UCSB Housing Crisis Needs a New Policy

Santa Barbara’s appeal is obvious for anyone, let alone for the thousands of students and residents here seeking high-quality education and a laid-back beachy lifestyle. But the picturesque lifestyle Santa Barbara is known for is increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible due to another of the realities the South Coast is known for — the crushing housing crisis. Increasing enrollment and stagnant housing opportunities have caused many students to turn to off-campus housing where they face exorbitant prices for overcrowded and poorly managed units. Even worse, some students are forced to live in cars or campers. This has made UC Santa Barbara’s failure to address the housing crisis globally infamous.

While UCSB bears much of the responsibility for not increasing the housing supply for new students, that does not let surrounding cities off the hook. Santa Barbara, Goleta, and other cities on the South Coast must also address their part in solving the local housing shortage. One state bill, Senate Bill 423 by Senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco, will help them do just that.

About 61 percent of UCSB students live off campus, many of them spread across Isla Vista, Goleta, and Santa Barbara. Students help boost the local economy and create stronger, more diverse communities, but due to decades of predominantly single-family, exclusionary zoning, students increasingly find themselves competing with neighbors for housing. Or they are priced out entirely. Community opposition to denser housing has made it difficult for builders to overcome the increased cost of building near the coast in order to build more affordable, multifamily housing that is often a good fit for students.