There are misconceptions about the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara.

If you ask anyone in the community what they think the HACSB does, it would be that they provide a valuable service to the community, which is indeed true.

But here are some little-known recognized truths …

1. The HACSB assists more people in Santa Barbara, per capita, than any other city in California, by owning/managing more than 1,400 units and administering more than 3,000 Section 8 vouchers.
2. Property taxes pay for schools, safety, streets, sanitation and other essential services, but the HACSB is a nonprofit organization and therefore does NOT contribute to property taxes. Other nonprofit housing providers are exempt as well. Corporate and private rental property providers DO pay property taxes, therefore contributing to our city’s needs.
3. The Housing Authority also has the dubious distinction of having the highest number of evictions but uses the defense that it is the “largest” landlord in the city. Unfairly, other rental property providers are targeted and demonized for performing fewer evictions while the HACSB is held in the highest regard.
4. The HACSB also has done renovations, aka “renovictions,” as evidenced with the recent Sycamore Gardens project, but only other private providers are negatively targeted.
5. There are very long waitlists, taking years, prioritized in order of seniors, veterans, people with disabilities, and families with low incomes. What isn’t well known is that single, working people who are NOT in these groups, struggling to make it, will be at the bottom of the list. In the meantime, if anyone in these upper, preferred categories apply, others below wait longer.
6. There is little incentive for these individuals and families to move on from the program once they’ve secured a voucher. Individuals who do not work may qualify for housing choice vouchers if their income falls below a certain threshold, and if they return to work, they can lose their voucher.
7. The program’s “portability” feature, which allows recipients to use their vouchers to move from one jurisdiction to another, is a bureaucratic nightmare and next to impossible.
8. The cry from tenant groups is, “The rents are too damn high!” The HACSB owns property it rents, HACSB is tax-exempt and also exempt from rent control, and it continues to increase rents beyond California state rent control limits, despite having fixed finance that is subsidized by taxpayers.
   The 2024 HACSB rates for housing units:
   Studio $2,550
   One bedroom $2,900
   Two bedrooms $3,290
   Three bedrooms $4,395
   Four bedrooms $4,980
   The Housing Authority will argue that these rates are needed to enable voucher subsidies to catch up to typical market rents and help ensure that participants with vouchers can successfully rent homes. The reality is the HACSB is driving up rents being the largest rental property provider in the city, not just other providers.
9. Waitlist priority means that hardworking individuals (think our local teachers, police officers, nurses, firefighters and other essential city workers) who may not earn enough to cover their housing costs are left without support. There are only 250 units of workforce housing offered by the HACSB, and most of the previously listed workers will not qualify.
10. The prevailing thought is that the Housing Authority can build affordable housing for less than the private sector, yet that’s not always true. Can anyone name a federal project that has been built for less than the private sector?

While it would be wonderful to assist every veteran, senior, disabled person and low-income families, what we need is more missing-middle workforce housing, and for the most part, the Housing Authority cannot do this.

We should be doing more to encourage other options to satisfy this need. Everyone admits the permitting process to add more housing is too onerous, takes too long, and is too expensive, but instead of city officials trying very proactively to effect change with that process, they seem to deflect and continue to look to the supposed “savior” of the Housing Authority.

We need to demand change within the City of Santa Barbara to help create more missing-middle workforce housing, by addressing the permitting obstacles that prevent more smart development.