Rob Fredericks is to be forgiven for walking around the Carrillo-Castillo Commuter Lot late Monday morning with an unquenchable pinch-me grin plastered to his face. As Fredericks tells it, he and the City of Santa Barbara’s Housing Authority — where he’s executive director — just broke ground on the first-of-its-kind-anywhere-in-the-country affordable housing project slated for middle-income residents.
“This is completely different,” Fredericks said. “It serves the missing middle. This is a milestone moment. We really need to celebrate it.”
The “it” to which he refers is the new 63-unit three-and-four story housing complex known as Jacaranda Court on the site formerly occupied by the city’s public commuter lot at Castillo and Carrillo streets. What makes “it” so difficult and unusual is that none of the subsidies traditionally available for low- and very-low-income housing developments exist for moderate-income housing.
In the case of Jacaranda Court, studio residents can make no more than $100,000 a year. While the studio rents aren’t particularly cheap — $2,500 a month — that’s still just 30 percent of the residents’ income.
“Who’s going to be living here?” Fredericks asked. “Teachers. City employees. Nurses. People who work for nonprofits. It’s downtown workforce housing.”
Fredericks was quick to credit City Hall for donating the land for the parking lot deemed underutilized except for the flotilla of RVs occupied by people who would be otherwise homeless. That land, he said, was valued at $7.7million.
In addition, the City Council donated $3.5 million out of the city’s affordable housing trust fund. Although Mayor Randy Rowse cast the only council vote against that donation — objecting on the grounds of fiscal recklessness — he spoke in praise of the project and the Housing Authority Monday. So too did Councilmember Meagan Harmon, in whose downtown district the project lies.
Fredericks’s first attempt to put housing on that lot — back in 2018 — elicited a firestorm of angry neighborhood reaction. On the table at that time was a proposed tiny home village targeting the chronically homeless.
“I’m still plucking the arrows out of my back over that one,” Fredericks said.
Jacaranda Court is the Plan B. Fredericks said the Housing Authority put $8 million of its own money into the project and landed $18 million in tax exempt loans. (Seven of the 63 units are set aside for low- and very-low-income residents. By including them in the project, Jacaranda Court could qualify for some tax subsidies.)
Each of the units will have an assigned parking space, but to keep costs down, those parking spaces will be compressed where the site abuts Highway 101 and built at ground level.
“It’s common to hear developers say certain things just ‘don’t pencil out,’” Fredericks said. “But they have a rate of return to worry about. Us being a nonprofit, we don’t worry what our return is. We just have to make sure we can cover our costs.”
He said construction should take 20 months to complete.
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