Planning commission recommends board adopt San Benito County 6th-cycle housing element after HCD compliance finding

The San Benito County Planning Commission voted 5-0 April 30 to recommend the Board of Supervisors adopt a general plan amendment that updates the county's housing element for the 2023'031 period after the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) found the draft met statutory requirements on April 1, 2025.

The housing element update, prepared with consultant Kimley-Horn, identifies how the county will plan for a Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) of 754 units across income categories and proposes several strategies to accommodate that need, including rezoning 12 candidate parcels, encouraging accessory dwelling unit (ADU) production, and counting pipeline and entitled projects. Consultant Brian Dela Torre said, "This document is a very large document, about 300 pages or so," and summarized the public outreach, HCD review and the site-selection process that produced the candidate sites inventory found in Appendix B.

The element covers demographic analysis, constraints (including infrastructure and utilities), affirmatively furthering fair…