Anonymous
By an edhat reader
There was a neighborhood meeting on Monday night abut a new 33-unit housing complex in Noleta.
It will be located near Fire Station 13 on Hollister Ave and San Antonio Road near the Page Youth Center. It’s supposed to be 16 units for those mental health disorders and the rest for the homeless.
The project is listed as the Hollister Lofts Studio Apartments and will be on a 24,700 square foot lot. There will be a total of 22 parking spaces with 27 studios (326 sf each), 5 one-bedrooms (569 sq each), and 1 two-bedroom (810 sq ft).
The neighborhood meeting was pretty heated but I can’t find any more information on the project. Does anyone have more info?
Hmm, not sure ~600ft away from where hundreds of children are playing outdoors every fall and spring/summer evening and weekend is the best place to put people with mental health disorders.
Just reading “more housing” made my heart sink. If I had one wish right this moment it would be that Noleta/Goleta/Santa Barbara would STOP putting in more housing. Leave the little remaining open space as open space.
Ah yes, the highly literate would conflate the mentally ill and homeless with paedophilia.
2:04 – no one said anything about “pedophilia” – just that mentally ill people don’t usually mix well with hundreds of screaming little league fans….. don’t be so defensive.
Well… as long as it’s Not In My Backyard I say go for it. Why only 33 units? Let’s triple the height and go for a cool 100. In all seriousness though, more of these residences distributed throughout the county (away from downtown and separated from residential neighborhoods) enforcement of strict laws prohibiting camping/sleeping, and one-way bus tickets for the “homeless tourists” is what’s needed. Locals will always protest, but we can’t keep concentrating this type of housing downtown. The rest of the county needs to share the burden. (this coming from someone that lives near many of the homeless shelters downtown).
I think that they should build the community outward the Drive-In was, at the end of Kellogg. There is a lot more room there for housing and also even monitored camping areas for homeless. There is a lot that can be done if they pay for security and management of the property. I think it would satisfy the majority of residents.
Not choosing to be Santa Barbara or Goleta, Noleta chose to become the county’s easiest dumping ground.
This looks similar to the Alisos Street Housing Project that was shot down.
Why not do what we’ve been doing for those with”mental health disorders” for decades – elect them to office in Sacramento.
Who is funding this?
…and the White House.
I am sure it is a Santa Barbara Housing Authority program- They get Card Blanche on ANY project they are associated with- Be damned with neighbors, neighborhood concerns or density issues.
Housing First policy is doomed to fail. Treatment first, then apartment housing.
Why would people protest their property value going up?
2:15 If you’re not talking paedophilia what is the problem with people with mental disorders living near a park frequented by “hundreds of screaming little league fans”? Nothing defensive about this except I don’t understand your point. Please enlighten me.
Hopefully the mentally Ill, so Ill that they need us to house them, do not drive. Not sure the percentage of each sector, but the homeless should have room to park. Although if you can afford a car, gas, and insurance, why am I pitching in for your housing?
If “they pay”? You mean if we pay, right? Wierd “they” don’t have to pay to have extra security and management in my community. (DP) That’s because we’re respectful, hard-working, and care about our neighbors. Not the case with the homeless encampments.
That seems way to reasonable to work.
You.
Several other people seem to get the point, based on the upvotes. In my opinion, aren’t all pedos mentally ill in some form or another to even commit such a heinous act? Think about that and then the “oh yeah, duh” starts to kick in.
22 parking places for 33 units. Where would you park if you wanted to visit a friend there? Will there be off street parking? Is this intentional to force people out of their cars?
12:09: They share the presence of life and humanity. I suspect you think of more material things to share and don’t want to be cheated. I also suspect you think you are regularly cheated by those who have less than you. Such blindness deprives you of much joy and equanimity.
RHS: There is no joy watching vagrants take over our city. There is joy watching them leave. There is even greater joy when they take advantage of what is already offered, and get off the streets on their own right now. We are sharing plenty. Now it is their turn to give back.
RHS: do you care to identify the locations the vast network of subsidized housing this community already supplies? SBHA website has a map.
LUVADUCK, state legislators finally started pilot programs in SF, LA and San Diego to lower barriers for the public guardian’s office placement of mentally-impaired street people into care institutions. All appropriate due process will be observed, but no longer will the very strict Lanternmann-Perris standards need to be met, which were virtually impossible when it came to taking the mentally-impaired population off the streets. We need to monitor this trial program and then expand it to all communities, so we too can take advantage of the billions of dollars voters already raised to spend specifically for the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA). No one yet has accounted for the billions of dollars the MHSA had already raised over this past decade. Our local state legislators (Limon-Jackson) need to be far more pro-active about this issue. Yet have remained curiously silent. Good campaign issue to raise with the current state assembly candidates – what happened to the billions of MHSA dollars that were intended to get mentally-impaired persons off the streets. How do you intend to spend the next billions of dollars raised by this “tax the rich” MHSA voter proposition.
7:41: Misusing the billions of dollars the MHSA has already raised for those with mental impairments now living on the streets is sad. Redirect your compassion to making the MHSA accountable. Why did you let our local representatives Jackson and Limon waste this specifically dedicated money?
People in cities often live in very small apartments. I’d choose one of these apartments on a busy street over a bush by the freeway.
I’m sure the people of Lake County are overjoyed at your suggestion. Please ask them and get back to us with their reply.
Someone I know attended a presentation on housing. The group had developed an apartment complex with limited parking and offered them to seniors and homeless. Neither group was enthused because of the lack of parking. Both wanted to keep the cars that they had. Until something changes, these approaches to providing housing will not work very well.
PITMIX, let me explain how the market economy works. Willing seller meets willing buyer. People looking for lower cost shelter will find it in very affordable Lake County. This is not dumping anything on anybody; so permission is not needed or feedback requested. Simply offering a free market option that better matches someone’s limited resources, compared to finding housing here. Isn’t that the goal, what is called a win-win. Lake County is full of low cost housing and open land opportunities allowing far more freestyle living, than one finds locally. Take a look. Lake County remains a hidden California sleeper when it comes to low-cost housing and a low-regulation lifestyle.
Treatment of those living on the streets is bound to fail; treatment for those housed has a good chance of working. …If you were living on the streets, would you be taking your meds?
Would that apply to all those, homeowners, apartment dwellers who live near schools? Some of them probably have “mental disorders”.
I suppose they are counting on the new tenants being poor enough that they can’t afford cars. Grace Village Apartments has a “no vehicle” restriction for their tenants. (I wonder how that’s working.) Maybe this place could do that.
People have complained about the homeless situation and now there is the start to solving
the problem, and yet people complain about that. The lack of compassion and empathy is very sad.
The lack of initiative by those who refuse treatment and persist in remaining “homeless”, at our continued, expense, is what is sad. Coddling this element, while calling this “compassion” has proven counter-productive. Time for this persistent and service-resistant element to get their own lives together. The resources are already in place. Society has reached out, above and beyond. Next step is to get their own lives together, or get gone.
This does not solve the homeless problem. It will get a few people off the street, but it will only invite other homeless people from other cities. Word will get out, as it always does, and these out-of-towners will continue to flock to Santa Barbara because they know they will get free handouts and free housing.
*free or cheap housing
7:12 – No, this is different. Having a few people living sporadically near schools with disorders is not the same. 1) This is a concentration of people with mental disorders in ONE location that is within 600 feet of basically a giant playground, and 2) given that they’re living on their own or with family in a home or apartment indicates they are being treated and have things under control to some degree. Simple logic here….
Why is it so predictable that whenever something is being done for “the least of us” people who claim to be caring and religious find so many rude ways, so many lies to protest the act? Are we not self-aware at all? People, we need to share and care for each other.
Hopefully the overall response will be positive. This place can get people out of the bushes and into a place where they can keep clean and have a chance at self-sufficiency. And it’s near a bus stop and community facilities – jail, fire station, and church.
RHS – It is entirely possible to be supportive of housing the mentally ill and homeless, while at the same time disagreeing upon the location that is being chosen to do so. We don’t need to just blindly swallow and allow any location just because it’s the “caring” thing to do.
10:28 a.m. I agree with your possibility but in fact I have never seen a person write into this sort of discussion and who didn’t disagree with a location in their own neighborhood. This is the truth of sarcastic NIMBY label. If not my neighborhood then whose neighborhood? We all should share. (And FYI there are at least two half-way house/residential treatment homes in my own neighborhood–they are fine with me.)
How cool is this project? Shoebox living like a hamster, Target & Costco nearby and the best yet, TONS of traffic & LOTS of people. How can a person go wrong here?
This street population can get out of the bushes and into clean housing in number of much lower costs areas in this state. Lake County is a perfect example of low cost living, open spaces and far fewer regulations. Only a few hours north from here. Check out Zillow for Lake County, California. There are long lists of highly affordable housing options in Lake County, even for someone on SSI. We don’t have a housing crisis in this state; we have a misallocation of already existing housing in this state. However, one cannot have champagne dreams on a beer budget. That is the only “housing” problem.
What do street people share back with us that makes “sharing” a mutually and appealing argument? What is the upper limit to what we already are providing? Until you can answer that, any attempt to scold only, goes nowhere. Homeless Inc is already huge multimillion operation in this area. That is sharing enough. Why are you asking for even more. Why isn’t what we have been doing for decades not working. Why has this problem only grown, and not been mitgated. There is no argument to “do more” when what we have already done has failed so badly.