CountyofSantaBarbara
The Board of Supervisors adopted the County’s Housing Element Update 2023-2031 (HEU) at a hearing on Tuesday, December 5, 2023.
The Board of Supervisors considered the analysis, policies and programs in the Draft HEU, and adopted the Final HEU. The Board did not consider or take any actions on the rezones during this hearing. Rezones will be considered in early 2024.
At the public hearing, several speakers addressed the need for affordable housing and a preference that any housing built be available to locals. The Final HEU includes a program that directs the County to study the feasibility of developing a Local Preference Housing program that prioritizes people who live and/or work within Santa Barbara County who wish to rent or purchase affordable units.
The State Housing and Community Development Department (State HCD) will review the County’s Final HEU to determine that it is in substantial compliance with State requirements. The County received formal notice from the State HCD on October 16, 2023, that the County’s Draft HEU was preliminarily in substantial compliance with State requirements.
The selection of specific sites to rezone is a later step. Hearings to choose rezone sites will take place early in 2024 after the release of a draft Program Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) analyzing potential impacts associated with the potential rezones. During the public comment period on the Draft PEIR, the Department will hold two public comment hearings; one in north county and one in south county.
“This Housing Element cycle was more complex than any previous cycle with hundreds of pages of requirements and instruction. I am very proud of the job our team did producing a document that the State found in substantial compliance very quickly, and that identified more sites than required so the Board of Supervisors will have a range of options to choose from at hearings next year on the rezones,” added Planning and Development Director Lisa Plowman.
The Draft HEU with all revisions tracked can be found at: https://www.countyofsb.org/3177/Housing-Element-Update. The Final HEU will be available later this week. An interactive map showing all the potential housing sites can be found at: https://sbcopad.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=9375e0705e864eada0ff535c23ba99ac.
For this cycle, State HCD requires that Santa Barbara County identify sites to accommodate 5,664 new housing units in unincorporated portions of Santa Barbara County between 2023 and 2031. This is an 8-fold increase from the last cycle. That housing needs allocation, the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), is further broken down to require 4,142 units in the South Coast region and 1,522 units in the North County region. This breakdown attempts to address the current jobs-housing imbalance.
The State requires the County’s Housing Element to accommodate 2,818 very low, low- and moderate-income units.
The County submitted the Draft HEU to State HCD for review on March 31, 2023. After receiving preliminary comments from the State on June 30, 2023, the County worked with the State to address their questions and comments over the summer and submitted a formal revised draft on September 22, 2023.
The Planning Commission considered the Draft HEU at a public hearing on November 8, 2023, and recommended the Board of Supervisors adopt the Draft HEU.
The Housing Element Update is one of the mandated components of a General Plan. It directs local governments to plan for the existing and projected housing needs of all economic segments of the community. This is the 6th Housing Element cycle, covering 2023-2031.
January 27th 2020, HCD sent a letter to the SBCAG providing the final regional housing need determination- The letter included the minimum regional housing need determination of 24,856 total
units across four income categories for SBCAG to distribute amongst the region’s local
governments. SBCAG is made up the County BOS and a representative from each of the 9 jurisdictions.( all the Cities). All local agencies were informed of the housing need requirements in Jan 2020.
The letter also states :”Increasing the availability of affordable homes, ending homelessness, and meeting other housing goals continues to be a priority for the State of California. To support these goals, the 2019-20 Budget Act allocated $250 million for all regions and jurisdictions for planning activities through the Regional Early Action Planning (REAP) and Local Early Action Planning (LEAP) Grant programs. SBCAG is part of the Central Coast Multi-agency Working Group that is eligible for $7,931,311 through the REAP program.”
The HCD site provides access to see the status of Grant applications and awards- SBCAG did not apply for the REAP grant program.
The SBCAG notified all 9 jurisdictions of the HCD housing need determination but all 9 jurisdictions failed to submit its housing element by the required date of Feb 2023. In fact the only jurisdiction that is currently IN compliance is Buellton as of Dec 17,2023 when the Housing compliance report was viewed. Buellton submitted its Housing element on June 2, 2023 and approved complete on Aug 1, 2023. It was still 4 months late.
All remaining 8 jurisdiction remain OUT of compliance with 7 in review.
3 years of having this housing element requirement numbers along with millions of grant funds to make it happen, how is it that all 9 missed the Feb 2023 deadline?
The HCD site with the compliance reports
https://www.hcd.ca.gov/planning-and-community-development/housing-open-data-tools/housing-element-review-and-compliance-report