During the Feb. 8 Solvang City Council meeting, the council questioned whether the city has enough development space to meet the state’s next set of recommended housing need allocations.
In this cycle, Solvang is tentatively projected to need 225 more housing units, 63 of which must be allocated to “very low-income housing,” 45 for “low-income housing,” 25 for “moderate-income housing,” and 92 for “above-moderate-income housing.”
After a staff presentation, Councilmember Mark Infanti said he was confused about what the city could do in order to meet these requirements.
“We’re pretty built-out in this town. That is where I get really confused. When I ask what we’re supposed to do, I’m a little bit lost as to what we can accomplish,” Infanti said.
Solvang isn’t on the hook to ensure the units are actually built, however it is responsible for ensuring there are adequate development sites and that regulatory obstacles are minimized.
The state Department of Housing and Community Development works with the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments to assign Santa Barbara County with the number of housing units that it must plan for during a specified planning period. This cycle, which is the sixth for the Regional Housing Needs Assessment, estimates that the county should plan for 24,856 more housing units between February 2023 to February 2031.
It’s a significant increase over the fifth cycle allocation of 11,030 housing units. According to a staff report, the increase is not unique to Santa Barbara County. Instead, it’s a result of new factors such as overcrowding and cost burdens, which weren’t considered in past cycles.
During Solvang’s meeting, county Association of Governments Director of Planning Michael Becker said that many local governments question whether their city can meet the housing allocation requirements.
For instance, Becker said the city of Santa Barbara’s allocation is increasing to about 8,000 housing units, which the city is struggling to accommodate.
“I will say, with the state’s new accessory dwelling unit law, a good portion of your housing units could be accommodated through assumptions related to accessory dwelling units,” he said.
The new accessory dwelling unit law that went into effect on Jan. 1, 2021, states that landlords and homeowners can now add two more units, an accessory dwelling unit and a junior accessory dwelling unit, to any residential lot.
This cycle of the Regional Housing Needs Assessment is in a draft stage, and the allocations are being reviewed by the Department of Housing and Community Development. The numbers are expected to be finalized by the end of 2021.
This article appears in Feb 11-18, 2021.