Santa Barbara has a reputation for being expensive, but it may be worse than you think.

The new state threshold for a low-income household in Santa Barbara County is $98,850.

The state defines low-income by looking at the median income for a county and comparing it to lower incomes and other factors, including housing costs.

According to the updated report, the median income for Santa Barbara County is $119,100. Anything below $100,000 is considered low-income.

The median income in neighboring San Luis Obispo County is $125,600, and in Ventura County it’s $131,300.

There are currently five counties in California where a six-figure salary is considered as low-income, including Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties.

During the Upward Mobility Summit organized by CommUnify in January, officials said the cost to live in Santa Barbara County and be able to afford basic needs is $111,602. Basic needs were described as housing, childcare, food, transportation, health care and taxes.

Former State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, who spoke at the event, said the state needs to do more to address the issue of poverty and called for higher taxes to fund social services.

“Poverty is a policy. People are not born bad, they are not born lazy, they are not born inept. It’s the thumb that is kept on them by those who have more or the most,” Jackson said.

There are 50,929 households in Santa Barbara County that are considered to be in poverty, which is 42% of the total. Of those, 92% have a full-time working adult, according to CommUnify.

The statistics also show that most homes below the poverty level are in the North County, and children in North County communities are twice as likely to face poverty as those in South County communities.

One of the main drivers of poverty in Santa Barbara County is the price of housing. Santa Barbara ranks fourth in the state for the most severe cost burden for renters.

In Santa Barbara, 55% of renters pay 30% or more of their income toward rent. Additionally, 29% of renters spend more than half of their income on rent.

The cost of homes has also skyrocketed in recent years, increasing by 42% since 2012. The cost of homes in Santa Maria has jumped by 77%, and house prices increased by 58% in Lompoc.

The issue is worse in Santa Barbara, which was recently named the least affordable city for homebuyers in the country.

During the Santa Barbara County Economic Summit earlier this month, Lee Ohanian, an economics professor at UCLA and senior fellow at Stanford University, said that the average cost of homes in California is $884,000.

That is 115% higher than the national average and only affordable to 16% of people living in California.

In comparison, the average cost of a home in Santa Barbara is $1.4 million.

Ohanian said he believes California’s strict regulations have contributed to the lack of new housing construction.

Even though California has attempted to reduce the cost of building new housing, he said, it has largely been ineffective.

“Over 100 new housing laws have been passed in Sacramento over the last few years to try to create new housing and reduce costs, but they haven’t really moved the needle, because unless you reduce the cost of building, we cannot legitimately reduce the cost of California housing,” Ohanian said.