Faced with the high cost of ensuring that subsidized homeowners follow the law, the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday agreed to get out of the real estate business - at least for families that make less than $50,000 per year.  Photo: Santa Barbara County The change is one of several recommendations from a citizen panel supervisors created as part of a broader push to reform the troubled Housing and Community Development Department, which oversees about 463 reduced-price homes in the unincorporated area. Last year Auditor-Controller Bob Geis found that more than 25 percent of the subsidized homeowners violated one or more occupancy restrictions, including rules against owning additional properties and renting out units to third parties. On Tuesday, officials accepted the panel’s recommendations and instructed staff to begin implementing them. While they expressed concern about creating additional for-sale homes in the future, supervisors said they would continue the so-called inclusionary housing program for families that make between $50,000 and $130,000. Deputy county executive Ron Cortez, who presented the report from the Affordable Housing Policy Committee, told officials that it costs $188,000 to monitor the existing housing stock, versus $22,000 for the county’s 1,179 low-income rentals. Under current practices, builders must designate a portion of new homes for low-income residents, and eat the cost of selling those homes at a reduced price. These subsidized properties, which the county oversees, typically sit alongside market rate homes in the same development. For a three-bedroom home on the South Coast, a subsidized home would cost $126,963 for families making less than $30,000 per year; $217,629 for those making less than $50,000; $277,164 for those making less than $80,000; and, $436,124 for those making less than $130,000. Instead of building affordable homes, the county also allows builders to pay “in-lieu” fees if they choose not to produce affordable homes within their developments. As part of the report, panelists on the county’s Affordable Housing Policy Committee also urged the county to accept alternate payments, such as land that other developers could use for affordable housing. Cortez explained that these alternate payments would also have to produce new housing. “We need to be given something of like value,” Cortez said. |
