The Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara plans to purchase the Quality Inn for $9.45 million and convert it into a home for formerly homeless and very low-income individuals.
The City Council on Tuesday approved a $6 million loan to the Housing Authority to help fund the project at 3055 De la Vina St.
“I actually think this is an enhancement over what is there today,” Mayor Randy Rowse said. “This may be less impactful to a neighborhood than having a hotel, frankly, in terms of traffic.”
The 34-room hotel will be converted into 32 studio apartments, with kitchenettes, and a one-bedroom manager’s unit. The apartment building will accept Section 8 vouchers. Those who qualify will pay no more than 30% of their income.
The Santa Barbara Foundation has agreed to spend $2 million on the project, and the Housing Authority is putting in another $5 million. The city’s loan is at 3% and matures in 2054.
It will cost about $3 million to renovate the building. The affordability limits will last for 90 years.
The city plans to take the $6 million from its Affordable Housing fund, which has about $15 million in it. The city also will lose an undisclosed amount of transient occupancy taxes from the change.
The supportive services will help individuals find jobs and become self-sufficient, and help address Santa Barbara’s homeless and housing crisis.
Some neighborhood residents opposed the project.
“I am completely in favor of low-income housing, and I appreciate the need for all of us to be involved in that,” said Patrice Surmeier, who said she has lived in the area for three decades and raised four children. “My main concern is that there’s really not any involvement of the neighbors in this process, and frankly, I felt the Housing Authority was really deaf to our concerns.”
She added that people who are “suffering from drug addiction,” people who are “unstabilized” and those “suffering from mental illness” will live at the site.
The neighborhood now is filled with children, she said, and the money should be used instead for workforce housing, seniors or veterans.
“Please limit your loan for this project to communities that are appropriate for a family neighborhood,” Surmeier said.
Councilwoman Meagan Harmon, however, shot down that line of thinking.
“The nature of this crisis is such that we can’t say either/or; we must begin a yes/and positioning when it comes to solving our housing crisis in our community,” Harmon said. “I just don’t prescribe to the idea that by saying yes to this today we are saying no to something else.”