County of Santa Barbara adopts Housing Element Update on Tuesday
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. – The County of Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors adopted the Housing Element Update 2023-2031 during their meeting on Tuesday.
While the County Board of Supervisors accepted the analysis, policies, and programs within the plan, the issue of rezoning certain spaces within the County was not part of Tuesday's deliberations.
Those new zoning sites in unincorporated parts of Santa Barbara County are scheduled for consideration in early 2024 after the release of a draft of a Program Environmental Impact Report detail the County of Santa Barbara.
Two public hearings are expected to be part of the evaluation process for rezoning sites in the County, one each for the northern and southern regions explain the County of Santa Barbara.
Now, the State Housing and Community Development Department (HCD) will review the recently authorized Housing Element Plan. The County received notice from the HCD that the draft version was already in substantial compliance in October of this year.
This cycle, HCD required the County of Santa Barbara to identify sites to accommodate 5,564 new housing units in unincorporated regions between 2023 and 2031, an eight-fold increase from last cycle.
The Regional Housing Needs Allocation further broke down the requirements for this cycle by designating that 4,142 new units need to be in the Southern portion of the County and an additional 1,522 units for the Northern parts of the County in an attempt to address the existing jobs-housing imbalance in the County.
“This Housing Element cycle was more complex than any previous cycle with hundreds of pages of requirements and instruction. I am very proud of the job our team did producing a document that the State found in substantial compliance very quickly, and that identified more sites than required so the Board of Supervisors will have a range of options to choose from at hearings next year on the rezones,” explained Santa Barbara County Planning and Development Director Lisa Plowman.
The Housing Element, including all revisions, can be tracked here and the County of Santa Barbara has this interactive map of potential housing sites available before next year's deliberations.
