties can deny a builder’s remedy project if it is “proposed on land zoned for agriculture or resource preservation” or “does not have adequate water or wastewater facilities to serve the project.”

The county declined to say whether it would exercise that power, writing in a statement that “it is too early to determine the outcome of any builder’s remedy application submitted.”

— Dana Bartholomew