The rental housing markets are different between the North County and South County, Fourth District Supervisor Bob Nelson says, and the Housing Element should reflect that.
Santa Barbara County’s Housing Element Update meets all state requirements, the Planning & Development Department heard Monday, and adoption hearings are planned for later this year.
However, at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Nelson proposed changing part of it.
The document estimates that 50% of new housing projects will be low-income units, 25% will be moderate-income units and 15% will be above-moderate-income units. That helps the county figure out how much land to rezone to meet development goals.
“That may be needed for the South Coast, but it’s overkill for the North County,” Nelson said.
His point was that the Santa Ynez Valley, Lompoc Valley and Santa Maria Valley communities are generally more affordable than South Coast communities such as Goleta and Santa Barbara.
South County areas “need deed-restricted projects and public projects to get their inventory of low-income sites,” while North County communities can meet affordability targets with a market-rate approach, Nelson said.
Average North County rents are considered affordable (paying less than one-third of household income on housing), according to a summer survey of eight property management companies, Nelson said.
Rather than assume a 50% low-income unit number to all new projects countywide, he proposed a tiered system starting at 65% low-income units for the North County. The denser the project, the higher the rate of low-income units that can be assumed, according to his presentation.
The other supervisors liked the idea and directed staff to see if the state would support changing the assumption to 60% low-income units for North County projects, and whether it would slow down the Housing Element Update adoption.
“The math on this really drives the point home,” Supervisor Joan Hartmann said.
Planning & Development Director Lisa Plowman said she thought that number was optimistic.
If the county doesn’t see enough affordable housing units to meet state goals, it will have to rezone more land on short notice to stay in compliance, she said.
The Housing Element Update responds to a state mandate to make enough land available for a certain amount of housing development for all income levels.
For this cycle, the state requires the county to identify sites to accommodate 5,663 new units in unincorporated areas, including 4,142 units in the South Coast and 1,522 units in the North County. That also includes 2,818 very-low income, low-income and moderate-income units.
Counties and cities are not required to actually build the housing, but there has to be enough residentially-zoned space for developer projects. That’s why the county and cities will be talking about rezoning certain properties next year, including commercial and agricultural land.
The county has never completed 100% of the units identified in its Regional Housing Needs Allocation.
Now that the state said the Housing Element Update complies with its requirements, the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors will consider adopting it in meetings scheduled for Nov. 8 and Dec. 5, respectively.