There are two kinds of people in Santa Barbara: the people who think we have a housing crisis, and the people who own homes.
The first group talks about it constantly. The second group talks about it, too, but only to mention what the place down the street just sold for.
I love both groups. Some of my best friends are homeowners.
After a second glass of Santa Ynez pinot, a few will confess they couldn’t afford their own house today. Then they get in the Volvo and drive home to it.
This isn’t really a disagreement about facts. It’s about which side of the deed you’re standing on.
For renters, rising prices are a crisis. For owners, they’re a 401(k) with a lemon tree.
Math Doesn’t Care About Your Feelings
Let’s do the numbers, since feelings are free and housing is not.
Santa Barbara home prices have hovered around $1.8 million. In May, WalletHub ranked Santa Barbara last among 300 American cities for home-buying affordability.
Not near the bottom. Last.
Somewhere in Ohio, a real estate agent just spilled his reasonably priced coffee laughing.
Put 20% down on a $1.8 million home — that’s $360,000, which most of us keep in our other jacket — and finance the rest at an illustrative 6.4% interest rate.
You’re paying roughly $9,000 monthly in principal and interest. Add estimated property taxes and you’re above $10,000, before insurance and maintenance.
To keep those costs near 30% of income, a household would need to earn more than $425,000 annually.
The area’s 2026 median family income benchmark for four people is $118,600.
That’s not an affordability gap. That’s a canyon with an ocean view, and the canyon is also for sale.
Renting is the consolation prize. Average asking rents in the Santa Barbara multifamily market were about $2,900 in the first half of 2026, and roughly 59% of occupied city housing units are renter-occupied.
The people experiencing this crisis aren’t a marginal constituency. They just can’t make the afternoon planning meeting.
Why the Other Half Sleeps Soundly
Homeowners aren’t villains. They’re ordinary people responding rationally to incentives California created decades ago.
Consider Proposition 13, passed in 1978, when the Bee Gees were singing “Stayin’ Alive” and Californians were making long-term financial arrangements to do precisely that.
Under Prop. 13, a property’s assessed value generally cannot increase more than 2% annually, except when reassessment rules apply.
The couple who bought on the Riviera in 1991 may pay substantially less in property taxes than the family purchasing an equivalent house next door.
Their house is worth millions of dollars. Their tax assessment still remembers the first Bush administration.
One person’s housing crisis is another person’s appreciating asset.
The interesting question isn’t why homeowners protect their interests. It’s how a community can organize itself around those interests while proclaiming its commitment to affordable housing.
Everyone supports affordable housing in principle. The difficulties begin when somebody proposes building it.
Suddenly, neighborhood character, architectural compatibility, traffic, parking and historic preservation become matters of existential importance.
Nobody needs to announce an intention to exclude working families. Exclusion emerges from the accumulated consequences of individually reasonable objections.
No conspiracy is necessary. The machinery works perfectly well on its own.
Somebody Pays the Bill
The housing crisis doesn’t disappear because some residents can’t see it from their patios. It just gets on Highway 101.
Thousands of workers commute into Santa Barbara from Ventura County and elsewhere. They clean hotel rooms, prepare restaurant meals, teach children, care for older residents, and perform countless tasks that make paradise possible.
We welcome their labor with open arms. Their housing is another matter.
Apparently, our commitment to reducing carbon emissions ends somewhere near the property line.
And at the bottom of the housing ladder, the joke stops being funny.
During my years working with people experiencing homelessness, I encountered individuals whose lives had unraveled through unaffordable rents, illness, lost employment, addiction and family conflict.
Their circumstances differed, but affordable routes back into housing were scarce.
Santa Barbara County figures show people living in vehicles increasing from 675 in 2022 to 962 in 2025.
In a small county-commissioned survey of 90 vehicle residents not engaged with services, more than half reported working.
The survey cannot represent everyone living in vehicles, but it punctures the assumption that employment guarantees housing.
Behold the new Santa Barbara dream: a job and a Corolla with a view.
A Third Kind of Person
Santa Barbara’s state-assigned housing-planning target is 8,001 units for 2023-2031. Through 2025, the city had permitted 863, approximately 11% of that target.
Permits aren’t completed homes, and the target isn’t a construction quota. Still, much of the permitted housing remains beyond lower-income households’ reach.
The solutions require more than slogans: infill near jobs and transit, tenant protections, preservation of existing affordable units, and public investment in homes for people the private market fails to serve.
So I propose a third kind of Santa Barbaran: the homeowner who remembers what it took to get in the door and is willing to hold it open.
Perhaps you bought in 1991. Your house has appreciated beyond anything you imagined. Your children now live in Ventura, or in your guest room, because they cannot afford a place of their own.
Come to the next planning meeting. Support a well-designed apartment building in your neighborhood. Welcome more neighbors.
Bring a renter. Offer to split the parking.
Santa Barbara has spent generations preserving its exceptional beauty. Now we face a different challenge: preserving the possibility of belonging here.
A beautiful city that increasingly excludes the people who make it function may remain beautiful for a very long time.
But we should be careful about calling it a community.