The phrase “Santa Barbara needs more affordable housing” gets thrown around a lot, but what does it mean for housing to actually be affordable?

It depends on a few factors, including your income compared to the area median income, and the number of people in your household. 

The Santa Barbara Foundation released a housing affordability report for the county in 2023 that outlined four income levels for families of four in the county to qualify for affordable housing.

Extremely Low Income

These are households that earn less than 30% of the area median income, as defined by the federal government, or about $42,000 a year. About 18,060 of these households exist in the county.

Very Low Income

These are households that earn less than 50% of the area median income, or about $70,000 a year. There are about 16,780 of these households.

Low Income

These are households that earn less than 80% of the area median income, or about $112,000 a year. There are 24,905 of these households.

Moderate Income

These are households that earn less than 120% of the area median income, or about $120,000 year. There are about 27,540.

In order for housing to be considered affordable, a renter should only have to spend 30% of their monthly income on housing expenses, otherwise the renter is considered burdened by the cost of housing.

In Santa Barbara County, 75% of low-income renters spend more than half their salary on housing costs, according to the California Housing Partnership’s 2024 Santa Barbara County Housing Needs Report.

The average monthly rent in Santa Barbara County is $2,447, meaning the average renter would need to make $47 an hour, or $8,513 a month, to not be extremely cost burdened, according to the Santa Barbara Foundation’s report.

People get access to affordable housing through federal Housing Choice Vouchers (formerly Section 8) or through local housing programs that target units for households of specific income levels. When developers propose housing projects, local governments are typically trying to incentivize developers to make more units affordable to people who earn less than 120% of the area median income, from very low to moderate levels.

Developers in return ask for the ability to build a greater number of units, if they have to agree to lower income subsidized units. The situation, however, gets complicated on a political level since Santa Barbara has historically been a place that guards against rapid housing growth.

The regional housing needs allocation (RHNA) is a state-mandated process that determines how much housing local governments need to plan for in their Housing Element Update. The most recent RHNA identified that the county needed 5,799 units for low-income individuals, or those who make less than 50% of the area median income, according to the Santa Barbara Foundation’s Housing Affordability report. 

Rob Fredericks, executive director of the Santa Barbara City Housing Authority, works to provide low-income housing to families, elderly and disabled persons in need. Fredericks said both the city and county housing authorities are working with private developers to develop mixed-income units, and with school districts to develop employee housing on district-owned land. 

“We see day in and day out the people that come to us that are not just low income, but moderate income that need housing,” Fredericks said. 

The city housing authority has over 7,000 local residents and employees on the waitlist for affordable housing. People typically spend five to seven years on the waitlist due to lack of resources, Fredericks said.

“What we really need to ensure is that it's not all market-rate housing,” Fredericks said. “That's what we've seen in the last few years where we failed miserably in the last housing element planning period, not meeting the RHNA numbers for low, moderate-income households, but above moderate we did pretty well.”

Fredericks said the best way to get more affordable housing is by incentivizing developers to donate land for low-income units and build more than just the minimum quantity of affordable units.

“We need to encourage more of that,” Fredericks said. “We need to work with the developer community to incentivize developers to build more affordable housing through expediting the permitting process.”

According to the Housing Affordability report, nearly half (48%) of Santa Barbara County households in 2022 were renters. People of color, in particular Black and Latina/o families,
are more likely to be renters, according to the report. About 86% of Black families and 59% of Latina/o families are renters, compared to just 38% of white families.

Between 2021 and 2023, asking rent in the county increased by 31%, from $1,862 to $2,447.14

"Based on those averages, the majority of workers living in Santa Barbara County are unable to afford their monthly rents," the report states.