Santa Barbara City Planning Commissioner Jay Higgins opens up about his views on a potential hotel moratorium, the promenade on State Street, and affordable housing in Santa Barbara.
Higgins is one of the elders on the Planning Commission. He is serving his eighth and final term on the commission.
Higgins said he is open to a conversation about a commercial vacancy tax.
“I would be interested in what it would fund,” Higgins said. “I would like to see it directly tied to law enforcement, or the ambassador program, or for prosecuting people who start fires in encampments.”
Higgins said highway fires and encampment fires are “untenable.”
“They seem to be increasing in frequency and it just boggles my mind that we let that happen,” Higgins said.
Higgins also talked about the proposal to place a moratorium on new hotel construction. He said he agrees that in some cases housing would be better than hotels, but it’s not always the practical answer.
“Everyone has to understand that when an owner of real estate wants to make a change to their property, they are going to do it in a way that has the least amount of risk,” Higgins said.
The risks are both regulatory and financial, he said. The city needs to allow tenant improvements for housing, which would minimize the regulatory risk.
“Why not do the thing that has the lowest amount of risk profile and the greatest return on investment,” he said. “That’s real simple.”
Higgins also said that the city’s constant changing of the rules regarding housing also limits new construction.
“It’s impossible to know what the rules are,” he said.
Josh Molina has been a journalist in Santa Barbara for 20 years. He also covered City Hall for the San Jose Mercury News. In addition to working as a reporter at Noozhawk, he teaches journalism at Cal State University, Northridge and Santa Barbara City College. Please subscribe to his You Tube channel for more content.