Housing options and development were featured topics last week at a day-long event in Santa Barbara hosted by the Coastal Housing Coalition.
The fifth annual Santa Barbara Housing Conference, titled Collaborate for Housing, offered networking, a guest speaker, followed by morning and afternoon educational workshops and panel discussions.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, opened with a keynote address that examined housing development in California cities.
“Unless we get it together in housing, what we are going to see in many communities — particularly coastal communities like Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and San Francisco — is cities with three types of people living there: people who are wealthy, people who are lucky enough to bought their home 20-40 years ago or inherit their home, and people who are homeless or packed into an overcrowded housing situations,”said Wiener. “That is the future unless we turn it around.”
He spoke of policy that aims to lead more affordable housing in California.
During his first year in State Senate, Wiener said, he passed 11 bills that were signed into law, including a bill to approve projects without delay in cities behind on their housing goals.
Senate Bill 35, written by Wiener and took effect Jan. 1, 2018, was part of a broad housing package that aims to make it easier to build homes and generate in new funding for affordable housing.
“California now has a housing deficit of 3.6 million homes…and that number grows by 100,000 every year,” Wiener said. “We need to be producing about 180,000 units of housing every year in California, in practice we produce about 80,000.”
Wiener noted California’s growing homeless problem, and the need to better serve those in seeking of housing.
“Low-income people are at the greatest risk of homelessness,” he said. “Even though homeless people we often see are troubled with mental health and substance use disorder…many homeless people that we don’t see… people who are maybe working two jobs, who are bringing their children to school but they happen to live in a car or shelter because they don’t have a home.”
He spoke to more than 250 attendees gathered at the Carrillo Recreation Center. The audience was primarily housing providers, developers, business and government leaders, nonprofit representatives, architects, real estate professionals, financial institution managers and employers.
Workshops at the Friday event covered a variety of housing issues such as exploring the challenges of developing housing in historic districts.
Last year, a design charrette hosted by AIA Santa Barbara advocated for the development of housing units in Santa Barbara’s historic central core.
A discussion was centered on ideas and recommendations that could help city staff move forward with its focus on downtown housing.
The workshop shared insights on addressing housing needs and issues for supporting housing production like economic vitality, infrastructure development, transportation and parking systems.
Another workshop, Exploring Local Preference Options and Fair Housing Laws, tackled the challenges and benefits of implementing local preference policy and the legal implications related to upholding fair housing laws.
— Noozhawk staff writer Brooke Holland can be reached at bholland@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
