Affordable and Workforce Housing Needs in SB County

Fair-share housing plan foiled again

By Deborah Brasket, SB CAN Executive Director

It looks as if Santa Barbara County, once again, is failing to meet its own stated goals to provide fair-share affordable housing throughout the county.

Every five years, the state requires the county to document that it is providing enough high-density zoning to support the needs for affordable and workforce housing. The 2003-08 Housing Element Mandate required the county to rezone 62 acres to support housing for low- and very-low-income households.

Yet, by January 2007, the county had still failed to provide enough high-density rezones to fulfill its certification.

Then, in February, the county proposed meeting the state's mandate for affordable housing by locating all of its high-density rezones in the North County, with half of those sites in the semi-rural community of Orcutt. This plan met with strong opposition from the local community.

The Santa Barbara County Action Network was one of the organizations objecting to this plan, which would unfairly impact one area while failing to meet the housing needs of the county as a whole. We urged the Board of Supervisors to meet the need for fair distribution of affordable housing across the county by including South County sites, near job and transportation centers.

Eventually, the Board of Supervisors sent the plan back to staff to determine if additional sites could be found to create a more balanced plan.

In August, the board claimed to have found a loophole. The supervisors announced that, with the adoption of the Isla Vista Master Plan, the state's requirement to rezone 62 acres of land to accommodate very-low and low-income- housing needs across the county had been met. But, the concentration of all the rezones in one small area, once again, fails to provide the development of low-income housing where it is most needed - near job and transportation centers.

Moreover, since Isla Vista is largely a student community, the type of housing developed there will likely address student needs and be priced accordingly. In fact, rental prices in Isla Vista far exceed those of the rest of the county. As a result, even with higher densities, housing built in this community will be unaffordable for our local workforce, let alone low-income households.

In any case, the IV Master Plan embraces a 30-year period, and is not directed to the need for housing in the next five years.

For all these reasons, the county's plan to meet the state's housing mandate seems to have gone from bad to worse. Locating all of its high-density rezones in the North County was a bad idea, but claiming to locate them in the tiny community of Isla Vista is simply a sham.

It is the county's quick-fix solution to what it obviously sees as a certification problem, rather than an opportunity to address the real need for affordable housing throughout the county.

This last-ditch effort to satisfy the state mandate, in the long run, hurts working families that struggle to find decent, affordable housing near their jobs. And it hurts the public confidence when the need for affordable housing becomes, as one critic termed it, a “shell game.”

Whether the state ends up certifying this plan or not, let's hope our county supervisors will plan more wisely for the 2009-2014 Housing Element.

Santa Maria Times, Looking Forward Column, November 23, 2007