The Santa Barbara County Association of Governments has formally approved the adoption of the methodology to distribute California’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation across the county, a decision that will distribute around 43 percent of the total allotment to above-moderate income level housing.
The RHNA is the state’s fair share housing law that requires local governments to plan for the minimum number of housing units across four income groups. As the county’s acting regional government agency, SBCAG is responsible for developing a methodology to start that process.
In February, SBCAG approved the county’s final allocation of 24,856 units for the eight-year cycle of 2023-2031.
About 23 percent of the final allocation will go toward very low-income households that earn zero to 50 percent of the county’s median household income, which is approximately $77,000, said Michael Becker, SBCAG’s director of planning.
Nearly 16 percent will go toward low-income households that earn between 50 percent and 80 percent of the county’s median household income, and 17.7 percent will go to moderate-income households that make between 80 percent and 120 percent of the median household income.
Becker said the final 43.2 percent of the housing allocation will go toward above moderate-income households that make more than 120 percent of the median household income.
These numbers are significantly higher than numbers in previous cycles as a result of Senate Bill 828, which highlights the state’s priority of increasing housing production, he said.
Carpinteria Vice Mayor Al Clark said the allocation going toward above moderate-income households is too high, and that type of housing is not needed.
“We don’t need that kind of housing, we need lower-income housing,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense.
“To build expensive housing is not the way to get out of our congestion problem. This is the exact opposite of what we need.”
First District Supervisor Das Williams disagreed, noting that creating additional housing actually would reduce the impacts of growth and congestion.
“Right now, for most of the South Coast, we are seeing an enormous amount of impact that seems to be the impact of growth, but it’s actually an impact from commuting,” he said.
“We’re getting more traffic from lack of housing than we do from the production of housing.”
Second District Supervisor Gregg Hart pointed out that the above moderate-income level starts at two people in the household making $45,000 a year, which he noted is not a very high income.
“Everyone needs to understand that the state isn’t trying to drive the development of expensive housing,” he said.
A two-step process was used to determine where those housing units would be distributed, Becker said. First, he explained, the total allocation was split into two shares between North County and the South Coast based on the number of existing and forecasted jobs.
The methodology includes a 60 percent weighting applied to existing jobs and a 40 percent weight applied to forecasted jobs between 2020 and 2030 from SBCAG’s regional growth forecast, he added.
In the second step, a formula is applied to allocate sub-regional shares to the county’s nine jurisdictions based on the level of the cost burden and overcrowding in each jurisdiction, Becker said.
“We are required to work toward parity so that no one jurisdiction bears the undue burden or benefit of housing in any particular income group,” he said.
The SBCAG Policy Board adopted the distribution methodology with a 12-1 vote, with Clark dissenting.
Draft allocations will be delivered to each jurisdiction Thursday afternoon and then a 45-day appeal period will begin, according to Becker.
Any appeals by the jurisdictions will be heard at an SBCAG meeting in June or July. Following the resolution of any appeals, SBCAG will be asked to adopt the plan in August, Becker continued.
If no appeals are received, the plan could be approved as soon as July, he said.
— Noozhawk staff writer Jade Martinez-Pogue can be reached at jmartinez-pogue@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
