Edhat Staff
The Santa Barbara City Council voted this week to grant the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara a $6 million loan to purchase a hotel to convert into housing for formerly homeless individuals.
The Quality Inn, located at 3055 De La Vina Street on the corner of State Street, will likely be purchased for $9.45 million with an added $3.05 million estimate for renovation costs.
The project plans to convert the 34 hotel rooms into studio apartments with kitchenettes as permanent affordable housing for extremely low-income residents who are formerly homeless. An added one-bedroom apartment will be created for an on-site manager.
All residents will be eligible for Section 8 rental assistance and the property will be designated exclusively for those who make 30% or less of the area’s median income. For Santa Barbara that would be $32,190 annually.
Similar to other housing projects for homeless individuals, supportive services will be offered to help people find jobs and access care needs.
The $6 million loan from the city will come from the $15 million affordable housing reserve fund for a term of 30 years at 3% interest. On top of this loan, the Housing Authority will contribute an additional $5 million and the Santa Barbara Foundation will contribute $2 million.
Samarkand and San Roque neighbors opposed to project, some stating they were worried this would turn into the Rose Garden Inn, a hotel in the same area that was used to house homeless individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Neighbors complained there was an increase in crime and drug-use in their neighborhood during this time.
Councilmembers stressed the need to address the housing crisis in the area with Councilmember Eric Friedman stating this project will be run very differently than the Rose Garden Inn, which was essentially a temporary shelter.
The Santa Barbara City Council voted unanimously to approve the loan for this project.
I’m glad the city is taking productive steps to help those who are struggling the hardest to find a place to live here. I live very close to this area and I support this and other projects that, when done well, alleviate the issue of homelessness.
@ Anonymous- Go spend some time with your prospective new neighbors from the other States and jurisdictions around the country at the Cacique or the shelter(s) on Yanonali Street. You will soon see that they are addicts and opportunists that come here for the benefits and all the Santa Barbarba has to offer- Mostly the liberal policies that white guilt produces here in SB and Montecito. The results are the hand wringing about issues like the loss of tourists (INCOME for the City) on State St. just to name one issue. The “Homeless Inc.” administrators from across the country are just WAITING to see if Prop 1 passes this March, so they too can get a piece of the $6.4 BILLION pie with $100k a yr salaries and living in “paradise”…Wake up people.
CoastWatch – do you have any solutions for the homeless crisis? All of your comments center around complaining that homeless people exist, complaining about housing for the homeless, complaining about services to get people off the street. So.. what do you propose?
Your comments continue to display how uneducated and uninformed you are, parroting lies from right wing talking heads.
So just call anyone who speaks the truth uneducated and right wing sure that works-Where are the lies in Coast’s statements ? Please tell us how turning homes into STR’s and hotels into “free” housing helps the big picture or the residents of SB
Who said it’s free housing? And what is the “truth” that you found in Coast watch’s comment? It’s really dangerous to conflate opinion with truth.
I suppose they’ll remove the pool. It would be nice if they could open the pool for locals to use.
“Supportive Housing…” LMAO- that is the new DEI think-speak for Low-Low Income / Homeless Housing….Just what the City needs- All the vagrants from across the U.S. can now get on a list from the SBHA for a taxpayer subsidized place to live on the “American Riviera”. This will no doubt bump up the subsidized housing units within the City to over 20% . Wait ’til Newsom’s Prop 1 passes the $6.4 BILLION housing mandate, that will bump up all government housing to 50%, and the vagrants will STILL be coming to CA…!
Up next, $5 if you vote in California
Taxpayers will pay for the mob of vagrants to turn up and cast their votes
Up next, death threats in numerous U.S. states if you refuse to cast fake ballots for the GOP.. oh wait.
Lol, anon making things political.
Typical.
What exactly is wrong with diversity, equity, and inclusion? And please think for yourself and not say what Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Green tell you.
What is wrong is that one is limiting one’s pool of candidates (by their color, for example.). The best minds do not have a color. When we start seeing short Asians on basketball teams, I will consider that it is important.
Oh yikes, you really don’t get it. This is why higher education for all is needed so people don’t believe the conspiracy rantings on YouTube.
Just to refute your incorrect statements with facts, “vagrants” are not coming to California for services. CA is losing residents. The homeless we have here used to have jobs, homes, families, etc. in this state until they fell on hard times and/or suffered from mental health issues that our country will not effectively treat.
This city council must hate our beautiful city. Whe do we vote them out. I over by a housing unit like this believe me when I say they are not the best. Neighbors. People spend millions to live in nice safe places then a city can do this to them. Very unfair. There are better places to place people not in established neighborhoods
I haven’t seen anything about how this project will be funded in the long term – i.e. who will pay for management, maintenance, utilities, upgrades, loan repayment, etc. If the Housing Authority hasn’t committed that this will be self-supporting from rents then I must assume that the tax payers will be stuck with the bills – again!
SBHA is completely supported and subsidized by taxpayers. All their housing units, which in Santa Barbara accounts for about 22% of ALL housing units and is continuing to grow every year.
As someone who is more conservative than most of you and generally in favor of market based solutions I also have come to the realization that Santa Barbara and the South Coast is an extremely unique place, with one of the most asymmetrical economies and housing markets in the world. I’ve also observed that the Santa Barbara Housing Authority has done a decent job of funding, building, and maintaining housing for a large population. Of course much of this came about because of socialist leaning dumb assed liberal voters electing no growth politicians, as well as generalized hostility toward rental property landlords exhibited by elected officials, department heads and staff over the past 50 years. Dario Pini and many others h known to the public have provided affordable housing for our gardeners, nurses, teachers, store clerks and restaurant and hotel workers for many years while the city has spent millions to make it more difficult for these heroes to participate in capitalist pursuits. Finally after years of dealing with the homeless by paying staff big salaries and just talking about it they are getting serious. Why don’t you see many homeless in most European cities and even in Mexico City? Because there is enough effing housing.
But we are here now and fact is these people are living in cars parked in your neighborhoods or in the bushes around town. So why act like providing housing for some of them and a path to self sufficiency is going to hurt you somehow? A lot of them are also long time locals even natives. You are all deeply middle class. your kids see them on their way to school and in 7-11 (if you even let your kids out of the car), so don’t act like you are the elitist snob that you aren’t. (Harry, Megan and their neighbors are not writing on Edhat and don’t give a damn about Santa Barbara anyway) The money is there from section 8 and other programs that people can’t access when they sleep at McKenzie Park and keep themselves warm with a 40oz beer. So maybe not be so dumb about it and realize that SB actually needs this kind of stuff.
As well a mentality that accepts a favela like area that is self regulated by the residents like Soweto, or Rocinha, providing a base for cheap labor as well as the drugs, prostitution, and thugs for hire that wealthy in other cities have access to. 😉
This is pretty prime real estate to give away, isn’t it? Wow. Can you imagine what other (hardworking) folks around the country think that the city of SB gives away this stuff?
All of Santa Barbara is prime real estate. Do you have a point?
Do you have a suggestion on how to address the homeless crisis locally?
So if the income has to be SUPER low to get these “supportive” apartments. people who are working and homeless don’t get them? Could we please start looking at who is homeless and working and/or attending school OR was born here? STOP helping people from all over who just want a free ride here. NOT everyone gets to live in Santa Barbara!
So only people who were born in Santa Barbara can get help if they need it? Where does that line start and stop for you? “Welcome to Cottage Hospital, before we let you into the ER to repair that detached arm, we need to see your birth certificate. If you weren’t born here, please drive back to where you came from to get the help you need.”
That type of thinking isn’t only uneducated, it’s unrealistic.
szq said nothing about turning people away from urgent medical care. It’s not irrational to ask how the free housing will be allocated.
That’s only part of what szq said. It is irrational to think only people born in Santa Barbara should receive care or services. My medical analogy isn’t far off from szq’s line of thinking.
szq said: “Could we please start looking at who is homeless and working and/or attending school OR was born here? STOP helping people from all over who just want a free ride here. NOT everyone gets to live in Santa Barbara!”
Absurd statement Anonymous.
Absurd for szq to assume homeless individuals weren’t born here and somehow travel here to receive the bare minimum in services. And even if they weren’t born here but lived here and worked here then became homeless, they aren’t entitled to services in the community they live?
We are looking at who is homeless and how many. We do it every year, and it just happened a few days ago so I don’t know when the results will be available. Here is the link so you can stay tuned https://www.countyofsb.org/3667/Homeless-Point-In-Time-Count
That’s $350,000 per living unit. Surely the city can do better than that with prefab housing on public land, and accommodate many more.
I mean a TuffShed is like $5k avg.
City should buy 2,500 of them and put them in the parks that have been widely unavailable to the public anyways due to vagrant invasion and then lock the gates.
There you go, that’s at least 5,000 bums off the streets when you fit two per.
I am aware of this property and location. I wonder how those who live next to it in Sanmarkand feel about the proximity? No doubt, this affects the value of those homes nearby. Clearly, those from various groups should get priority on beds ie. battered women, veterans, disabled and elderly. It SHOULD NOT be a half way home for addicted homeless or the undocumented.
We need to get back to requiring MANDATORY committing those with mental illness, to state regulated mental health facilities. Yes, committing those who insist on living on our streets and using our public spaces for toilets!
We have only so much physical space for those less fortunate, NOT a free-for- all for everyone that wants to call SB home.
Then again, we could be Boston whereby local officials are asking residents to open their homes up for undocumented immigrants.