NO HOME LIKE NO PLACE: While sitting in Santa Barbara's City Council chambers last week, a song from the distant past crowbarred its way into my brain: “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” Naturally, the issue then before the council was housing. Boy Wunderkind developer and spokesperson for millennial hipster creatives Neil Dipaola had the mic and was throwing down with a vengeance. On the table was a policy aphrodisiac designed to stimulate private developers to build rental units by bribing them with massive density increases and big breaks on parking requirements.
The program, still in its gestation period, appears to be succeeding far beyond expectation. Some councilmembers worried the excess of success might generate collateral parking problems on city streets. Not normally so outspoken, Dipaola dissed such parking concerns as “Old White People Problems.” He equated them to having so much space in one’s backyard that it was impossible to figure out where exactly to build one’s new swimming pool. Those harboring such fears, he concluded, were the same kinds of people who fret about putting the wrong octane of gas into their BMW. It was great theater, but for Dipaolo — hitherto regarded around City Hall as a suave and savvy visionary type — it was probably bad politics. A whole lot of air got sucked through a lot of city councilmembers’ teeth.
Dipaolo is currently trying to build about three times as many rental units in the Funk Zone as city planners say can be accommodated under existing zoning. It’s going to be a dog fight. As a cudgel, Dipaola is wielding a state law he says allows far more density than city rules and regulations tolerate. And the state law, he claims, trumps such local, parochial concerns. As a general rule, City Hall hates getting muscled. And especially so by the State of California.