Santa Barbara County Asks for Input on Housing and Environmental Justice

Source: County of Santa Barbara

We need your input on Housing & Environmental Justice: Complete Survey in English or Spanish by June 15

The County is preparing its first-ever Environmental Justice Element (EJE) and is also updating its Housing Element. Both elements are part of the Santa Barbara County Comprehensive Plan. The Housing Element will contain policies and programs to increase housing development within unincorporated areas of the county. It will also plan for housing for everyone in our county, including seniors, families, and workers. Accordingly, the Housing Element will allow all types of housing, including houses, apartments, and farm labor housing.

EJ means that people of all races, cultures, and incomes are treated with equity in government laws and programs. In other words, EJ affirms that everyone has the right to a healthy environment, equitable access to decision-making processes, and protection from environmental and health hazards. The EJE will identify the needs within EJ communities and contain new policies or update existing policies to prioritize the needs of the EJ communities.

The County is surveying residents to better understand their housing needs and to identify EJ issues such as pollution and other health risks. The County will use the survey results to help determine where new housing should go, what types of new housing are needed, and what EJ issues communities are facing throughout the county.

Please complete the survey in English or Spanish by June 15th. If you’d like additional information on either project or to sign up for future project notifications, please visit the links below.

Housing Element Update information: http://countyofsb.org/plndev/projects/Housing-Element-Update.sbc 

EJE information: http://countyofsb.org/plndev/projects/Environmental_Justice_Element.sbc

To sign up for project notifications: https://signup.e2ma.net/signup/1883430/1753150/

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6 Comments

  1. …and these days it’s apparently not politically correct to tell someone who can’t afford to live here that they would have a better quality of life if they moved to somewhere more affordable. We could turn the South Coast into Miami Beach, packing and stacking, and people would still want to live here. The idea that we can provide housing “to everyone in our Community” is a farce.

  2. Inequality is a major problem in california. Here is an interesting analysis of how income inequality has been getting much worse in recent years.
    https://calbudgetcenter.org/app/uploads/The-Growth-of-Top-Incomes-Across-California-02172016.pdf
    And here is an interesting article from the chronicle comparing california to texas. The differences are surprising, particularly in educational outcomes and in new housing construction.
    https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/As-more-Californians-head-to-Texas-how-do-the-16485798.php?sid=53ba58dfa256ab2532000130&%20

  3. Once again, whomever drafts these questionnaires needs a class in clear communication. A few of t he questions are so badly worded as to make the answers they produce worthless. But the people who evaluate these things probably already have the answers in their own minds so it probably doesn’t matter anyway.

  4. I read that there is a housing shortage which is described as some kind of emergency. This may be a really dumb question, but did the population go up considerably in the last couple of years? ( I understand that the great repositioning of the population impacts many areas, but I keep reading that everywhere there is a housing shortage)

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