Risking a potential lawsuit and other punitive measures, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 during its Jan. 27 meeting to reject an affordable housing mandate from the state.
To meet state requirements, the board considered selecting two parcels of land in Orcutt for residential rezoning. The parcels would have been home to 370 low-income residential units—the final portion of the 6,064 units the California Housing and Community Development Department directed the county to find or make room for in 2007.
The county originally found room for even more units than the state had asked for. However, the housing department later told the board that less than half of the 1,417 units the county located in Isla Vista would be accepted under state guidelines.
The board had been considering settling the remaining homes on a combination of sites in Orcutt. The new plan, however, didn’t sit well with three of the supervisors, including Fourth District Supervisor Joni Gray.
“I thought [the requirement] was forcing high density housing into key sites that can’t support it,” Gray told the Sun, adding that she would have more readily supported a plan that spread the housing over multiple key sites.
“That would give you all levels of socioeconomic housing together so you don’t segregate people,” she said.
Following the vote, the board directed staff to inform the California Housing and Community Development Department that the Isla Vista units fulfill the county’s housing requirements.
If the state ultimately rejects them, the county could be subject to a lawsuit, and the board’s authority over housing and development projects could be suspended.
This article appears in Feb 5-12, 2009.
