This is a doozy. Santa Barbara Supervisor Laura Capps has made a decision. The people of her county do not need public parks. Instead, she wants to build “affordable” housing on public land. In other words, she is looking for donations from unions and greedy construction companies and developers. She does not care if she turns Santa Barbara in Manhattan, with its high rises, slums and crime—as long as her buddies get to make money and give her campaigns some.
“County Supervisor Laura Capps believes she has found “the silver bullet” for affordable housing in the south county. Her not-so-brilliant plan is to use the land the county owns to build affordable housing, thereby eliminating the land costs of the housing, by way of a donation I presume. Yet, the vast bulk of the land the county owns is parkland.
Is she going to convert parks to housing?
The rest of the county’s holdings are built out with buildings and parking lots. How can the county do without either? The final insult is that she would propose to free up county property for housing ostensibly for those who can least afford it, including county employees, as if county employees are poorly compensated.
Yup, she wants to provide special benefits to bureaucrats—at the expense of children, families, safety and potential corruption
The Fairy Godmother of Affordable Housing
by Andy Caldwell, Current, 2/11/24 https://www.sbcurrent.com/p/the-fairy-godmother-of-affordable?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2074654&post_id=141559368&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=x9o3&utm_medium=email
County Supervisor Laura Capps believes she has found “the silver bullet” for affordable housing in the south county. Her not-so-brilliant plan is to use the land the county owns to build affordable housing, thereby eliminating the land costs of the housing, by way of a donation I presume. Yet, the vast bulk of the land the county owns is parkland.
Is she going to convert parks to housing?
The rest of the county’s holdings are built out with buildings and parking lots. How can the county do without either? The final insult is that she would propose to free up county property for housing ostensibly for those who can least afford it, including county employees, as if county employees are poorly compensated.
Whereas Laura Capps is worried about the poor folks in the south county, she should take a drive to the north county where the really poor folks live. The poverty rates in Lompoc and Santa Maria are at least 25% higher than in the south county. In fact, 65% of the children in the county are “clients” of the Social Services department, receiving government benefits, and most of them live in Santa Maria and Lompoc. Capps has no understanding that the only way many folks in the north county can afford a home is with two families sharing a single-family dwelling.
Who Qualifies for “Affordable” Housing?
Should a county full-time employee qualify for affordable housing when the average salary, benefit, and pension cost per employee is $166,300 per year? Of the county’s 4,637 employees, the average salary alone is $100,000 per year. That means the average county employee earns nearly twice that of the average household income, that is, two workers, in the north county, some $55,000 per year!
Lost on Supervisor Capps is the fact that over the past 30-plus years, the south county has taken hundreds of acres and declared it off limits to development to “conserve” the land as open space. These large parcels were originally slated to have thousands of homes built on them. Yet, to forestall growth, south county politicians and private donors purchased the land while severely limiting its development potential. Moreover, a very large ranch in the region has been purchased for conservation purposes as well.
That bell can’t be unrung!
UCSB Should Build More On-Campus Housing
There are two big reasons why there is not enough affordable housing in the south county: UCSB and Santa Barbara City College. In fact, the City of Goleta and the County of Santa Barbara are suing UCSB because the college has failed to build housing on campus for the tens of thousands of students enrolled there.
Regarding City College, it is not your typical community college that serves the local population. It appeals to students from all over the country and the world hoping to get into UCSB; City College is a “feeder-school” to UCSB. Nearly 20% of City College students are from out of state, compared with just 4% at Allan Hancock College. This too puts a strain on housing. All told, there are thousands of homes and apartments throughout the south county filled with out-of-town students that could otherwise be available to local workers.
Unintended Consequences of Action and Inaction
The awful truth? There is no magic wand that can fix this problem. The means by which politicians, including our county supervisors, are currently trying to create affordable housing is going to lower our quality of life by way of building either super high-density developments or ridiculously tiny homes in a neighborhood near you. That is, beware of the law of unintended consequences. That which artificially lowers the cost of development will come at the expense of the quality of life of current residents including water shortages, unbearable traffic, a shortage of parking spaces, and many other undesirable neighborhood impacts.
