SARATOGA — Nestled under the redwood trees on Savannah-Chanelle Vineyards’ 60-acre property is the 40-foot-long RV that vineyard manager Marcelino Martinez and his family of five call home.
The winery’s owners, Michael and Kellie Ballard, have allowed their long-time employee and his family to live there rent-free since 2013. At the time, the Martinezes had lost their lease on the trailer they were living in off Skyline Boulevard, and with few other affordable housing options nearby, Martinez was faced with the reality that he’d have to quit the job he loves.
“They’re like my babies, the grapes,” Martinez said in an interview at the winery.
With his family’s future hanging in the balance, Martinez asked the Ballards if he could buy an RV and live alongside them at the vineyards. Michael Ballard said he didn’t hesitate to agree. And for a half-decade, the Martinez family lived in their corner of the property without issue.
But in early 2018, a years-long battle between Santa Clara County and Savannah-Chanelle commenced when the county issued a notice to the Ballards stating that they were violating local zoning laws that prohibited anyone from living in an RV — even on private property.
“I couldn’t make a family homeless for arbitrary reasons,” Ballard said of the county’s request to remove the RV. “The human impact exceeded any damage or nuisance that their continued living in the trailer was going to create.”
Instead, he started exploring options for adding a permitted home while the Martinez family continued to live in the RV — a process that he said cost tens of thousands of dollars in preparatory work that included engineering and geological studies.
Meanwhile, Ballard said the county started “getting impatient,” and in July 2019 they began imposing a $1,000 daily fine for the RV that was eventually reduced to $250 per day several months later. He estimates that he owes upwards of $120,000 in fines to the county and is now taking the matter to court, saying the county is infringing on his constitutional rights.
In a statement, Santa Clara County disputed the amount and said that Ballard has refused “to agree to any deadlines to abate the violations.” The county also said it has given him multiple extensions to apply for a permit and has “made multiple offers to significantly reduce the fines” if he removes the RV.
But Paul Avelar, an attorney with the Institute of Justice representing Ballard, said the county was imposing “excessive fines” in the first place, violating the Constitution and a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling. He added that Ballard has “not refused to agree to any deadlines” and that his current work has been held up for more than a month as he waits for a response from the county over an amended permit.
“What you have is a family who has been fined now more than $120,000 for what is essentially a single violation — and while it’s a violation, it didn’t harm anyone,” Avelar said. “In fact, the Ballards were just trying to help their employee and friend with housing in an area that’s basically impossible for working-class people to afford housing.”
Matthew Lewis of the housing advocacy group California YIMBY said that even if Santa Clara County’s interpretation of the zoning law is correct, there’s a deeper question about whether it is “morally and ethically right to penalize people who are functionally farmers for providing farmworker housing on their property.”
His answer: no.
“These counties have just adapted to a full-NIMBY mindset, and that’s a real problem,” Lewis said. “They’re just so used to blocking people from having places to live. It’s almost like it’s baked into their DNA and they’ve got to get over it.”
The Martinezes’ future home, a 68-foot-long pre-fabricated dwelling, sits a few hundred feet away from the RV where they currently reside.
Ballard was finally able to obtain a permit for it in 2022, and the unit was delivered to the property about a year ago. A landslide that closed off an access road to their property last year slowed the installation process, but Ballard expects the Martinez family will be able to move in soon.
Ultimately, he thinks the county should eliminate the fines completely as they’ve worked to establish a legal residence for the Martinezes. But what frustrates him the most is the “element of selective prosecution.”
“Just drive anywhere in the county, there are mobile homes parked all over the place. There are encampments everywhere you go,” Ballard said. “The problem is obvious and overt, yet they’re choosing to prosecute us in probably the least intrusive example of this, where we are letting someone live on private property in a private location and we’re not bothering anyone.”
For Martinez, he anxiously awaits work to be completed on his new home and hopes he can move in before the rainy season when the redwoods start dropping their branches atop the RV. The vineyard, he said, is his life, and he just wants to see everybody happy with the outcome.
“They’ve all grown up here, one was born here,” Martinez said of his children’s life at Savannah-Chanelle. “It’s home.”
