Local Government Housing Action

Currently, all of our local governments are working on updates to their General Plans, including updates to their Housing Elements, state-required documents that assess local housing needs and outline strategies to meet those needs.  
 
Plan Santa Barbara is the City’s two year process to update their General Plan, including housing, transportation and environmental policies.  The final recommendations and implementation policies adopted through Plan SB will dictate the City’s decisions on residential development for years to come.
 
We urge you to make your voice heard by letting your local elected officials know that you support the production of more attainable housing, close to jobs for our local workforce.  
 
Contact information for our local elected officials can be found: http://www.voicesforhousing.org/elected_officials.htm

Here is an example of a recent Coastal Housing Coalition letter sent to the City regarding Plan Santa Barbara policy recommendations:

December 10, 2008

Honorable Mayor Marty Blum and Members of the City Council
PO Box 1990
Santa Barbara, CA  93102

Dear Mayor Blum and Council Members:

The Coastal Housing Coalition, representing thousands of local workers, greatly appreciates the opportunity to be part of the discussion about our City’s future through Plan Santa Barbara. 

We commend City Staff for their inclusive and effective process to date, as well as the Planning Commission for its extra effort to hear repeatedly from the community as part of their thoughtful deliberations.  We were pleased to see such a large number of those who participated in the Plan Santa Barbara workshops, particularly younger residents, expressing strong support for making housing for all income levels a priority, a sentiment that was reinforced by the Plan Santa Barbara survey.  This support was echoed in our own most recent survey of local employees: 61% (1,788 people) said they would write a letter, and 25% (725 people) would attend a hearing, to voice their support for workforce housing.

We are largely supportive of the updated Draft Policy Preferences report, including the sustainability framework and the recognition that “living within our resources” means we must house a greater percentage of our local workers rather than continuing to export our housing needs to neighboring jurisdictions.

To those who say that the housing problem will take care of itself with declining house prices, we’d point out that even with the downturn, today’s median home price on the South Coast (excluding Hope Ranch and Montecito) is $890,000 and requires a family income of $180k to purchase.  For that reason, we appreciate the City taking the long view in understanding that Santa Barbara will always be one of the highest priced areas to live in the country, and continuing to focus on creative ways to provide housing for a variety of income levels.

First, we want to comment on the scope of the EIR.  While we are pleased that the EIR as proposed would study a variety of alternatives, including options with residential growth at 4,500 and a long term build-out of 7,000 units, we have concerns that the “Project Alternative” bases future residential growth on historical growth rates.  We believe strongly that our current housing shortage is the product of short-sighted general plan policies adopted over many years and that the only effective antidote to our critical lack of housing is an overhaul of those policies. Thus, one fundamental objective of the new general plan should be to directly address the regional jobs-housing imbalance by adopting new policies that will increase housing production over historical rates.  If those policies are adopted and successful, then we will no longer be strangled by our history of suppressing workforce housing production.

Second, we want to comment on the Growth Management Policies, specifically LG1 & 3 which are described in the staff report as setting the “broad policy position for residential growth management”.  These policies "prioritize the use of available resource capacities for additional affordable housing over all other new development".  We want to ensure that the language is clear that “affordable” in this context means up to and including workforce housing, which would be consistent with how “affordable” is used throughout the document (for example in such policies as LG 11 defining Community Benefit Residential Land Uses).

We are strongly supportive of the Housing Goals and Objectives which put an emphasis on increasing housing availability for a variety of income types and the local workforce, providing an expanded range of housing types, and increasing density to accommodate affordable housing.

Within the section on housing, we are particularly supportive of the incentives for employer sponsored housing, as well as the policy to encourage Granny Flats within the Mobility Oriented Development Area.   In H8, we encourage you to include all schools, not just UCSB and SBCC, as all area educational institutions are struggling to recruit and retain quality faculty and staff.   

We strongly encourage the City to look at providing incentives, rather than mandating, smaller unit size as not to make it economically infeasible to build.  We are very supportive of the idea of affordability by design and support incentivizing smaller units through granting increased density, reduced parking requirements and the like.

Outside the housing chapter, we want to single out for comment our support for LG14, creating a regional land use blueprint with an emphasis on providing affordable housing.  Our housing crisis is a regional problem that requires a regional solution.

Again, we are grateful for the opportunity to make comments and look forward to continuing to be part of this important community dialogue.

Sincerely,

Debbie Cox Bultan
Executive Director

cc:  John Ledbetter
Bettie Weiss