Santa Clara County Planning Collaborative
Since its inception in 2019, the Santa Clara County Planning Collaborative (SCCPC) has served as a countywide shared effort to advance housing policy and action among all 16 jurisdictions in the county, spanning from Palo Alto and south to Gilroy and encompassing the heart of Silicon Valley and the City of San Jose. SCCPC helps make developing high-quality, certified housing elements easier and less costly, and supports housing policy implementation across the County. SCCPC is a project of the Cities Association of Santa Clara County, and Community Planning Collaborative has helped support its formation as well as providing ongoing facilitation and technical support.
While of varying size and capacity, SCCPC’s member jurisdictions all face significant regional and local housing challenges, shaped by being at the epicenter of the global tech economy. Through monthly meetings, focused work groups, outreach to key partners and experts, and tailored technical assistance, SCCPC fosters cross-jurisdiction collaboration and resource-sharing to save time and money and achieve shared goals. It also helps advance coordinated policy strategies and promotes best practices to more efficiently and effectively meet the region’s profound housing needs.
From 2021 through 2023, SCCPC’s work has been focused on helping every jurisdiction update their Housing Element to meet state law requirements. To promote inclusive outreach for the Housing Element, we developed and delivered Let’s Talk Housing, a shared, multilingual countywide engagement process. We also helped all of SCCPC’s jurisdictions with their state-required analyses of housing needs and provided guidance for affirmatively furthering fair housing (AFFH) in addition to hosting numerous trainings and work sessions focused on specific state requirements. These included guidance on model policies and programs; a work group focused on farmworker housing; and an Equity Advisory Group to help ensure inclusion of lower income groups, communities of color and special needs populations.
Starting in late 2022 SCCPC decided to move forward on developing a set of shared ADU program resources and tools, which will be a key focus of work in 2023. We will continue to help every jurisdiction respond to State comments on their updated Housing Elements and, once those are certified, will continue to support all SCCPC members in developing and implementing housing policies and programs to address housing needs across the county.
