| Last week, the Board of Supervisors took a unanimous 5-0 vote to adopt re-zones as the last step to having our Housing Element Update certified by the State. I believe this plan strikes a balance between the State mandates, the County’s legal responsibilities, and the need to have more housing, to reduce traffic commute trips, and to protect our environment.
The final re-zone site list includes District 1 sites in Cuyama, Carpinteria, Santa Barbara, and the Eastern Goleta Valley (in addition to pending projects in Montecito and Toro Canyon).
By re-zoning certain “Builder’s Remedy” sites in the Carpinteria Valley and Eastern Goleta Valley (projects that would have moved forward regardless without our ability to the deny them), we secured traffic mitigations, and a higher percentage of affordable housing.
While the housing crisis is not novel, our approach to addressing it is. For my entire lifetime, the one thing our community has never tried is allowing more rental housing near jobs on the scale we need to meet the needs of our community – and our workforce that has been pushed out of town. This has caused traffic and commuting on a scale that is worsening climate change and polluting our environment.
Every community and neighborhood in Santa Barbara County has elements that give it a special charm that we are right to be proud of. But the best part of a community is its people. When we talk about persevering our community, we need to talk about preserving the people, as well as the buildings.
I want to give special thanks to the County Planning and Development team, who worked at breakneck speed to do the technical work to prepare a plan that could live up to the State’s standards. Their commitment to getting it right the first time prevented the County from falling out of compliance (as other jurisdictions in our region recently have), which would have opened the door for projects to move forward without going through our processes, or our ability to deny them. |
