City Council Votes to Build Housing Downtown
Increasingly Vacant State Street Will House Renters, Attract Shoppers
The City of Santa Barbara has gone to great lengths to save its downtown from becoming a ghost town. After years of trial and error, the City Council killed two birds with one stone Thursday.
The Council unanimously voted to allow more rental units in the heart of the Central Business District, a move that will both chip away at the housing crisis and simultaneously help revitalize the dying downtown businesses.
The vote was one of several conceptual votes the Council took at its joint meeting with the Planning Commission on proposed amendments to the city’s experimental rental housing program. The votes came after the Planning Commission spent over 10 hours preparing the whopping 22 recommended changes, detailed here.
