Santa Barbara County Grand Jury
• 2024-2025
• Agency Response
City of Santa Barbara Office of the Mayor SantaBarbaraCA.gov*
⚠️ Translation Notice: This content has been automatically translated. The original English text is the official version. Translation may contain errors.
⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
Findings and Recommendations 3 findings
F1
Santa Barbara County and the cities of Santa Barbara, Goleta and Carpinteria own land that is surplus to their operational requirements, some of which could be used for affordable housing. Response to Finding 1: Agree.
Related Recommendations (2)
R1a
The Grand Jury recommends that the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and City Councils of Santa Barbara, Goleta and Carpinteria identify publicly owned properties within their jurisdiction that could be utilized for affordable housing.
R1b
The Grand Jury recommends that the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and City Councils of Santa Barbara, Goleta, and Carpinteria invite public and private developers to work with them to build affordable housing on the publicly owned land identified as available.
F2
The process for issuance of a permit for affordable housing development projects in the County and the cities of Santa Barbara, Goleta and Carpinteria is costly, time consuming, and complicated. Response to Finding 2: Disagree partially. The City's commitment is to reduce and, where feasible and practical, remove unnecessary City-imposed constraints that impede housing development. It is important to acknowledge the ever-changing State laws and regulations that need to be adopted and implemented by local jurisdictions in very short timeframes, that also make the process for advancing affordable housing projects complicated and cumbersome. The City must ensure conformance to the most up to date public health and safety regulations to ensure our public remains safe by meeting regulatory standards. The City has expanded our Accelerate Program (Accelerate 2.0) to include 100% affordable housing projects. The Accelerate Program provides priority review service to designated projects, which includes priority on design review agendas and priority building plan review.
Related Recommendations (4)
R2a
The Grand Jury recommends that the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and City Councils of Santa Barbara, Goleta and Carpinteria each create a position to be staffed by a qualified person who can coordinate and facilitate the application and approval processes for affordable housing projects, with the authority to bring together all interested parties to arrive at an expeditious resolution of any issue.
R2b
The Grand Jury recommends that the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and City Councils of Santa Barbara, Goleta, and Carpinteria review their processes for development approvals to prioritize affordable housing projects.
R2c
The Grand Jury recommends that the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and City Councils of Santa Barbara, Goleta and Carpinteria apply the ministerial approval process to all development projects comprising 75% or more of low-income housing.
R2d
The Grand Jury recommends that the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and City Councils of Santa Barbara, Goleta and Carpinteria conduct a review of all development and impacts fees and find ways to waive, reduce or amortize fees for affordable housing projects.
F3
There are insufficient funds available to develop needed affordable housing. Response to Finding 3: Agree. From 1977 to 2012, the largest source of City affordable housing financing was the City's Redevelopment Agency (RDA). Since the California Legislature approved the dissolution of the State's over 400 redevelopment agencies in February 2012, it has been challenging to identify funding sources for affordable housing that can support the increasing demand.
Related Recommendations (2)
R3c
The Grand Jury recommends that the Santa Barbara City Council further increase funding to the City of Santa Barbara Local Housing Trust Fund to facilitate the building of affordable housing.
R3d
The Grand Jury recommends that the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and the City Councils of Santa Barbara, Goleta and Carpinteria promote contributions to their housing trust funds by other non-governmental organizations, the philanthropic community, and the public.
* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.