We have joined together to urge the Santa Barbara City Council to commit $5 million to the city’s Local Housing Trust Fund for each of the next two fiscal years.
While this is but one stream of badly needed funding, in the short term it will provide a predictable source for affordable housing projects. Santa Barbara is facing an urgent decision point in terms of meeting essential housing needs. We can continue struggling to manage symptoms — or our City Council can do what our community has asked and expects: address root causes with intelligence and resolve.
When Santa Barbara voters overwhelmingly passed Measure I last November, designed to raise $15.1 million or more annually through a 0.5 percent sales tax increase, they affirmed earlier survey results that identified affordable housing and maintaining essential public safety services as top priorities. Ballot measure supporters signed off on arguments for Measure I that specifically emphasized this: “Your YES vote on Measure I … ensures that Santa Barbara maintains essential services, such as emergency fire/paramedic response, and improves housing affordability and homelessness by funding the newly created City of Santa Barbara Local Housing Trust Fund.”
The $5 million can come from Measure I revenues and other City sources. For example, tapping the city’s large reserves by one percent would help the fund for affordable housing without greatly affecting other services.
Broad civic support for affordable housing was evident in the endorsements Measure I received from housing advocates, religious leaders, community organizations, and voters across ideological lines. United by the belief that housing is both a human right and a practical necessity, these groups championed the measure. An increase in the sales tax, which disproportionately impacts the poorest, would, in all likelihood, not have passed without the promise of a significant investment in affordable housing.
The 2025 Workforce Housing Study reports that 70 percent of the county’s workers earn less than 80 percent of area median income; many of these are very low or extremely low income. These individuals play vital roles in our city: They care for our children, clean our hotels, serve our food, staff our schools, and work in underpaid city jobs. Despite their essential contributions, the housing market has failed them.
With low-income housing unaffordable, essential workers including health-care workers, administrative professionals, nonprofit leaders, educators, hospitality professionals, service providers and more are forced to overpay, overcrowd, commute, or decide they can only work elsewhere. Students, elderly, and others who cannot afford Santa Barbara’s high housing costs end up living in vehicles, parks, shelters, or even jail cells. The city’s unsheltered population is a predictable result of decades of insufficient affordable housing development.
Now it is time for our City Council to deliver what voters expect: affordable housing as a key top priority with unflinching, robust funding for our Local Housing Trust Fund. Only in this way will affordable housing construction occur. Between 2018 and 2023, 87 percent of new housing units produced were at or above the market-rate, failing to be affordable or to meet the needs of Santa Barbara’s workforce.
Santa Barbara has a moral obligation to help fund affordable housing. The city is mandated by the State’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) to plan for and facilitate the construction of 3,528 units of low and very low income housing within the next five years. Market-rate developers alone cannot — and will not — meet this target. Public investment is the only viable path to fulfilling RHNA requirements and addressing the housing crisis.
It is imperative that the council follows through to address this stark need. More funding that is allocated to affordable housing puts us in a more advantageous position to compete for state and other outside funds. These funds can be leveraged 8 to 1; $5 million can produce $40 million in affordable housing money. Indeed, a recent city project on South Hope Street that would have provided 46 units of affordable housing is now on hold because $1.4 million in Housing Trust funds was an insufficient amount of local investment to successfully compete for state tax credits. But $5 million in local funding would enable this and other projects to go ahead.
Dedicated Housing Trust funds can create affordable housing in several ways: affordable rental housing and, equally important, deed-restricted ownership housing for low-income, first-time homebuyer families, as well as home repairs to preserve the stock of naturally affordable homes that already exist in our community — via the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
On Tuesday, June 3, the city hosted an all-day public meeting on budgetary priorities. Tuesday, June 10, presents two key opportunities to have your voice heard: the City Council Finance Committee (noon-1:30pm, David Gebhard Public Meeting Room, 630 Garden St.), which will recommend final budget allocations to the full City Council; and the City Council meeting itself immediately after (2pm, Santa Barbara City Hall, De la Guerra Plaza).
Public input is crucial. Show up to offer public comment during the decision process, this will make the biggest immediate impact; or submit a written public comment via email to Clerk@SantaBarbaraCA.gov prior to the start of each meeting; or offer remote verbal public comment during the meeting via Zoom by registering before each meeting at: https://santabarbaraca-gov.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-tbNSuHPTmquCwDEP9hNaQ#/registration.
Finally, you can do something right now to support affordable housing: send an e-mail to the mayor and each city councilmember. For the reasons stated above, ask them to allocate $5 million per year to the Local Housing Trust Fund to create affordable housing in the City of Santa Barbara.
Mayor Randy Rowse rrowse@santabarbaraca.gov
Eric Friedman EFriedman@SantaBarbaraCA.gov
Kristen Sneddon ksneddon@santabarbaraca.gov
Meagan Harmon mharmon@santabarbaraca.gov
Mike Jordan mjordan@santabarbaraca.gov
Oscar Gutierrez OGutierrez@SantaBarbaraCA.gov
Wendy Santamaria WSantamaria@SantaBarbaraCA.gov
The authors, respectively, represent CLUE-Santa Barbara, League of Women Voters S.B., Gray Panthers, Commitee for Social Justice, S.B. County Action Network, Central Coast Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, and Habitat for Humanity of Southern S.B. County.
