Jerry Roberts
By Jerry Roberts of Newsmakers
Six-story buildings inevitably will come to dominate Santa Barbara’s iconic skyline, City Council member Oscar Gutierrez said Wednesday, because “stylistic choices” must give way to the “need of the people” for more housing.
The combination of homelessness, a shortage of “affordable housing” and political pressure from state government will require more density and construction of taller buildings that are all but certain to change “the feel and the atmosphere” of the city, Gutierrez said in an interview with Newsmakers.
The comments come as City Hall is studying a controversial new design scheme, known as “Floor Area Ratio” (FAR), to spur production of rental housing, in which building size would replace the number of units as the key criteria in approval of multi-unit developments. Among other changes, critics say, such a change could open the door for a spate of higher buildings that conflict with Santa Barbara’s painstakingly curated architectural aesthetic.
“Unfortunately, I feel like that’s going to be inevitable, I think it’s just going to happen over the years,” Gutierrez said. “I think that the need of the people (is) going to outweigh, you know, stylistic choices.
“Obviously, we have a homeless crisis, we have a housing crisis and we’re going to have to build homes for these people and I’ve been pro-housing since the start,” he added.
Gutierrez cited the growing push from Sacramento to quash local control over zoning, density and design issues in communities around the state, which housing advocates argue have been crucial in creating a shortage of units, as a critical factor.
Several weeks ago, the council agreed to hire a consultant to study options for affordable housing locations before reaching a decision on the FAR proposal, a move in which Gutierrez played a key role.
“We can only slow it down, but we can’t stop it, so people need to kind of realize that,” he said. “I grew up here, and the one thing I appreciate whenever I come home is the skyline, you know, is how I can see the mountains, I can see the hills.
“It will change the feel and the atmosphere having taller buildings, but again, I understand the purpose and the need for it,” he added. “And know that eventually it’s just going to happen…I just know the legislation from the state and the federal government is going to come down on us even more as time passes, and we’re going to have to give up more and more to be able to abide by it.”
In the interview, the last of our series of conversations with all seven members of council, Gutierrez also discussed his:
- support for new traffic initiatives encouraging more bicycle ridership;
- view that the State Street closure to traffic should be expanded by at least one block;
- advocacy of Mayor Cathy Murillo’s re-election;
- sponsorship of a proposal to require grocery store owners to pay their employees more for working during the pandemic;
- recovery from Covid and his take on the debate over equity of the vaccine roll-out;
Plus: the latest NFL good fortune of his former San Marcos High School football teammate Alex Mack, among other issues.
Watch our conversation with Oscar Gutierrez via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here.
@9:30. In my opinion the city is already destroyed. And with the voting base in this state, I don’t see it changing any time soon.
“need of the people”. I doubt it. More like the need of more property taxes for the overpaid government employees and such.
Dumpster fire.
Oscar is a smart guy. He cares about over population and he is going to do something about. He going to increase density and over population. All the developers get rich, and when the next pandemic hits, it will kill us all off.
Over population problem solved!
Thanks for the insight ITMIX “In the Basque Country, people have accepted living in apartments in urban areas in return for keeping their countryside mostly undeveloped”
Your almost quoting from the U.N.’s agenda 21 and 30 handbook. Stack and pack urban centers with restricted access to open space.
RHS, very well said. I personally do not like Oscar and feel he has no place in the city council. he is judgmental, rude and brash, has no decent etiquette on how to speak to people and resorts to tantrums and yelling. He and several others on the council are an embarrassment to the city and have done way more damage than good. These people are ruining our city. Fact.
oscar’s constituents are a very few and reside on the deep east side, not downtown where he wants tall buildings. Perhaps the council member that has constituents in this district should have more of a voice than that bag of hot air/gutierrez
ZEROHAWK, I, too, have had discourse with Oscar and found his behavior exactly as you describe with the additional quality of being a bully and threatening retaliation for dissidents to his plans.
And I, too, have had recent conversation with this supposed representative of the people and found him to be an in-your-face kind of a bully. I had asked for Council help and he blew me off. I won’t be back.
If this is the view of a local council member one wonders why he even bothers to serve as part of city democracy. Local resistance to pandering state politicians should occur as a necessary quality of life issue. We cannot just pave more, build more, consume more, pollute more, congest more. This is Earth Day. We need to protect the environment from consumption freaks and people who can’t understand that there are already too many people. I will never again vote for this man.
This councilmember is of the “Scott Weiner” party. The latter, a California state rep from San Francisco who advocates adding increased density to middle class neighbors and squeezing people into every nook and cranny, came to SB a few years advocating to planning staffs locally how we should look forward to downtown looking like Barcelona. Stacked multi generational housing in Spain resonates to the local few who own downtown who want the 6 stories without worrying about the necessary infrastructure. This is just a ploy to take buildings that are now unrentable and balloon them in the hope that it values will be enhanced enough to unload on an out of town investor. And where’s the water, sewer systems, roads and parking for this megalopolis? Vote Gutierrez and Murillo OUT before they destroy the City.
That could be said of literally any place on earth.
Unfortunately we are stuck with Oscar Gutierrez, Mike Jordan & Alejandra Gutierrez until December 2024.
We can change some things shortly as Cathy Murillo (Mayor if some of you don’t know who she is), Kristen Sneddon, Eric Friedman & Meghan Harmon’s terms end December 2021.
Along with all the other handouts I’m afraid we are creating a generation who will become dependent on the government and not want to work. Who wouldn’t want to have a cheep or free place to live while most of the town struggles to make it, my son said to me the other day why do I have to work my friends just hang out and get free things. We must think this out responsibility.
Start with overpopulation, what are we going to do about that? All of these other problems stem from that. He is brave for stating the reality, unless you know that local pushback can overturn state programs? Do you have any examples of where this has happened?
People who just hang out and get free things are by and large the uber rich and those that inherited their wealth. There are many generations of people living this way and contributing nothing of their own. So if your son’s friends have that going so be it. But the poor do not live such fine lives. Sleeping in the rough or in cars, getting showers at a transitionary trailer, finding food in public places with lines and crowds, no medical care, no dental care, no retirement, ad nauseum. Give these tropes a rest.
Housing will never be cheap in SB unless non-profits use their money to create it. Building homes and apartments commercially results in very expensive units- that is the cost of the land, materials, and labor these days. So no one has to worry about people getting handouts and becoming a welfare state.
In the Basque Country, people have accepted living in apartments in urban areas in return for keeping their countryside mostly undeveloped. That is the future unless we choose the alternate path of developing the Goleta and Gaviota Coast with single family homes.
It must be hard for people who hold onto the Judaeo-christian fallacy that the earth is theirs for the taking and that their continued abuse of its finite and balanced resources to satisfy their own selfish desires is a detriment to their God they claim to honor. The fact that the Earth and all of its life are God’s gift to us humans seems lost on those people who follow the ill guided teachings of charlatans. No Oscar, you do not have a RIGHT to destroy what is not yours any more than you have a right to propagate unchecked. Perhaps if you recognized that your purpose on Earth is to foster all life, not destroy it for your own desires. Oscar represents this fallacy perfectly. He and many others not only believe that they have a right to take from you and the rest of God’s creations in order to promote their own selfish desires, but that their desires outweigh all other life on earth… Stop having babies. Stop forcing others to care for your choices and your failures. Be a good human and tend to the most vital gift we have as humans. Mother Nature… We dont need more buildings, we need less people, better people. On this day we should all stop and remember that the earth is not gifted to us by our forefathers, we are borrowing it from future generations. It is simply not ours to destroy.
The housing wealth of NIMBYs is rapidly increasing based on housing scarcity. In other words all of the homeowners who complain about increasing supply in the only safe and efficient neighborhoods available (not dispersed in the wildland interface) benefit economically by using zoning to deny affordable housing to the essential workers that provide the necessary services that those same homeowners require. The more NIMBYs restrict development the more they watch the value of their homes increase on Zillow while more working people are forced to live in their vehicles.
Your wealth may in part be due to more and more working families forced into homelessness. Building up and infilling is a rational response to housing policies that in effect throw people away like they are trash.
With all due respect, if you think we can build our way out of a housing shortage I suggest you go to Manhattan. Skyscrapers do not solve problems. They make problems worse. If you promise to resign and move out of town I will buy you a ticket.
The high density apartments worked so well in San Francisco. That City is a wasteland and residents can’t flee SF fast enough. Who is this Oscar guy? Let’s get rid of him.
Pitmix, we live in a democracy. People can and should ‘push back’ and create a better place. It appears that some folks, mostly real estate investors I think, support politicians that cater to this sort of argument. Taking our own town as an example, Santa Barbara would have gone the way of Ventura and most of Orange County if people here had not resisted the push to tract homes. They did this by using whatever strategy legally available. Stopping the water connections was a good tactic. The fact that pro-growth politicians are currently in ascendance in Sacto does not mean they will always be and if we let them just push for more housing forever we will not be able to undo the damage later. We need to resist, not submit weakly.
1619112519 Actually my sons friends he’s speaking about are not from rich family’s rather from low income family’s they smoke weed and hang out get free medical food and very very low housing kids get free phones and iPads what would be the indenture to better yourself
You can not just turn those buildings into housing. They would need to be demolished and built anew to meet current codes. Not to mention, who would want to live in an apartment with no windows in the middle of these large buildings?
Perhaps Oscar motivation is his own situation, as he lives with his girlfriend and his mother in his mother’s home. Maybe he wants a low cost place for himself.
VOR, you are right that the department stores won’t easily be converted to housing. Where does Oscar think we are going to put the six-story buildings? On current open space and parking lots? Or will smaller buildings be demolished? Why not first demolish the big ones that nobody is using? More importantly, none of it will be affordable unless it is subsidized. How much should local taxpayers contribute to subsidized housing? How will increased taxes affect the people who are already housed but not rich? Has the city council figured any of this out? Surely they don’t think that we will get enough cheaper housing simply by building more units at cost. Hasn’t worked here yet, won’t work going forward. Unless the land purchase and construction is subsidized.
Every issue is linked to others. The overriding issue right now is how we are going to address climate change. If we don’t fix that, housing density will become irrelevant. And it is not clear to me that that we can fix it if the goal of the whole world is to have a US lifestyle with single family homes, SUVs, and jet vacations. Address over-population, put jobs near housing, and develop green housing as much as possible. That way my nephews and nieces might have a future to look forward to.
Hi Liberty,
I’d be glad to introduce myself to you. It seems as most of the people on this site has fallen for Jerrys misleading clickbait headlines without actually watching the interview or seeing how I’ve voted on this issue. I voted against going higher than 3 stories in the downtown area. Jerry even started the conversation by addressing that. Feel free to reach out to me if you like to discuss this further. ogutierrez@santabarbaraca.gov
It seems as most of the people on this site have fallen for Jerrys misleading clickbait headlines without actually watching the interview or seeing how I’ve voted on this issue in the past. I voted against going higher than 3 stories in the downtown area. Jerry even started the conversation by addressing that. Feel free to reach out to me if you like to discuss this further. ogutierrez@santabarbaraca.gov
LOL! I represent the WESTSIDE ZEROHAWK. Meagan represents the downtown area and she wanted to vote for more than 3 stories. It seems as most of the people on this site have fallen for Jerrys misleading clickbait headlines without actually watching the interview or seeing how I’ve voted on this issue in the past. I voted against going higher than 3 stories in the downtown area. Jerry even started the conversation by addressing that. Feel free to reach out to me if you like to discuss this further. ogutierrez@santabarbaraca.gov
Nice try Oscar. The extensive quotes in the body of the piece are yours, and it is a fair and accurate summation of your comments.
It’s sad that someone who ran for office as a “journalist” now resorts to attacking the media rather than taking responsibility for his own comments.
Nice try Oscar. Your words, your responsibility. Sad to see someone who used to present himself as a “journalist” now attacking reporters. Congratulations, you’ve finally made it as a politician.
By degrading the city the demand for housing will diminish. That is the city council’s plan.
Please continue to vote for them if that is your plan also.
Achoo, you are right. Here’s the thinking process at the Democratic Central Committee:
1. Housing is good. If you build more, prices will come down and we can afford it. Don’t worry about affordable – excess market rate housing will drive down the price so that housing eventually becomes affordable.
2. If we spur housing creation, and sign Project Labor Agreements that mandate union building jobs, the construction workers will earn more, while we get more housing. This is good. Since unions own most of the City Council, the PLA wasn’t hard to get in return for all those campaign contributions.
3. Real estate speculation and developers and investors out-pricing families? Keeping prices way high, even with more density? Um, so we must need to follow step 1 and 2 again, maybe double-down on it, until the trickle-down effect finally kicks in and we can all afford housing.
4. Keep electing people that support these policies. Walk for them, write them checks. Eventually it’s going to work! We’ll all get cheaper housing!
That’s the plan the DCC is working off of, and that’s why Santa Paula Pipefitters and LA electrical workers write checks to Cathy, Oscar, Meagan, etc.
Really? The newcomers want housing? How many homeless immigrants have you seen? I’ll give you a hint, 0. People who come here from other countries seem to be able to work it out. They are not the problem.