Courtesy photo.
SANTA BARBARA — The Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara (HACSB) is pleased to announce its purchase of Garden Court on De La Vina, preserving the affordability of 97 studio units for low-income seniors in Santa Barbara.
Located a few blocks from Santa Barbara’s downtown corridor at 1116 De La Vina, Garden Court opened in 2000, in response to a desperate need for very low-income housing for frail seniors in Santa Barbara.
“Housing Authority of the City of the Santa Barbara has been part of Garden Court on De La Vina since its inception, and this purchase guarantees it will continue to be used as originally intended,” said Rob Fredericks, HACSB CEO. “Housing Authority is proud to extend its own resources to protect the property from any future conversion to market rate housing, while protecting existing residents.”
Garden Court was the first of its kind on the South Coast, providing service-enhanced independent living for frail, low-income seniors, including three meals a day, housekeeping, transportation as well as a host of social programs. The Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara played a major role in its original design, planning and funding.
In the late ‘90s, HACSB’s Board of Commissioners in partnership with the City of Santa Barbara, local architects and developers created the development plan for what would become Garden Court. This development, which was funded through the Federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program and the former Redevelopment Agency of the City of Santa Barbara, is a testament to how a partnership between private and public entities can be forged to effectively solve a community need.
Since the development of the property in 2000, the HACSB has master leased the Garden Court property from the owner, a tax credit partnership, and sub-contracted the property management responsibilities to The Parsons Group, Inc., a firm with expertise in managing the day-to-day operations of congregate care of frail seniors.
Many of Garden Court’s 97 seniors, 62 years of age or older, are long-time Santa Barbara-area residents who worked all their lives serving the local community as laborers, nurses, business owners and teachers. However, they lack sufficient retirement income to afford private market housing.
About the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara: The Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara is a local public agency created for the purpose of providing safe, decent, and quality affordable housing and supportive services to eligible persons with limited incomes, through a variety of federal, state, local and private resources. Since 1969, the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara has developed and/or secured over 3,600 units (about 1,200 owned or managed and 2,400 of Section 8 subsidy) of affordable rental housing for Santa Barbara through a variety of federal, state, local and private funding sources. Please visit the website at www.hacsb.org