Journalist Dan Walters will be the keynoter when the Coastal Housing Coalition presents the 6th Annual 2020 Santa Barbara Housing Conference 8:30-3:30 p.m. Friday, May 1, at the Carrillo Recreation Center, 100 E. Carrillo St., it was announced by board president Olivia Marr.
Founded in 2005, the Coastal Housing Coalition is a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding solutions to the South Coast’s housing crisis and reversing the adverse impacts that the lack of workforce housing is having on our economy, environment, and civic life.
The conference will feature networking, educational workshops, exhibits, and panel discussions on timely housing topics and issues. Breakfast, lunch and a post-conference wine and beer reception are included.
Up to 250 attendees, including housing providers, developers, business and government leaders, nonprofits, architects, real estate professionals, financial institution managers, elected officials, employers, and interested community members are expected attend the typically sold-out event.
Conference co-chairs are Christopher Guillen and Craig Minus.
Keynote speaker Walters is a Sacramento-based California housing and political expert. His column has been published in the Santa Barbara News-Press for many years.
Walters has been a journalist for 57 years, spending most of them working for California newspapers.
He began his professional career in 1960, at age 16, at the Humboldt Times in Eureka, while still attending high school, and turned down a National Merit Scholarship to continue working as a journalist. At 22, he was the nation’s youngest daily newspaper editor.
The Hanford Sentinel was the first of three newspaper editor positions Walters held before joining the Sacramento Union’s Capitol bureau in 1975 as Jerry Brown began his governorship. Walters later became the Union’s Capitol bureau chief, and in 1981 began writing the state’s only daily newspaper column devoted to California political, economic and social events.
In 1984, he and the column moved to The Sacramento Bee. He has written more than 9,000 columns about California and its politics, and his column has appears in many other California newspapers, as well as The Wall Street Journal and the Christian Science Monitor.
In 1986, his book “The New California: Facing the 21st Century” was published in its first edition. He is also the founding editor of the “California Political Almanac;” the co-author of a book on lobbying, “The Third House: Lobbyists Money & Power in Sacramento;” and contributed chapters to two other books “Remaking California” and “The New Political Geography of California.”
He has been a frequent guest on national television news shows, commenting on California politics.
Conference tickets are $110 in advance before March 31 and $140 after March 31 and at the door. Tickets include breakfast, lunch, educational workshops, networking, trade show, plenary sessions, souvenir program, and concluding wine-and-beer reception.
Sponsorships are available at $500, $1,000, $3,000, $5,000, $7,500 and $10,000 (presenting sponsor), which include tickets, publicity, booth space, banner privileges, etc. according to sponsor level.
For more information, to register or buy a sponsorship visit https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3209664 or www.coastalhousingcoalition.org, email info@chcsb.org, or phone 805-570-1250.