Santa Barbara County community members,

As a 20+ year resident of Santa Barbara, I am asking all of you to take the time to think about housing needs in Santa Barbara County, and how rising housing prices affect your friends, co-workers, seniors, family and, of course, you. How do we create an affordable community in Santa Barbara that does not force out long-term citizens?

The current market rate for a 2 bedroom, 2 bath house is $2,000,000. A 20% down payment would be $400,000, with a monthly payment of $9,500 for a fixed rate, 30-year loan of 6.1% APR, excluding all other home costs such a property taxes, utilities and maintenance.

Rent for similar properties upwards of $4,000/ month.

This is not affordable. The annual median income for a city employee is $39,000.

There are many ongoing conversations about affordable housing, market rate housing, and where these housing projects should be located. These conversations are happening between developers and city and county officials, and while the community has many opinions on these matters, so far there has not been a clear consensus on these projects.

California has enacted a slew of new housing laws to allow for more housing density throughout California. Some of these laws allow developers to speed up the process of having their projects approved, and these laws intentionally allow developers to increase density in cities with housing needs, but at the same time allows developers to circumvent city concerns about parking, traffic and neighborhood impact. More importantly, by building market rate housing with a relatively small percentage of affordable housing these developers are exacerbating the housing crisis, by creating an influx of new residents to the county, and an even greater need for workers to manage infrastructure needs. 

Cities do grow, that is inevitable. However, Santa Barbara has unique limits to its growth. With mountains on one side and the ocean on the other, and a single highway, the cities cannot sprawl outwards, but only become more dense and/or grow upwards.

If we task our supervisors, our mayor, the city council, the city planners and developers with building workforce housing, we add stable housing for workers who are forced to commute every day. What is just as important is that we retain teachers, city staff, policemen, firefighters, and many other essential workers. And with the decrease in commuting from outside areas we improve their quality of life, decrease highway congestion and mitigate the environmental and social impact of all this displacement.

I am asking you, as city and county residents, to make your voices heard and as a group, take charge of the type of housing that is developed here. We need to focus on workforce housing, and task both our elected officials as well as the developers to create the type of housing we need.

The Housing Trust Fund of Santa Barbara County, a non-profit financing agency which builds innovative partnerships between the private, public and nonprofit sectors to address critical affordable housing needs. This includes affordable middle income housing for workforce employees.

Housing Trust Fund of Santa Barbara County

Senator Monique Limón has introduced SB 540: The Laborforce Housing Fund which would collect percentage of transient housing taxes (short term rental housing) to be placed in a local housing fund. 

Santa Barbara city is trying to establish a new housing fund that would enable private citizens as well as philanthropic organizations contribute to an affordable housing fund. 

Teacher specific housing can be built if the districts own private land or receive land donations and then build district specific housing. 

If as a community we can work together with county and city leadership to plan the workforce housing we need, then local large employers and generous private citizens can finance these projects and the cities work with local developers who are vested in our community to build them.

Please sign this petition, to show your support for the construction of specific workforce/median income housing in the cities Santa Barbara, Goleta and Carpinteria and unincorporated areas.

We need to have our voices heard as a community!

Please sign this petition, to send to our elected officials, and share with your friends and co-workers on social media!