State lawmakers focused a Santa Barbara improvement. Now, the fallout

Outraged Santa Barbara residents jumped into motion when a developer unveiled plans final 12 months for a towering residence complicated close by of the historic Outdated Mission.

They complained to metropolis officers, wrote letters and shaped a nonprofit to try to block the undertaking. Nonetheless, the developer’s plans went ahead.

Then one thing uncommon occurred.

4 hundred miles away in Sacramento, state lawmakers quietly tucked language into an obscure funds invoice requiring an environmental affect research of the proposed improvement — which housing advocates allege was an try to dam the undertaking.

The laws, Senate Invoice 158, signed into legislation by Gov. Gavin Newsom, didn’t point out the Santa Barbara undertaking by title. However the provision was so detailed and particular it couldn’t apply to every other improvement within the state.

The fallout was swift: The developer sued the state and a Santa Barbara lawmaker, the highly effective new president of the state Senate, is beneath scrutiny over her position within the invoice.

The saga highlights the governor’s and state Legislature’s rising affect in native housing selections, and the battle between cities and Sacramento to deal with California’s vital housing scarcity.

Within the face of California’s excessive value of housing and hire, state leaders are more and more passing new housing mandates that require cities and counties to speed up the development of recent housing and ease the obstacles impeding builders.

On this case, the legislation focusing on the Santa Barbara improvement does the other by making it tougher to construct.

‘A horrendous nightmare’

The battle began final 12 months after builders Craig and Stephanie Smith laid out bold plans for an eight-story housing undertaking with not less than 250 residences at 505 East Los Olivos St.

The five-acre website is close to the Outdated Mission Santa Barbara, which attracts a whole bunch of 1000’s of vacationers annually.

In Santa Barbara, a slow-growth haven the place many residence buildings are two tales, the Los Olivos undertaking was perceived as a skyscraper. The mayor, Randy Rowse, referred to as the proposal “a horrendous nightmare,” based on native media website Noozhawk.

However the developer had a bonus. California legislation requires cities and counties to develop plans for development each eight years to deal with California’s rising inhabitants. Jurisdictions are required to pinpoint areas the place housing or density could possibly be added.

If cities and counties fail to develop plans by every eight-year deadline, a provision kicks in referred to as “builder’s treatment.”

It permits builders to bypass native zoning restrictions and construct larger, denser tasks so long as low or moderate-income items are included.

Santa Barbara was nonetheless working with the state on its housing plan when the deadline handed in February 2023. The plan was full by December of that 12 months, however didn’t turn into official till the state licensed it in February 2024.

A month prior, in January, the builders submitted their plans. And since they included 54 low-income items, the town couldn’t outright deny the undertaking.

“The builders had been enjoying chess whereas the town was enjoying checkers,” mentioned Evan Minogue, a Santa Barbara resident against the event.

He mentioned older generations in California resisted change, leaving the state to come back in with “heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all insurance policies to drive cities to do one thing about housing.”

Santa Barbara, a rich metropolis that draws celebrities, bohemian artist-types and environmental activists, has an extended historical past of preventing to maintain its small-town really feel.

In 1975, the Metropolis Council adopted a plan to restrict improvement, together with water consumption and site visitors, and hold a cap on the town’s inhabitants at 85,000. Within the late ‘90s, actor Michael Douglas — an alum of UC Santa Barbara — donated cash to protect the town’s largest stretch of coastal land.

Hemmed in by the Santa Ynez Mountains, the town is dominated by low-slung buildings and single-family properties. The median residence worth is $1.8 million, based on Zillow. A metropolis report final 12 months detailed the necessity for 8,000 extra items, primarily for low-income households, over the approaching years.

Assemblymember Gregg Hart, whose district contains Santa Barbara, helps the language within the funds invoice requiring the environmental evaluate. He doesn’t need to see the proposed improvement tower over the Outdated Mission and blames the builder’s treatment legislation for its introduction.

“It’s an excellent illustration of how damaged the ‘builder’s treatment’ system is,” mentioned Hart. “Proposing tasks like this undermines help for constructing density in Santa Barbara.”

Related pushback has been seen in Santa Monica, Huntington Seashore and different small cities as builders scramble to make use of the builder’s treatment legislation. A notable instance just lately performed out in La Cañada Flintridge, the place builders pushed by means of a mixed-use undertaking with 80 items on a 1.29-acre lot regardless of fierce opposition from the town.

Nonetheless, the controversial legislation doesn’t exempt developments from evaluate beneath the California Environmental High quality Act, often called CEQA, the state’s landmark coverage requiring a research of the undertaking’s results on site visitors, air high quality and extra.

The builders behind the Los Olivos Avenue undertaking sought to keep away from the environmental evaluate, nonetheless, due to a brand new state legislation that enables many city infill tasks to keep away from such necessities. Meeting Invoice 130, based mostly on laws launched by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), was signed into legislation by Newsom in June.

When the Los Olivos builders requested metropolis officers about utilizing AB 130 for his or her undertaking, a Santa Barbara neighborhood developer director instructed them in July 2025 that the CEQA evaluate was needed. AB 130 doesn’t apply if the undertaking is deliberate close to a creek and wetland habitat, or different environmentally delicate space, the director wrote.

Months later, the state Legislature handed its funds invoice requiring the evaluate.

Santa Barbara residents who oppose the undertaking mentioned they didn’t ask for the invoice.

But when the evaluate finds that site visitors from the event would overwhelm fireplace evacuation routes, for example, they might have a neater time preventing the undertaking.

“We don’t need to come off as NIMBYs,” resident Fred Sweeney, who opposes the undertaking, mentioned, referring to the phrase “not in my yard.” Sweeney, an architect, and others began the nonprofit Sensible Motion for Development and Fairness to spotlight the Los Olivos undertaking and a second one deliberate by the identical developer.

Standing close to the undertaking website on a latest day, Sweeney pointed as automobiles lined up alongside the principle street. It wasn’t but rush hour, however site visitors was already constructing.

A ‘actually unusual’ invoice

Buried deep in Senate Invoice 158, the invoice handed by state lawmakers focusing on the Los Olivos undertaking, is a point out of the state legislation round infill city housing developments. Senate Invoice 158 clarified that sure developments shouldn’t be exempt from this legislation.

Developments in “a metropolis with greater than 85,000 however fewer than 95,000 folks, and inside a county of between 440,00 and 455,000 folks,” and that are additionally close to a historic landmark, regulatory floodway and watershed, are usually not exempt, the invoice said.

Based on the 2020 census, Santa Barbara has a inhabitants of 88,768. Santa Barbara County has a inhabitants of 448,229. And the undertaking sits close to each a creek and the Santa Barbara Mission.

The controversial improvement match the invoice.

A consultant for Senate President Professional Tem Monique Limón instructed CalMatters that the senator was concerned in crafting that exemption language.

Throughout a tour of an avocado farm in Ventura final month, Limón declined to touch upon her position. She cited the lawsuit and directed inquiries to Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s workplace.

Limón, who was born and raised in Santa Barbara, confirmed that she did discuss to Sweeney — who began the nonprofit to battle the event — about opposition to the event.

The Los Olivos undertaking had “loads of neighborhood involvement and participation,” she mentioned. “When it comes to suggestions, what I perceive, studying the articles, there are over 400 those who have weighed in on it … it’s a really public undertaking.”

Limón additionally defended her housing document.

“Each piece of laws I creator or evaluate, I achieve this based mostly on the wants of our state but additionally with the lens of the neighborhood I signify — whether or not that’s housing, schooling, environmental protections or every other points that come throughout my desk,” Limón mentioned.

The builders filed a lawsuit in opposition to the town and state in October, claiming that SB 158 targets one particular undertaking: theirs. As such, it will be unlawful beneath federal legislation, which bans “particular laws” that targets a single particular person or property.

The go well with claims that Limón promoted and ushered the invoice by means of the state Senate, argues that it ought to be overturned and questions the required environmental evaluate, which might seemingly add years to its timeline and thousands and thousands to its funds.

Stephanie Smith, one of many builders, instructed The Occasions that the invoice was born of the “protests of rich householders, a lot of whom cosplay as housing advocates till the proposed housing is of their neighborhood.”

“As a former homeless scholar who labored full time and lived in my automobile, I do know what it means to wrestle to afford housing. Dwelling with out safety or dignity gave me a foundational perception that housing is a nonnegotiable primary human proper,” Smith mentioned.

Public coverage advocates and specialists expressed concern about state lawmakers utilizing their energy to meddle with native housing tasks, particularly when carving out exemptions from legal guidelines they’ve imposed on everybody else within the state.

“It’s arduous to disregard when laws is drafted in a narrowly tailor-made approach — particularly when such language seems late within the course of with little public enter,” mentioned Sean McMorris of fine authorities group California Frequent Trigger. “Payments developed on this method threat fostering public cynicism concerning the legislative course of and the motivations behind narrowly centered policymaking.”

UC Davis College of Regulation professor Chris Elmendorf, who makes a speciality of housing coverage, referred to as the invoice’s particular language “actually unusual” and questioned whether or not it will survive a authorized problem.

He expects to see extra pleadings for exemptions from state housing legal guidelines.

“Native teams that don’t need the undertaking are going to the legislature to get the aid that, in a earlier period, they’d have gotten from their metropolis council,” Elmendorf mentioned.

UC Santa Barbara scholar Enri Lala is the founder and president of a scholar housing group. He mentioned the invoice goes in opposition to a latest pro-housing motion within the space.

“It’s definitely out of the atypical,” mentioned Lala. “This isn’t the form of transfer that we need to see repeated sooner or later.”