Montecito on the Move by Sharon Byrne, Executive Director, Montecito Association
Pack ‘em and Stack ‘em Housing in Montecito? Act Now Before It’s Too Late!
I
The Hill Road accessory dwelling unit
visited a project on Hill Road this week after receiving complaints from neighbors. As soon as I saw it, my heart sank. This is a second story ADU (accessory dwelling unit) that will decimate views and is built right to the edge of the driveway easement. Neighbors report it was piecemealed in permitting, so neither the neighbors nor MBAR (Montecito Board of Architectural Review) got a full sense of what it was going to be… until construction started. A state law passed two years ago allows ADUs like this to be built with
no hearings. I feel very badly for these lovely neighbors, but there’s no recourse via county planning. The state ADU law supersedes local controls, by design. In March, I asked the Montecito Planning Commission for the ADU tally for Montecito. Can we count ADUs in the state-mandated Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA)? The answer from the County, relayed via our terrific MFPD Chief Kevin Taylor, who’s monitoring from the public safety perspective: • 162 ADU applications • 47 in Montecito, more than 25% of
all ADU applications • We have 0.02% of the county’s population We’re certainly doing our part in Montecito on ADUs, but these can have consequences for our community, as our Hill Road neighbors sadly discovered. And it’s about to get a lot worse. Someone could divide their lot in two, and construct two units of housing per lot per Senate Bill 9, proposed by Senator Toni Atkins of San Diego. That’s in addition to an ADU and Junior ADU already allowed per property. If you live near a “jobs-rich” area, such as Santa Barbara, 10-unit buildings would be allowed, thanks to Senate Bill 10 from Senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco. You read that right: no hearings, no CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act), approvals just like ADUs. Just take out a building permit. Montecito is a target for 10-unit buildings on lots like the above because people commute through it to “jobsrich” areas like Santa Barbara, Goleta, and Ventura. Who would build a 10-unit building on your street? We’re in a real estate boom. If an investor could acquire a $5 million Montecito property, divide it under SB9, throw up 10 units next door under SB10, and flip the original house (now on a smaller lot), why wouldn’t they do that? The profit picture is quite compelling. These bills rely on trickle-down economics in the hopes that a massive building boom will magically lead to affordability for someone,
somewhere. They’re likely to create a housing building boom that’s speculative-investment-driven instead. We hosted a Zoom Town Hall forum on this last week. Jeff and Maria Kalban of Thousand Oaks Neighborhood Association and United Neighbors presented. Jeff is a skilled architect, succinctly illustrating what your single-family residential street will look like after these bills pass. There’s a cautionary tale from Long Beach. In the 1990s, they thought allowing apartment block buildings to be built on single-family residential streets would help their housing issue. Here’s how that turned out: United Neighbors is a statewide coalition that educates communities to get to their legislators. You can watch their presentation at our website. Montecito and Mesa neighbors attended, after reading our article in the Montecito Journal. This is the biggest land use fight to ever hit Montecito and thousands of communities at once. Senate leaders are determined to roll over NIMBY objections to more housing by removing local controls altogether. We hired our former state senator, Hannah-Beth Jackson, to help Montecito. Here’s why: We opposed Senate Bill 10 in the Senate Housing Committee two weeks ago – 45 communities and every trade union spoke against it. This had zero effect. The committee voted to send it on. Hannah-Beth explained it: trade unions opposed it because they don’t have Project Labor Agreements yet,
(Photos courtesy of United Neighbors)
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Here’s a Montecito-type lot with a nice home on it
The property owner can split it like this under SB 9 and 10
Montecito Tide Guide Day Thurs, April 8 Fri, April 9 Sat, April 10 Sun, April 11 Mon, April 12 Tues, April 13 Wed, April 14 Thurs, April 15 Fri, April 16
10 MONTECITO JOURNAL
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Low 02:49 PM 03:17 PM 03:42 PM 04:04 PM 04:25 PM 04:45 PM 05:04 PM 05:21 PM 05:32 PM
“Every time I jog I have 9-1 pressed into my phone, with the next ‘1’ ready to be launched in case I drop.” – Kevin James
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8 – 15 April 2021