People need homes to live in; it’s logical that the more people there are in the country, the more houses are needed. California has adopted policies that encourage a mass migration of new people into the state who have not been properly vetted and have no visible means of to support themselves; these folks need somewhere to live.
California’s political leadership, or lack thereof, has determined there is a critical housing shortage, specifically in the low- and moderate-income category. To demonstrate their concern, they have come up with a plan to increase available housing — they will simply mandate how a community will accommodate more residents.
For example, by eliminating single-family zoning restrictions thus creating overcrowded neighborhoods.
A community needs a couple of things to sustain a population: jobs for people to earn a reasonable living to pay rent or buy a home, and land to provide a space for housing. Oh, and they also need an adequate water supply to serve all those homes, and in Lompoc the agricultural operations that surround our city.
Water supply is a serious issue these days.
The Santa Barbara County Association of Governments (SBCAG), following polices of the state, dictates how much and what kind of housing is needed for each area of the county. They don’t consider any of these issues when they make the allocations.
In the city of Lompoc there are approved projects in the planning que that have been stagnant for more than a decade. Currently, there are eight projects (total of 1,032 units) listed on the Lompoc planning department’s “Residential Developments” webpage. Each contains additional allocations for low or very low-income housing units; some are exclusively in this category.
These projects occupy all the available in-fill space for housing in the city. So, state mandate or no mandate, there simply is no more room for additional housing. But that doesn’t worry SBCAG, which has identified a goal of 2,248 new units in the next eight-year planning period — just do it!
Another regional government outfit, the Local Area Formation Commission (LAFCO), establishes how cites can grow. LAFCO polices have contained Lompoc to exclusively moving north; however, the only property left to the north is owned by an oil company and it doesn’t support annexation or building homes on its property.
LAFCO strongly opposes the annexation of ag land to the west and any move to the east across the Santa Ynez River, so there simply is no room for more housing.
The state and SBCAG like to use the term “affordable housing” when establishing mandates; what exactly does that mean to the average working family? To afford to buy or rent a place to live, you must generate enough income to qualify. In today’s economy, a family earning a combined income of $35 an hour for a 40-hour week ($70,000 per year gross) can’t afford to buy a house and will struggle to pay rent on an apartment.
That’s assuming there are $35-an-hour jobs available; in Lompoc they are few and far between for working families.
Another factor is that SBCAG is upping the allocation of very low-income housing to 199 units; low income to 314 units; and moderate income to 373 units. That’s a total of 866 new low to moderate income homes. If the city were to require builders to provide 10 percent of new projects exceeding 10 units to this category of residences, it would mean there are currently only 100 of these units planned.
In November 2018 the city sent a letter to the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee (CTCAC) concerning a pending proposed new low-income project in our city. The CTCAC administers the federal and state Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Programs. Both programs were created to promote private investment in affordable rental housing for low-income Californians.
In the letter, they informed the committee that Lompoc had the most “affordable housing units” in the county; 76 percent of the available multi-family units were occupied by low-income renters as compared to a mere 6 percent in other jurisdictions. CTCAC didn’t care — provide them anyway was the answer.
So, it’s clear Lompoc has overachieved in providing affordable housing, but apparently it doesn’t matter to either SBCAG or the state.
Simply issuing a mandate doesn’t solve anything. And mandating more affordable units to a city that has three-fourths of the available multi-family units already used for this type of housing is irresponsible to say the least.
The SBCAG Housing algorithm needs an overhaul that considers more than hypothetical numbers.
— Ron Fink, a Lompoc resident since 1975, is retired from the aerospace industry. He has been following Lompoc politics since 1992, and after serving for 23 years appointed to various Lompoc commissions, retired from public service. The opinions expressed are his own.
