When Santa Barbara County’s controversial Housing Element proposal was first released last month, the county’s planning director said there were no potential housing sites in Montecito that would have met the State of California’s standards to be included.

Yet, in the days since the Housing Element was released, she told Noozhawk that at least one site in Montecito is now on the table.

“There were no sites in Montecito that conformed to the state’s guidelines,” Lisa Plowman, the county’s director of planning and development, said in an email. “However, since we released the draft document we have been contacted by an employer in Montecito that is interested in building employee housing on their site.

“We will be including this site on the interactive map and count proposed units toward the county’s regional housing needs allocation.”

The county did not specify the location of the potential employee housing site or the number of units.

The state’s mandate for local governments to build more housing has sparked a wide community conversation about the locations.

The county’s original Housing Element released in February relies primarily on the rezoning of agricultural land around the City of Goleta to meet the South Coast’s allotment.

The proposal to rezone Glen Annie Golf Course, at 405 Glen Annie Road in Goleta; two San Marcos Growers sites along the north side of Hollister Avenue west of South Turnpike Road; and St. Athanasius Orthodox Church property at 300 Sumida Gardens Lane near La Sumida Nursery, has angered Goleta city officials and some residents.

They want to know why about two-thirds of the 4,500 potential South Coast housing unit sites the county identified border Goleta.

In the past decade, more than 1,300 units of housing have been built in Goleta and another 334, as part of the Heritage Ridge Project, are headed to the City Council for approval this week.

At a special Feb. 27 meeting, every council member signed a formal letter of objection to be sent to the county as part of the public review process for the Housing Element.

“I’m glad to see that a community conversation about the need for all our communities to participate in addressing our regional housing challenges is leading to new progress in Montecito,” City Councilman James Kyriaco said.

Kyriaco and Councilwoman Luz Reyes-Martín wrote a March 4 commentary in Noozhawk complaining that the county process appeared to benefit “wealthy and well-connected areas.” They specifically called out Hope Ranch, Montecito and Summerland.

County planners have said the high cost of land in Montecito makes it difficult to identify locations for dense housing projects there.

But Goleta officials contend such assumptions are shortsighted. If the housing crisis is so significant, they say, every jurisdiction should bear some responsibility for finding sites.

“When you have a proposal that takes 5,664 units along this unincorporated South Coast and you put three-quarters of them on the borders of one city and of those sites they provide more than 100% of the low-income housing, and more than 100% of the moderate-income housing for the entire region, you need to re-examine your priorities,” Kyriaco said.

“That is shocking to me. This is functioning more like an exclusionary housing policy than a county that talks about inclusionary housing.”

Goleta itself is waiting to hear back from the state about its own Housing Element, after an early draft submittal was heavily criticized, like so many others throughout California.

For example, the state initially rejected the City of Berkeley’s Housing Element before approving its revised proposal last week. Berkeley plans about 2,000 units in wealthier neighborhoods.

Plowman said the state has been “very clear” that jurisdictions must demonstrate that identified sites will develop or redevelop within the eight-year Housing Element cycle, between 2023-2031, which she said makes Montecito a challenge.

“The state is rejecting housing elements that rely on developed sites to produce new housing if the agencies cannot demonstrate that these sites will redevelop,” she said.

Santa Barbara County only put sites on its list if the property owner agreed to the rezone. Plowman said only one property owner in Cuyama objected to a rezone, so the property did not make the list.

Since the public backlash, the Board of Supervisors has gotten involved to spread out the distribution of housing.

“Some supervisors reached out to landowners in their districts to determine if there were additional viable sites — Magnolia (Shopping) Center, Turnpike Shopping Center, the Upper Village neighborhood centers in Montecito, and sites in Orcutt,” Plowman said in her email to Noozhawk.

The county’s interactive map, released last November and updated in December, shows “the vast majority of the properties” where the owners were contacted.

“My team has not had a chance to add other owners that have been contacted in the last two months,” Plowman said. “Once we complete our review of public comment, update the draft document and submit it to the state, we can circle back to this and add the names.”

The outreach was conducted through phone calls, Zoom meetings and emails sent to landowners.

The state is requiring cities and counties to find new residential locations to help respond to California’s chronic housing crisis.

Historically, the North County has shouldered a majority of the development, but in this cycle the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments — which is made up of the Board of Supervisors and a member from each of its eight cities: Buellton, Carpinteria, Goleta, Guadalupe, Lompoc, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria and Solvang — split the allocation between the North County and the South Coast.

For this cycle, the county must find land to build 1,522 units in the North County and 4,142 on the South Coast.

The state wants the county to provide housing at “jobs-rich” locations, through vacant properties under current zoning, future accessory dwelling units, pending residential projects and rezoning of vacant and nonvacant land.

“From a practical standpoint, the county must identify potential housing sites that will accommodate large numbers of lower- and moderate-income housing,” Plowman said. “High land values, scarce sites and state housing laws make this a challenging task.”

First District Supervisor Das Williams told Noozhawk he has had conversations with a Montecito property owner and “is not done looking.”

After the release of the draft document, Second District Supervisor Laura Capps worked with her staff to get the Magnolia Shopping Center, at 5186 Hollister Ave., on the list as a potential site for mixed-use housing; it was not on the county’s original list.

“We are aggressively looking for more sites on county property, commercial properties as well within the 1st District,” Capps said. “Given the Brown Act, my team and I are only allowed to work with one other supervisor and that is Supervisor (Joan) Hartmann.

“Given his public comments in our hearing and to Noozhawk, Supervisor Williams seems to agree.”