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The Coastal Housing Coalition (CHC) recently co-signed a letter
with a number of Santa Barbara based organizations (dated June 23,
2010) expressing (1) our collective concern over the Santa Barbara
County Association of Government’s (SBCAG) initial calculations of
possible strategies and potential emissions reductions as required
by SB375, and (2) our collective hope that the California Air
Resources Board would set an appropriate “ambitious yet achievable”
greenhouse gas reduction target for Santa Barbara County. 
 
On behalf of CHC’s Board of Directors, I wanted to elaborate
briefly on the Coastal Housing Coalition’s specific concerns. 
According to the National Association of Home Builders, Santa
Barbara County is the fifth least affordable small metropolitan
area housing market in the nation.  The Coastal Housing Coalition
is a non-profit organization that represents thousands of workers
(and the organizations who employ them) on the South Coast of Santa
Barbara County who, because of the high cost of housing in our
area, struggle to find adequate, affordable housing for themselves
and their families.  Even with the recent widespread decline in
home prices, the vast majority of South Coast workers can’t afford
the median priced home; at the end of 2009, a family making the
median income could afford a home priced at $430,000, yet the
median home price on the South Coast was nearly $700,000. The
consequence is that now fully one third of our local workforce –
30,000 people - commutes an average of 90 miles daily.  
 
The jobs-housing imbalance impacts our community’s economy,
environment and civic life. In a recent study by the Santa Barbara
County Workforce Investment Board (Sept 2009), over 65% of county
employers listed issues related to housing, in terms of both
retaining and recruiting employees, as their top workforce
challenge.  In our most recent survey of local employees, 44% of
commuters said that they had to forgo serving on a non-profit board
or committee and 40% said they weren’t able to participate in their
children’s activities.  And we know that the growing number of
commuters is increasing our community’s carbon footprint.
 
The lack of adequate and affordable housing for our area’s
workforce is a regional problem that demands a regional solution;
it can’t be solved by each jurisdiction working independently when
so many county residents work and live in different communities.   
We hope that CARB will help provide a framework for SBCAG to
address these critical issues on a regional basis by issuing an
appropriate target, and allow our communities to come together and
plan for our County’s future.