Now they are thinking.

Top Santa Barbara officials met Friday for a massive brainstorming work-session to figure out ways to build more housing.

Some of the answers? Restrict and eliminate new hotels and make it less expensive for developers to renovate commercial buildings to create new housing.

“Given the housing crisis, I think it is really important that we consider eliminating more hotel uses throughout the city, outside of the coastal zone,” said Devon Wardlow, city planning commissioner. “If we just created the standard that we are no longer doing hotels, the ones that exist will exist, and the ones in the coastal zone will continue to grow, that would create the situation where developers know the only option is to build housing.”

Wardlow says halting hotels outside of the coastal zone is the city’s best option considering how “dire” the housing situation is in Santa Barbara.

The commissioners met at the David Gebhard Room at 630 Garden St. in Santa Barbara. The meeting was attended by 13 members of both the commission and the council. Planning Commissioner John Baucke did not attend but sent in comments that were read by Mayor Randy Rowse.

Santa Barbara is caught in a vortex of urban challenges centered on housing, transportation and business. Santa Barbara’s population has dropped in recent years, marked by an exodus of residents, majority Latino, who have been forced out of town by rising rents and a wave of evictions while property owners make renovations to buildings.

The City Council in 2013 approved a high-density housing ordinance that motivated developers to build new apartments in exchange for bonus density. But most of those units have been rented at market rents, which in Santa Barbara is out of reach for most workers.

A two-bedroom apartment for the just-built Soltara apartments on Gutierrez Street rents for between $5,500 and $6,900. The sizes of those apartments are between 821 and 1,162 square feet. A studio starts at $3,200, according to apartments.com.

While Santa Barbara has its share of high-paying tech jobs, most jobs in Santa Barbara don’t pay enough for people to afford such rents. Most property owners require a first rent, last rent and a security deposit, and then renters to earn three times the monthly rent to qualify.

Those rents are out of reach for most people earning $100,000 a year, much less the majority of Santa Barbara residents, which are people who work in the service industry.

In response, Santa Barbara is trying to increase housing supply, but developers contend that the cost of building, from construction, to bank loans, to insurance, makes housing development difficult financially, unless they are allowed higher densities.

Santa Barbara has historically had a slow-growth attitude toward development, and city planners have guarded against rapid housing growth.

In 2010, however, former Santa Barbara Mayor Sheila Lodge, who is now a planning commissioner, initially proposed what became the Average Unit-Sized Density Incentive Program, which allowed densities of up to 63 dwelling units per acre.

Fueled by that proposal, which led to a new policy in 2012, attitudes against slow-growth weakened, coupled with a more progressive crop of councilmembers and planning commissioners assuming office. While rents in Santa Barbara have always been high, the gap between rent and incomes has hit an apex, and city leaders are trying desperately to find a solution.

Among the ideas on the table are to ban approval of hotels outside the coastal zone, or only allow them with a conditional use permit. In recent years, developers have opted to build hotels instead of housing because the profit margins are higher and the city’s rules don’t allow enough density.

Oscar Gutierrez, the city councilman who represents District 3 on Santa Barbara’s Westside, pushed for policies that create more housing.

“Other than some of the people in this room right now, I have not heard anyone in the community say they want more hotel rooms,” Gutierrez said. “That’s even from hotel room owners and employees of hotels that I have spoken to personally. They are having a hard time filling the rooms and they are also having a hard time staffing them, to the point where some of the hotels are allowing their employees to live in the hotels.”

Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse said the biggest barrier to new housing is the lack of certainty the city provides in the process, such as stormwater. He expressed concerns about halting new hotels, saying that the market will dictate what gets built and what doesn’t.

“If the hotels’ occupancies are down, that market is going to take care of hotel development quicker than we can,” Rowse said.

The only variable that the city truly controls, he said, is the ability to weaken its regulations and provide clear rules and goals for the developer.

“We’re going to have to make this process as certain and friendly as possible,” Rowse said.

Rowse said the city has tried everything to create more housing with “moderate” success. He said that creating the Housing Trust Fund to fund new housing is a successful model, as well as using city-owned property.

“Our ability to actually dictate to everyone how we’re going to live, and how things are going, whether it’s bicycle travel versus cars, or whatever, has a little bit of hubris to it and I am not sure we are going to solve these problems from the dais like this,” Rowse said.

He said the goal is to attract development though certainty in the process.

The 13 members present took several straw poll votes related to housing, as well as streamlining rules for commercial buildings. On the table for conversion from commercial to residential is eliminating inclusionary requirements and 90-year deed restrictions and allowing one main water meter to serve residential and commercial tenants in the same building.

“I would just try to eliminate basically as much regulation and reduce fees as much as possible,” said architect Brian Cearnal, who is working with Kevin and Jason Yardi on a commercial conversion to housing at 12 E. Carrillo St.

Cearnal said he prefers that the city restrict hotels, but through a conditional use permit, rather than altogether outside of the coastal zone.

“At least then it’s not a strict prohibition, but it is given the benefit of being reviewed by the city,” Cearnal said.

Councilwoman Meagan Harmon said allowing new hotels only with a conditional use permit is probably the best route.

“To me this is the perfect balance to getting what we want while also maintaining an understanding that in the future what we desire in a community may change,” Harmon said. “This is the perfect middle ground to let us have everything we want.”