3 years after mass shooting, Half Moon Bay voters to weigh in on farmworker housing

• By: J.K. Dineen

• Published: July 21, 2026

After four years of debate, Half Moon Bay voters will have a chance  in November to decide the fate of a proposed 40-unit affordable farmworker housing development, a project that grew out of reaction to a tragic 2023 killing of seven mushroom farm employees and the subsequent outrage over the poor conditions many of the workers were living in.

Less than a week after Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the coastal community for being out of compliance with state housing laws, the Half Moon Bay City Council unanimously voted Tuesday night to put a referendum on the ballot that will either kill or approve the 40-unit senior farmworker complex that has been at the center of a fight dividing the upscale coastal community.

While the proposed affordable housing development on a city-owned lot at 555 Kelly Ave. downtown has been in the works for more than four years, the project received statewide attention in 2023 when a mass shooting at two mushroom farms killed seven people and exposed the abysmal living conditions of agricultural workers on the San Mateo County coast. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom has sharply criticized the city’s leaders for dragging their feet on the project.

Both supporters and opponents of the project said Tuesday night that a ballot referendum is the only way forward. 

“The city has a chance to show itself not to be racist and not to be classist by allowing a wonderful project for retired farmworkers, some of whom are in their 70s and 80s,” Vice Mayor Deborah Penrose said. “We have a chance as a city to be good citizens, to be loving, caring folks and take care of our elderly farmworkers.”

Mayor Debbie Ruddock, who voted against the project in March, said she supported the ballot measure because “referendums are a constitutional right in California.”

“It’s a chance for us to experience some real democracy in our community,” she said. “I think this process will be beneficial to this community as long as people are willing to listen to each other and avoid using the race card.”

The mass shooting unfolded in January 2023, when authorities say Chunli Zhao killed seven fellow farmworkers and wounded another person at the two farms. After the shooting, Newsom met with farmworkers and highlighted what he called deplorable living conditions, including families residing in converted shipping containers, some without proper running water or insulation.

Newsom has continued to criticize Half Moon Bay for blocking housing, calling the delays of approvals for 555 Kelly Ave. “egregious.”

“Rather than do the right thing and approve badly needed housing for the workers who feed us, a 40-unit complex for low-income seniors is being stalled by local officials,” he said in March.

Tuesday’s council decision comes as a group called Let Half Moon Bay Voters Decide has collected enough signatures to put a referendum on the project on the November ballot. The council had two choices: allow the Half Moon Bay voters to decide whether the five-story development can go forward or rescind its previous approval, which would most probably have ended the project.

While modest in terms of unit count, the project has played an outsize role in the fight between local anti-growth jurisdictions and the state’s push to force cities to accommodate more homes at a time when the cost of housing has driven residents and businesses from California. 

City Council Member Robert Brownstone said, “There is no dignified retirement for our farmworkers.” He said the homes built would be for “people who more often than not have not been heard for so many years, and who more often than not have been invisible.”

“They work up to the point until the bodies can’t take it anymore,” he said. “I trust the humanity and compassion of my fellow citizens and voters in this community.” 

For Belinda Hernandez-Arriaga, executive director of Ayudando Latinos A Soñar, a Half Moon Bay nonprofit developing the project with Mercy Housing, the Tuesday vote was at least the 10th public hearing to which her organization has bussed dozens of agricultural workers struggling to afford life in a town where Zillow pegs median home prices at $1.5 million and monthly rents at $4,500.

“Unfortunately, it’s just story after story,” Hernandez-Arriaga said.

Hernandez-Arriaga said the housing affordability crisis for farmworkers in the community of 11,000 was made more dire in April when the council repealed the city’s rent control ordinance.

“Our community is deeply hurting for better housing conditions,” she said. “So many people are having to rent one-room bedrooms for a whole family. Everyone is waiting for some kind of respite, some type of relief, some type of care. Unfortunately, we are going backwards here in Half Moon Bay.”

The project is part of the city’s state-mandated housing element, which requires that Half Moon Bay officials plan for 480 housing units from 2023 to 2031. Of that number, 339 are required to be affordable to low- and moderate-income households.

Let Half Moon Bay Voters Decide says on its website that the approval of the project could “open the door to a flood of tall, super dense, affordable housing to be built throughout the city.”

“This and related questions have not been discussed broadly in the community,” the group states. “We are seeking to place this question on the November 5 ballot to allow time for the citizens of Half Moon Bay to discuss, become well informed, and to weigh in on what will be one of the largest policy decisions for the future of our city.”

In announcing legal action against Half Moon Bay — one of five cities targeted in lawsuits — Bonta and Newsom accused it of violating state law by missing several deadlines to submit plans to build more housing and for delaying projects such as the Kelly Avenue development. The lawsuit gives Half Moon Bay until the end of the year to adopt a compliant Housing Element.

“California’s housing crisis demands action, not excuses,” Bonta said. “Jurisdictions that remain out of compliance with our Housing Element Law are standing in the way of the homes Californians need.”

Newsom said that Half Moon Bay and the four other California cities “had every chance to follow the law and plan for their fair share of housing.” 

“They chose not to, so now they’ll answer for it in court,” Newsom said.  

Ramie Dare, director of real estate development for Mercy Housing, said before the vote that she was not surprised that project opponents were able to collect the roughly 800 signatures needed to put the referendum on the fall ballot.

Dare said she didn’t know the lawsuit was coming and called the timing “interesting.” She said Mercy Housing will continue to “do our best to advance the project,” applying for funding and fine-tuning plans. Mercy Housing has already secured more than $21.6 million in committed funding, including $13 million from the state’s Serna Farmworker Housing Program.

With the artificial intelligence boom driving up Bay Area rents and home prices, Dare said the need for affordable housing is only increasing. More than 9,500 households applied for Mercy Housing’s recently completed 148-unit Lark Landing complex in San Francisco. 

“We may not get thousands of applications for senior farmworker housing because it’s a specific population unique to the Coastside, but we know the need is out there,” she said.

“We’ve got whole families living in one room, or fathers having to live separately from wives and children due to lack of space. It’s got to be incredibly difficult with rents where they are.”

At a City Council meeting in March, 67-year-old farmworker Candido Rosales said, “After a lifetime of hard work, I am living in a very difficult reality.”

“I cannot live with my wife and daughter — they rent a room with another family. I have to live somewhere else, also sharing a room with others,” he said. “We are separated not because we want to be, but because we have no other choice. At my age I want something so simple, so human: to live with my family.”

Jordan Grimes, a member of the YIMBY group Peninsula for Everyone, warned the council that blocking Kelly Avenue project would result in the California Department of Housing and Community Development not certifying the city’s Housing Element, which would lead to the “builder’s remedy,” in which local jurisdictions lose the ability make land use decisions or enforce local zoning regulations. Builder’s remedy projects have been submitted in other communities that are three or four times denser or taller than what local zoning allows.

“The city’s housing element is never going to be certified if this project doesn’t go forward,” he said. “Five stories is going to be the least of your problems if you have a housing element that doesn’t get certified for the next few years. You are absolutely going to have builder’s remedy projects coming in.”