Housing crisis spurs Santa Barbara County to build new housing on county land

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.—Santa Barbara County Supervisor Laura Capps’ Office says roughly one third of county employees commute dozens of miles just to get to work in the morning.
 
And that has some negative ripple effects not just for worker retention and the environment, but also the economy and private-industry workers.
 
Laura Capps is excited to see the County Probation building in downtown Santa Barbara fully transform into affordable workforce housing available to everyone.
 
“It's an experiment. I believe it's going to go really well. We just put out a request for proposals to help us develop this so that this will be about 60, 70 units,” said Capps.
 
From one story buildings to partially-vacant parking lots, Capps is starting a new initiative to collaborate with developers to turn parcels of county-owned land into housing.
 
"I mean, someone who lived here and worked at the county or worked at a public school, they could walk to restaurants, they could walk to their doctor's appointments.” said Capps.
 
The county has identified 21 parcels of land that could be viable starting points for housing development, including sites in Santa Maria and the County Administration building in Santa Barbara.
  
Community Services Department Director Jesús Armas says the Administration building would be an even bigger project than the Probation building
 
“We potentially could see somewhere in the in the range of 100 units here. And being able to leverage a county facility or a county asset to produce housing that's desperately needed. Pretty impressive step for a public agency,” said Armas.
  
Supervisor Capps says once the County Probation building housing project gets off the ground it’s likely that future developments like the County Admin building will gain more traction.