Update 10/23/25: The Planning Commission has postponed its vote on this topic until November 20. Thank you to everyone who emailed the Planning Commission in response to our action alert. Your comments will be included in the packet that Planning Commission staff provide to the Commissioners for their November 20 meeting. To anyone who hasn’t sent comments yet — you now have until the morning of November 20 to send your email! You can use the handy online form at the bottom of this page.

Please take a moment to email the Santa Clara County Planning Commission about another builder’s remedy proposal that would bring sprawl development to rural open space. A developer whose application was previously rejected for missing a deadline is appealing to the Planning Commission this Thursday. Although the Commission has repeatedly denied similar appeals, each vote has been extremely close. Your message can help ensure that none of these harmful projects are allowed to destroy farmland and wildlife habitat.

Thanks to all of you who have been emailing the Planning Commission about these sprawl projects! Please keep sending in your emails to show that you support protecting open space and farmland.

What’s Happening

Developers have submitted more than 40 applications to Santa Clara County under California’s “builder’s remedy” law. Nearly all of these projects would be built on open space or farmland and many would be in FEMA flood zones or wildfire hazard zones. The builder’s remedy law says that if a city or county doesn’t have a state-approved plan for building enough homes, developers can ignore local zoning rules and build anywhere they wish, as long as the project fits certain criteria. The purpose of the law is to make sure cities and counties don’t shirk their responsibility to build housing.

However, builder’s remedy projects must adhere to strict legal deadlines for submitting completed development applications. Several of these developers have failed to submit all the required information by the deadline, and the County has determined their applications to be incomplete – meaning these projects cannot proceed under the builder’s remedy law. Now, the developers are appealing those incompleteness determinations to the Planning Commission.

In August, the Planning Commission heard the first of these appeals. In September, the Planning Commission heard two more, and earlier this month, heard a fourth appeal. The Commissioners denied all of those appeals because the developers failed to provide all of the required information by the deadline. However, all of the votes were extremely close, in most cases with a 4-3 vote by the Commissioners.

Now, another developer has similarly failed to provide the required information for a builder’s remedy application. Other builder’s remedy projects have also been deemed incomplete and we expect those developers may appeal those determinations to the Planning Commission in the coming weeks. It is important to speak up about each of these harmful projects as they come before the Planning Commission. Your emails make a difference!

Why It Matters

This builder’s remedy project, known as Cameron Park, would put 576 housing units on rural land south of Gilroy. This is a rich agricultural area with prime farmland soil – an irreplaceable resource for our farming community. The site of the Cameron Park project is covered with prime farmland soils that would be lost if paved over for development. Furthermore, the site is entirely located within a FEMA flood zone and a liquefaction zone (meaning that in an earthquake the ground could liquefy). This project would both pave over prime farmland and put residents in harm’s way.

Santa Clara County has received dozens of builder’s remedy development proposals totalling nearly 7,000 units, nearly all on open space or farmland and many in FEMA flood zones or wildfire hazard zones. If all of these residential sprawl projects were to be approved, County resources would be severely strained by trying to protect and provide services to thousands of new homes scattered throughout the rural countryside.

Our region needs to build more housing, but we need to build it in urban, infill locations – not in rural areas, on open space or wildlife habitat, and definitely not in areas where people would be put in harm’s way.

What You Can Do

Please use the form below to email the Santa Clara County Planning Commission and ask them to deny the appeal.