A revised plan for the Dana Reserve—San Luis Obispo County’s largest proposed development in more than 25 years—will once again appear before the Board of Supervisors in November, but with half of its original number of affordable homes.
Thanks to a settlement requiring changes to the Dana Reserve Specific Plan, the county Planning Commission approved the new plan in a 4-1 vote on Sept. 16.
While the supervisors must now approve the project for it to become a reality, 2nd District Commissioner Anne Wyatt dissented at the Planning Commission meeting.
“I feel like the system has failed us a bit, and we’re plagued here with missed opportunity and a bit of magical thinking,” Wyatt said at the meeting. “Missed opportunity for meaningful deed-restricted affordable housing that could have been required through a fair and comprehensive, clearly applied inclusionary housing ordinance of the type this county once had and many jurisdictions within the county still have.”
The 288 acres of undeveloped land marked for the master-planned neighborhood is also the site of two legal battles.
Last year, the Nipomo Action Committee and the SLO chapter of the California Native Plant Society sued the county, the Board of Supervisors, and Dana Reserve developer NKT Commercial over environmental impact concerns, mainly alleging the destruction of an intact oak forest.
In December, the pair filed another lawsuit, this time against the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission, challenging its approval of Dana Reserve Specific Plan land annexed by the Nipomo Community Services District.
County staff confirmed at the Planning Commission meeting that the two lawsuits have come to halt, following a settlement agreement among NKT, the Nipomo Action Committee, and the local chapter of the California Native Plant Society.
Affordable housing took the biggest hit.
Originally, the Dana Reserve was slated to have 156 affordable homes spread out over two neighborhoods.
As part of the settlement, one of those neighborhoods will be removed to make way for 3 acres of oak woodlands. The other neighborhood will contain 78 deed-restricted affordable homes. The cuts to housing increased the amount of open space from roughly 55 acres to a little more than 60 acres.
“We weren’t happy with it, but that’s the best they could do,” Nipomo resident Lory Manosar told New Times after the Planning Commission meeting. “Affordable housing was one thing that we wanted.”
Manosar was part of a small group of residents and acquaintances of the Nipomo Action Committee present at the Planning Commission meeting who said they were unhappy with the cuts to affordable housing. The committee was unable to speak with New Times before press time.
Nonprofit People’s Self-Help Housing is responsible for building the 78 affordable units. CEO Ken Trigueiro is willing to take what they can get.
“We’re disappointed that it’s half of what it was or could have been because these units are so hard to bring forward,” Trigueiro told New Times. “But on the other hand, we’re just grateful that there are still units that are moving ahead because it’s so important and needed.”
He told commissioners that the People’s Self-Help Housing waitlist has 9,000 households in SLO County waiting to be housed across 1,000 homes.
NKT agreed to donate the piece of land holding these units to the Lucia Mar Unified School District. If the Dana Reserve Specific Plan receives all the required approvals, the school district would set up a ground lease with People’s Self-Help Housing to develop the affordable homes, which would be rented to teachers and classified employees of the school district first, and then other SLO County residents.
According to Trigueiro, the rent money won’t go to Lucia Mar or the developer. Instead, it would stay with the property as part of reserve funding if the rent exceeds the operational cost.
“When we say affordable, I think the best way to define it in our own heads is, what is that cost of that housing as a percentage of the budget for that household,” Trigueiro said.
At the Planning Commission meeting, Commissioner Wyatt said that the “back of the envelope calculation” to build the affordable units would be $50 million to $60 million. Trigueiro told New Times that his estimation lands the total cost between $35 million and $40 million.
Forty percent would be funded by state grants like the Affordable Housing Sustainable Communities Grant program and the Veterans Housing and Homeless Prevention program. People’s Self-Help Housing also plans to tap into the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit program to pay for the remaining cost.
California Native Plant Society’s Plant Communities Co-Chair Melissa Mooney said that the organization didn’t propose reducing affordable homes.
“It was the developer’s proposal, and we care deeply about it,” she said. “We do share some responsibility because we signed off on the settlement. But the settlement was the best we could come up with given the situation we were in.”
In 2021, the plant society’s co-president, Bill Waycott, discovered a new species of the manzanita shrub on the Nipomo Mesa while on a hike with his wife. He dove into an investigation after experts at San Francisco State University and UC Riverside agreed that the plant could be a new species.
Waycott previously told New Times that he informed the Local Agency Formation Commission about the new plant and that it could impact the environmental review for the Dana Reserve project. The commission’s rejection of his claim led to the second lawsuit filed by the plant society and the Nipomo Action Committee.
Mooney from the plant society said that the environmental report revealed that roughly 35 acres of Burton Mesa chaparral containing the rare manzanita were going to be significantly affected by the project.
“Ninety-three percent of the habitat on the site will be lost as a result of this development,” she said.
If the county supervisors approve the new specific plan, the settlement grants additional funds for to the plant society to manage off-site mitigation.
For developer NKT Commercial, perfection shouldn’t stand in the way of progress.
“We still have 78 affordable units that are going to be built sooner than later, versus this could have been dragged out in the courts for probably five years,” Dana Reserve spokesperson Jocelyn Brennan said.
Brennan echoed 4th District Commissioner Mariam Shah’s “profound” support for the project.
Shah—appointed by 4th District Supervisor Jimmy Paulding, who voted against the Dana Reserve project in 2024—said that her approval is the “one time” they don’t see eye to eye on an issue.
“We are in a housing crisis, and when we are in a crisis, we look for progress not perfection. I’m beyond sad about the number of affordable units lost,” Shah said. “I think this lawsuit was not about the environment. I drive by that area almost every day; nobody’s front yard is planted with the chaparral that they claim to value so much. I think it’s about keeping people out of a neighborhood, and it’s about keeping poor people out of a neighborhood.” ∆
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Sept 25-Oct 5, 2025.
It was the “developer’s proposal” to gut the affordability? Yeah right.
The developer’s proposal was what was approved and what the California Native Plant Society sued to stop. Their lawsuit, their actions, caused this.
Miss Melissa Mooney – The hundreds of underprivileged families that will now struggle to find housing because of this are on you. They are your responsibility. It is your fault.
The opposition to this plan is not about keeping poor people out of a neighborhood. It is about a large development going into an area with little to no infrastructure. The 101 cannot support thousands of people living in Nipomo and commuting for work. There are not enough community services or even grocery stores to support community as is.