An estimated 28,000 workers commute to the Santa Barbara South Coast Monday through Friday—a grind that fouls the air, steals time from family and sometimes puts emergency responders far away when disaster strikes.
A big catalyst for the commute is the area’s tight rental market. Vacancies regularly hover at a frustratingly narrow 2 percent, officials say.
In a new bid to ease the pressure, the county Board of Supervisors has unanimously passed a first-of-its-kind law requiring developers to market their newly built, market-rate homes to people who live or work in South Coast areas or the Santa Ynez Valley before ads appear anywhere else.
“A critical first step for securing housing is timely awareness of housing opportunity,” said Lila Spring, a long range county planner.
“We’re sort of on the cutting edge here of trying to do something,” added Lisa Plowman, county planning and development director.
Some builders, however, say it all adds up to an unnecessary new layer of mandatory requirements, reporting obligations and administrative oversight, and that officials’ time would be better spent embracing more construction.
‘We want people who are local’
The new rules stipulate that any development with five or more dwelling units in the unincorporated county must be advertised for 12 weeks locally first. Developers’ marketing plans will need county approval as part of the project permitting process.
“A real fear I hear from my constituents is that these homes are going to be gobbled up as second homes,” Second District Supervisor Laura Capps said. “That really does weaken the fabric of a community… We want people who are local, who work here, to be able to live here.”
The initiative dates to 2023, when the county adopted the current Housing Element of its General Plan. It’s a state-mandated strategy for meeting current and future housing needs across all income levels.
Elected leaders considered a range of strategies for getting more local residents into newly-built housing, especially along the heavily-impacted South Coast.
Last year, county planners floated a program that would have forced developers to prioritize locals and give them first dibs—on buying or leasing—when any newly-built, market-rate homes became available for sale or rent.
Developers opposed, concerned that lenders might view the requirements as an obstacle to renting and selling and, in turn, might increase financing costs or deny construction and mortgage loans, Plowman said.
Amid that opposition, county brass saw the potential for messy litigation on the horizon.
The county as a result worked with some key developers to find the right approach, Plowman said.
“We wanted to make sure we had something that attempted to address the issue but also was, I think, reasonable and manageable with respect to the financing constraints some of the development community expressed,” Plowman said, noting the novelty of the county’s new approach. “We spent a good deal of time doing research across the state, even including some other states. We haven’t found anything related to market-rate housing.”
‘Projects are taking too long’’
At the Home Builders Association of the Central Coast, board president and developer Michael Stoltey said members understand and appreciate the county’s goal of helping more local employees and families live in the communities where they work.
“Housing affordability and workforce housing remain the most urgent challenges facing the Central Coast, and many local builders and developers already prioritize local buyers and renters through partnerships, community outreach and employer-based programs,” Stoltey, founder of MD3 Investments, said in a statement to the News-Press.
At the same time, Stoltey questioned whether the county would be able to rezone enough properties and meet its Housing Element obligation to identify, by 2031, adequate sites to build 5,664 units, as mandated by the state.
“Giving locals first position in line does not change the fact that projects are taking too long, costing too much and failing to produce enough housing,” Stoltey said. “Added costs ultimately get passed on to renters and homebuyers… We believe the best way to help local residents is to continue streamlining approvals, reducing barriers to housing production.”
Helpful data
When new developments welcome new residents, the county will seek data from developers on how many locals and area workers end up living in them. This will be helpful as the officials look at other ways to promote local preference, Plowman said.
Craig Minus, a Santa Barbara land use consultant, urged the county in recent weeks to take a metrics-minded approach and gather more information.
“Overall, the idea of local preference is great,” said Minus, executive director of the Coastal Housing Partnership, which advocates for workforce housing solutions that support local employees and employers.
“We often hear mixed feedback on whether units are going to locals or out-of-towners,” he said in a May 1 letter to the supervisors, adding granular data on where people moved from within the local region, what type of housing they moved from and what attracted them to a new home could be useful.
“The goal,” he said, “would be to try to understand the micro-migration trends, and if or how new housing product influences housing availability in our region.”
