Wanted: more affordable housing.

The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors met for five hours Tuesday to hear presentations from an array of developers who want to build thousands of new housing units across the county.

The supervisors’ response? “Build more affordable housing.”

“Affordability is by far the top priority,” Second District Supervisor Laura Capps said. “We do not need to rezone any market-rate housing. It’s really about affordability.”

Capps said real estate and rents have “skyrocketed” by 30% in recent years, while wages have stayed the same.

“People are really hurting,” Capps said.

More than 150 people packed Santa Barbara County’s Planning Commission Hearing Room on Tuesday for a five-hour event that was cast as an opportunity for developers to present their housing projects intended to help the county meet state demands for new housing.

Among those who presented were the developers of the Glen Annie Golf Club, which previously has been the most controversial project stemming from the major traffic congestion already at the Storke and Glen Annie Highway 101 offramp; a 182-unit project on Bailard Avenue in the Carpinteria Valley; the Tatum property near Highway 101 in the Goleta Valley, which proposes 545 units with 110 of those affordable.

Both the Carpinteria Valley and Tatum projects are in partnership with The Santa Barbara County Housing Authority.

Developers from San Marcos Growers want to build 796 units, about 200 of them affordable, in a project called San Marcos Ranch, also in partnership with the county Housing Authority.

The Montessori Center is proposing to build housing at 5050 Hollister Ave. Several other developers proposed projects.

Although the supervisors want more below market-rate housing, the developers have most of the power right now.

The state requires the county to update its Housing Element every eight years and show sites that could accommodate new housing. Santa Barbara County planners must find land, or rezone it, to build up to 5,664 new housing units.

Of the total number of units, 4,142 must be on the South Coast and 1,522 units in the North County.

The county already has submitted the proposed sites to the state and had its Housing Element certified, but in an odd move different from most other agencies, the county has yet to actually rezone the land to make the housing projects happen.

The Board of Supervisors has essentially given massive power to the developers by submitting the sites to the state already as a condition for approval of its Housing Element. Now, the county needs to move forward and rezone the land, or risk being considered noncompliant with the state.

The state sent a letter to Lisa Plowman, county Planning & Development director, on Jan. 30, warning that “failure to implement rezone actions by the statutory deadline means the county’s Housing Element will no longer substantially comply with State Housing Element Law, and HCD may revoke its finding of substantial compliance.”

Plowman has made no reference to the letter publicly, nor is it posted on the county’s website, but she did respond to a reporter’s question after Noozhawk obtained the document.

“The county did receive a letter from the state inquiring about the timing of the required rezones,” Plowman said. “They requested that we reply to them by April 2 (due to the holiday on April 1) with information about the hearing process.

“By that time, the county will have held two Planning Commission hearings and will be on the way to the Board of Supervisors for final action.”

 Plowman said the supervisors dates are “still in flux” but should be completed in April.

“We are hopeful that Housing & Community Development will continue to work with the county as we take this final step,” Plowman said. “As of today, the county is still considered to be in compliance.”

The rushed process has caused concerns.

The rezones will result in “significant overdevelopment of market-rate units,” said Dianne Black, representing the League of Women Voters. “The league strongly recommends the county investigate additional sites owned by the county and other public agencies for affordable housing.”

She said the county’s projections result in a surplus of 801 market-rate units.

“Given the likely low production of affordable housing from the rezones, we believe and fully expect that additional rezones will be necessary,” Black said.

Bob Nelson, Santa Barbara County Fourth District supervisor, said, “From these presentations, we may need to pull the fire alarm.”

He noted that the “Builder’s Remedy” projects coming in promise only 20% affordability, and that’s just not enough.

Builder’s Remedy allows developers to build essentially whatever they want, as a punishment to agencies that missed their Housing Element deadline, as long as 20% of the units are affordable.

“What I am hearing from many of these projects is that they are only offering about 20%,” Nelson said.

To meet the affordability needs and demands from the state, Nelson said, the county needs to somehow convince developers to build more affordable housing, or rezone more properties.

“That’s a problem. We don’t have more affordability there,” Nelson said. “Most of these projects are only offering what the Builder’s Remedy requires them to do, and if that’s the case, I don’t see what the incentive is for the board to go through and give them the advantages of a rezone.”

Nelson said he thought the idea of granting the rezones was to incentivize the developers to do more than 20% affordability.

Capps, who grew up in Santa Barbara, said she remembers when teachers and health care workers could afford to live on the South Coast, but that just isn’t the case anymore.

“I heard some promising things on affordability,” Capps said. “I have met with each of you developers to make that case of how incredibly important it is that we don’t just do the bare minimum, that we actually serve our community — those who are the backbone of our community.”

Amid all the presentations from the developers, Kristen Miller, president and CEO of the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce, announced an employee-sponsored housing consortium plan called “The Road Home,” which calls for 10,000 new units of housing over the next 10 years, geared toward local workers.

Miller said the chamber is partnering with about 20 local businesses, which represent about 26,000 employees. The consortium will be a legal entity where employers will pool money and buy into a master lease or buy units for their employees.

“The program is a self-help initiative to allow local employers to guarantee access to new housing for their workforce,” Miller said.

The chamber is working with the developers of the Glen Annie Golf Club, who said at the meeting that they are in talks with the Santa Barbara Unified School District to own the affordable units.

“It’s been the honor of my career to be able to work on this site with these owners,” said Gelaré Macon, a land-use planner representing the Glen Annie development.

She said that more than 100 acres would be reserved for open space, recreation and public amenities. The site would have a child care center, a community pool, public pickleball courts, a local market and dog parks.

Although she didn’t say explicitly the amount, she said the development would include workforce, affordable and market-rate units, both for rent and for sale. It also would include condos and single-family homes.

“We are estimating a total of 800 to 1,000 housing units of variable densities and types,” Macon said.

She said the project would include three new entryways to the site that don’t exist now, with the main entrance off Cathedral Oaks Road. The site is across the street from Dos Pueblos High School.

The homes, she said, will be targeted to local workers as part of the partnership with the chamber.

“Our team is proud to have been working with the chamber since the beginning,” Macon said.

Third District Supervisor Joan Hartmann agreed, saying, “If we want to build housing, we really want it to go to our local workforce.”