Four Stories of Affordable Worker Housing in Heart of Downtown Santa Barbara? 

After the expression of considerable high hopes accompanied by more than a few raised eyebrows, the Santa Barbara County supervisors approved an executive negotiating agreement with SoLa, an L.A.-based private developer specializing in low-income housing, to build 104 units of affordable housing in the heart of downtown Santa Barbara. Should negotiations pan out, the new structure would stand four or five stories tall on county-owned land now occupied by the county Probation Department at 117 East Carrillo Street. It would deliver housing for low- to moderate-income county employees or for people who work downtown. 

Championing the effort was Supervisor Laura Capps, who has pushed hard for the creation of affordable workforce housing on vacant or underused county-owned real estate. Her hope is this is just the start of many similar projects to follow. 

“We are past the research and study phase and ready to act,” declared Jesus Armas, head of the county’s Community Development Department. 

Supervisor Roy Lee, normally Capps’s most loyal ally on the board, agreed to vote for the contract even though he said he thought it should have been awarded instead to the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara, which submitted a proposal of its own. 

Supervisor Steve Lavagnino agreed to go along but only as a procedural favor after announcing he would oppose the project later. Lavagnino questioned whether the county should provide housing to its own employees. It smacked, he said, of the old employer-owned company store which controlled employees by keeping them forever in debt. 

Capps noted that Cottage Hospital and UCSB both provided housing for their workers. One-third of all county workers, she noted, lived out of county. 

Lavagnino also wanted the name of the person who would be vetting SoLa’s track record for economic soundness and ability to deliver. Armas said his department will be hiring a consultant to do the vetting. Lavagnino asked how much the property would fetch on the open market. He was told the consultant would find that out too. The land will not be sold to SoLa; it will be leased on a long-term basis. 

Supervisor Lee and Capps agreed that SoLa needed to partner with a local nonprofit. Lee wanted the company to appear before the city’s Historic Landmarks Commission at least as a courtesy. 

The company has hired by the architectural firm of Brian Cearnal, one of the signature firms within in the firmament of Santa Barbara architects. Probably more than any one architect, Cearnal has defined the Santa Barbara vernacular. Whether that’s enough to get SoLa truly out the gate to the next step has yet to be seen. 

Among the three finalists, the ranking spread separating the highest from lowest was only 4.5 points. SoLa offered the most units for the least amount of money — $47 million — using modular components, which promised the quickest completion date of February 2029. But it also targeted a significantly higher-paid population of tenants. 

Rob Fredericks, executive director of the city’s Housing Authority, whose proposal was ranked third, cautioned that the SoLa plans skewed heavily to tightly packed small rooms with studios as small as 315 square feet and one-bedroom units at 415 square feet. 

“This is density at the expense of dignity,” he wrote in a letter. 

Picking up on Lavagnino’s vetting theme, Fredericks also provided supervisors with links to news articles suggesting SoLa might not be as solid as presented. Whether Fredericks’s concerns are taken seriously or dismissed as sour grapes from a sore loser remains to be seen as well. 

“This is the first step,” Armas cautioned. Negotiations have yet to start in earnest; no deal is signed. 

As for the Probation Department, its new digs at 1019 Garden Street are expected to be move-in ready by the end of the year.