It unfortunately seems to be the perennial struggle in the City of Santa Barbara: a desire to preserve our cherished community character, quality of life, and the general beauty of our town while agonizing over the relative expense of housing.
In 2011, the drumbeat of “Housing, Housing, Housing” became so loud that the City of Santa Barbara adopted a General Plan that instituted something called AUD (Average Unit-size Density) with the goal of incentivizing workforce housing. The plan in some instances allowed developers to build projects with significantly increased density, reduced off-street parking requirements, exemptions from planning review, and other inducements.
The AUD plan — beyond the hype of “denser” and therefore presumably “affordable by design” housing — basically allowed developers to develop, and they did. The city received applications for over 1,200 units, which are now either completed, in the planning review process, or under construction. Despite the original AUD selling point that the program would be evaluated once 250 units were completed and occupied, the way development entitlement rights work in California, it is assured that these 1,200 units could be constructed no matter what — the only question is how quickly developers can build them.