Santa Barbara County has never lacked compassion. What it has lacked, like so many communities across California, is enough housing built fast enough to meet the urgency of homelessness on our streets today.
That is why the recent Homekey award for Santa Barbara’s new Balay Ko Family Village is so significant. It’s not just another housing announcement. It’s proof that this county is doing something rare in California: matching urgency with execution.
For several years, Santa Barbara County and DignityMoves have pursued a clear goal: functional zero unsheltered homelessness. The idea is simple. Homelessness does not decline because people wish for it to. It declines when communities create enough places for people to come indoors, connect to services, and stabilize. In January 2023, the county took a bold stand that functional zero unsheltered was not aspirational, it was in fact achievable. It formally launched a countywide initiative to close the interim housing gap to make unsheltered homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring.
That effort did not begin as a formal initiative. It began when a few local leaders decided Santa Barbara did not have to accept the status quo. In 2021, DignityMoves joined forces with the County Board of Supervisors, then Assistant County Executive Terri Maus-Nisich, and Good Samaritan CEO Sylvia Barnard around a practical compact: If the county could provide land and move with urgency, DignityMoves would help raise the capital to build housing quickly, and Good Samaritan would provide the supportive services people needed to regain stability. That partnership between public leadership, nonprofit execution, and private philanthropy became the engine behind the county’s push to reach functional zero unsheltered.
The first site captured that spirit. County leaders identified an underused county-owned parking lot on Santa Barbara Street in downtown — long slated for low-income housing but stalled in approvals. Rather than let public land sit idle while people slept unsheltered nearby, the county and DignityMoves converted it into interim supportive housing. Gensler designed it with trauma-informed features, county staff moved it through permitting at unusual speed, and construction took only four months.
That first community did more than house people. It changed the local debate. By prioritizing those sleeping in the immediate area, the site produced visible improvements for both residents and neighbors. People came indoors. Businesses saw surrounding streets improve. Residents got help securing identification, accessing treatment, finding jobs, and moving toward permanent housing. Santa Barbara learned something essential: When communities act with focus and urgency, progress is not abstract. It is visible.
That success led to a bigger vision. Instead of tackling homelessness one project at a time, Santa Barbara County launched DignityNOW — a countywide strategy that has already produced the downtown Santa Barbara site, Hope Village in Santa Maria, and La Posada with a total of 210 units serving over 600 residents. Balay Ko Family Village is the next step.
Families must be part of the solution, especially given that Santa Barbara County currently has the second-highest rate of child poverty in the state, just behind Los Angeles. No county can claim functional zero unsheltered while parents and children are still cycling through cars, motel rooms, overcrowded homes, or unsafe places to sleep. Family homelessness is less visible than street homelessness, but its consequences are profound and long-lasting.
Balay Ko Family Village will bring 30 new homes for families, including one-bedroom and two-bedroom units designed specifically for parents and children, along with community space, laundry, administrative offices, parking, and a shared courtyard. Balay Ko means “my home,” honoring the philanthropic support of the Balay Ko Foundation — and reflecting what this village is actually meant to provide: not just shelter, but a real chance at home.
This will be the fourth DignityMoves site in Santa Barbara County’s drive to end unsheltered homelessness county-wide, and with nine units set aside for veterans with families we will be closer than ever to achieving functional zero for veterans in all of Santa Barbara County.
And in North County, we are closing in on functional zero unsheltered for transition-age youth.
Functional zero unsheltered is not a ribbon cutting. It is a sustained condition where a community has enough housing capacity to respond to homelessness in real time. Balay Ko Family Village brings Santa Barbara meaningfully closer to that threshold and offers a model other California communities can follow.
This county set a bold goal. It built momentum site by site. And now it shows that the work will continue until every kind of household is included.
