In a school district where only 11% of its staff say housing is affordable, Santa Barbara Unified teachers and staff will soon get first dibs on a new housing development in the Goleta Valley.
The Housing Authority of the County of Santa Barbara broke ground today with the Santa Barbara Unified School District on an affordable housing development for its employees.
Construction is expected to finish by December 2027.
“At the end of the day, it is great teachers and staff that build great schools,” said District Superintendent Hilda Maldonado. “At Santa Barbara Unified, we believe that our great teachers and our great staff deserve beautiful housing, and they deserve to live and work in the community that they serve.”
Located on the corner of San Simeon Dr. and San Marcos Rd., near Vons, the 3.65-acre development, named the San Simeon Oaks Village, also sits across from El Camino School and San Marcos Growers.
It will consist of five residential buildings with 51 one-bedrooms, 26 two-bedrooms and 29 three-bedrooms for a total of 106 income-restricted rental units.
Ninety seven units will be prioritized for employees of Santa Barbara Unified, with second priority given to employees of nearby school districts, authorized charter schools and qualified nonprofits. Eight apartments will be reserved for formerly homeless veterans. One unit will be reserved for an on-site manager.
Applicants’ income must be at or below 80% of the area median income to apply.
“We want to make it a community asset,” said John Polanskey, the housing authority’s director of housing development. “We want it to benefit the community.”
The project is being developed by Orange County-based developer Red Tail Mulitfamily Land Development.
The groundbreaking ceremony brought together representatives from a variety of public agencies, including ones that helped fund the development. Sources for funding came from HUD Section 8 vouchers, tax credits, county loans and private activities bonds–with no cost to the school district.
The ceremony comes after the school district’s board of trustees unanimously voted last month to lease 3.65 acres of an original 24-acre site called ‘Tatum’ to Red Tail for the affordable housing development.
Maldonado said the school district worked with Red Tail on a tree-planting project so that the trees taken down to construct the development would be used for wood-shopping classes.
Public officials touted the partnership between the school district and housing authority as unprecedented and applauded collaboration among city, county, state and federal governments in pulling together funding from different sources.
“When I read about the details involving the financing of the project, and frankly the magic of the school district being able to pull all this off without using its general fund dollars, I couldn’t figure that out,” said Gregg Hart, 37th District Assemblyman, D-Santa Barbara. “I went to ChatGPT and asked the question, ‘how can this be done?’ And the answer was, ‘it’s magic.’”
Second District County Supervisor Laura Capps called the housing authority “archeologists of grant funding.”
“Crisis requires creativity and that’s what this really represents,” Capps said.
