The Santa Maria Valley’s Housing Summit this week offered a snapshot of the pressures shaping the local market.

The event touched on rising affordability challenges, Santa Maria’s growing housing pipeline and the expected impact of continued expansion at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Speakers also highlighted policy changes and construction approaches they said could help get more homes built.

It was held at Allan Hancock College and hosted by the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Home Builders Association of the Central Coast.

Staci Caplan, broker-owner of Pacific Crest Realty, said California’s homeownership rate has fallen to 56%.

“I’m also concerned that the average age of our first-time buyer is now at 40 years old, and that is just unacceptable,” she said.

Caplan said the supply of lower-priced homes has shrunk and that consumer confidence was at a multi-year low, the lowest since 2014.

Chenin Dow, Santa Maria’s community development director, said the city’s residential pipeline currently includes roughly 5,500 units, among them the 1,499-unit Blosser Ranch development, where grading is already underway.

She said the city’s general plan update, which recently cleared the Planning Commission, is expected to go before the City Council in May and calls for 16,140 new housing units by 2045.

Dow highlighted the city’s use of objective design guidelines, which set clear standards for housing projects, as one way Santa Maria is trying to make approvals more predictable.

“It shows exactly what we want to see built, and if you come in with the project like that, it gets approved,” she said.

Housing Demands for Vandenberg Personnel

Tom Stevens, executive director of Space Launch Delta 30 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, said about 80% of the base’s workforce lives off-base, competing for the same limited housing supply as other local residents.

“We got about 10,000 people working and living and operating on base on a given day,” Stevens said, adding that the figure could grow to 20,000 by 2030.

The biggest demand gap, Stevens said, is in apartments and townhomes, especially for military personnel who are often in the area for only a few years and are looking to rent.

He said a recent Defense Department housing study means Vandenberg is unlikely to add new on-base housing for at least five years, increasing pressure on the surrounding market. With new on-base housing unlikely in the near future, he said the base is exploring out-of-the-box housing options, including public-private partnerships and manufactured housing.

“We have not had the experience with private-public partnerships, but we are going to have to do that,” Stevens said.

State Housing Laws

Speakers on Wednesday discussed a range of possible responses, from recent state laws aimed at streamlining development to new construction approaches for getting projects built faster.

Attorneys Mack Carlson and Chris Guillen of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck pointed to recent California laws meant to streamline housing approvals. Those include AB 130, which creates a CEQA exemption for some infill housing projects, and SB 131, which allows certain housing projects that miss an exemption by a single condition to undergo a narrower review focused on that issue.

A more tangible approach came from Dan Ferreira, founder of US-Offsite, who described a factory-built approach to housing. He said units are built in parts on a 20-step assembly line, “just like you think of a car being built,” before being delivered to the site with interiors largely finished.

Ferreira said the model is designed for wood-frame projects up to five stories and allows factory work and site work to move forward at the same time.

“By the time your slab is poured, you have the majority of the building complete,” he said.

As an example, Ferreira cited the 24-unit Mill Street project in Santa Maria, where 16 modules were set in a single day and the structure was completed in 11 hours.

He said the approach could help shorten timelines and reduce some of the delays and labor pressures that continue to slow traditional construction.