Nine apartments are proposed at the site of what is now a single-family home and garage on Santa Barbara’s Eastside.
Santa Barbara’s Architectural Board of Review reviewed the project at Monday’s meeting and gave the project mostly positive support, but suggested a few design changes mostly based on appearance.
The new buildings would be in the craftsman bungalow style, with a single story facing the street and the back buildings rising to two stories.
The project is proposed for 210 S. Voluntario St.
“I have a nice feeling about it,” board member David Black said. “It has a nice look. I am familiar with this neighborhood. I think these buildings would fit in nicely with the neighborhood.”
The units would be small, with one studio, four one-bedroom units and four two-bedroom units. The studio would be 407 square feet, and the largest two-bedroom unit would be 822 square feet. The average unit size of all of the units would be 612 square feet.
Eight of the units would rent at the market rate, but one of the one-bedroom units would rent to individuals who qualify as very low income.
The project is proposed under the city’s average unit-sized density incentive program, which was approved in 2013, and allows developers to stack multiple apartments on smaller pieces of land in exchange for building rental units.
One of the concerns of the program, however, is that the new apartments are not affordable, and are too small for working, middle-class families who are unable to buy a home in Santa Barbara.
The units have no price restrictions, so property owners are renting out the units at what the market will bear, which in Santa Barbara is out of reach for many people. To address the issue, in 2019, the city passed a 10% inclusionary housing requirement for new units.
Developers and city officials have suggested that the rental apartments house millennials and young professionals who don’t drive cars, walk or ride the bus to their jobs and downtown nightlife, and don’t need a lot of yard or open space in the apartment projects that they live in. Critics, however, contend that building density in the neighborhoods worsens parking problems.
For the project on Voluntario Street, five parking spaces are proposed.
The city also is facing increasing pressure from the state to allow developers and property owners to build housing without design review. The state’s housing shortage has forced lawmakers to pass bills that allow people to build duplezes on their single-family lots.
Architectural Board of Review member Richard Six said the style of the Voluntario Street project “is very successful and compatible with the neighborhood.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.