Updated county housing element includes 19 new proposed housing sites

BY ZOË COSGROVE

Santa Barbara County submitted an updated draft of its Housing Element to the state of California on March 31; the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors heard the update on Tuesday. The document, a planning tool used to address county housing needs, is revised every eight years.

According to First District Supervisor Das Williams, the county added 19 new proposed housing sites to its Housing Element, including 60 units of housing for workers at The Miramar Hotel and the Biltmore Hotel in Montecito.

“These are important decisions about our shared future that cannot be taken lightly,” Williams said. “If we are serious about keeping our community a place where our kids, grandkids and seniors can live, we need to find the right places for housing.”

For many county residents, housing shortages and costs are significant concerns. According to the latest draft of the county’s Housing Element, the county had the sixth-highest average rental cost in the United States in 2022. The area has also seen a decline in housing production in the past 20 years. Residents with lower incomes and those with disabilities experience disproportionate effects, including overcrowding. Additionally, many “overpaying renters” reside in the unincorporated areas near Goleta and Carpinteria.

A draft of the document became available to the public on Jan. 30. According to County Planning Director Lisa Plowman, the county received over 430 comment letters during the 30-day public comment period. “It was a full, broad range of public comment,” Plowman said. “We got a lot of good information from that process which resulted in changes we’ve made to the Housing Element.”

Seven of the 19 new sites are county-owned, according to Plowman. Other sites include two parcels in Montecito, one in Isla Vista, three within UCSB faculty/ staff housing projects, two in Eastern Goleta Valley, one in Carpinteria, one in Vandenberg Village and two in Orcutt, she added.

The wage needed to afford a market rate two-bedroom rental unit in the county “far exceeds” the wage needed to afford an average rental in the state of California; many “overpaying renters” reside in the unincorporated areas near Goleta and Carpinteria.

Carpinterians’ voiced their dissent regarding the potential rezoning of agriculture sites in the unincorporated Carpinteria Valley. A summary of comments within the update argued that the rezoning would threaten Carpinteria agriculture, neglect the urban-rural boundary and conflict with the County Local Coastal Program and the Coastal Act. They also advocated for more even disbursement of potential rezoning areas throughout the county. Those opposing the Glen Annie Golf Course rezoning share this stance and want the county to “rezone Montecito or Hope Ranch sites as well, not just Goleta and Carpinteria.”

In the update, county representatives said they prefer to avoid rezoning agricultural land and plan to use the identified vacant and underutilized areas before considering rezones. However, limited non-agricultural sites are available, according to the update.

The update also discusses 24 programs created to meet county housing needs and address the county’s growing population; following the public comment period, the county added a new program, the Rental Housing Incentive Ordinance, “designed to create an ordinance that would incentivize rental housing,” Plowman said. The county also revised programs five, ten and 16, involving High Quality Affordable Housing incentives and Accessory Dwelling Units.

Other programs focus on improving access to affordable housing for those experiencing homelessness, ensuring sites for emergency shelters, providing adequate water and sewer services, reducing government constraints on housing developments, preserving mobile home parks, completing a workforce housing study and encouraging rental housing development, among other issues.

An interactive map showing all potential housing locations from the updated Housing Element is available online at countyofsb.org/3177/Housing-Element-Update.