A winery in the South Bay finds itself locked in a dispute with Santa Clara County. The issue? Housing.
Michael Ballard has owned Savannah-Chanelle Vineyards in Saratoga since 1996.
In 2013, Ballard let his vineyard manager, Marcelino Martinez, move his family into an RV on the 60-acre property.
“One of the things that I just always felt from the beginning was we were doing the right thing,” Ballard said.
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After an inspection in 2017, Ballard said Santa Clara County sent a letter that it was illegal to let someone live in a recreational vehicle on the winery property.
“Nobody ever addressed the elephant in the room which was ‘Well, what’s going to happen to the Martinez family when we get rid of the trailer?'” Ballard said. “They have no home so we’re going to make a family homeless that you can enforce an ordinance that says you can’t live in a recreational vehicle when there are hundreds if not thousands of people living in recreational vehicles all over the county and you aren’t enforcing that.”