Outraged Santa Barbara residents jumped into motion when a developer unveiled plans final yr for a towering house advanced within reach of the historic Outdated Mission.
They complained to metropolis officers, wrote letters and shaped a nonprofit to attempt 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 influence examine 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 identify. 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 underneath scrutiny over her position within the invoice.
The present property situated on the proposed location for the eight-story house tower.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Occasions)
The saga highlights the governor’s and state Legislature’s rising affect in native housing choices, and the battle between cities and Sacramento to deal with California’s essential housing scarcity.
Within the face of California’s excessive value of housing and lease, state leaders are more and more passing new housing mandates that require cities and counties to speed up the development of latest housing and ease the boundaries 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 yr after builders Craig and Stephanie Smith laid out bold plans for an eight-story housing undertaking with not less than 250 flats at 505 East Los Olivos St.
The five-acre website is close to the Outdated Mission Santa Barbara, which pulls a whole lot of 1000’s of vacationers every year.
In Santa Barbara, a slow-growth haven the place many house buildings are two tales, the Los Olivos undertaking was perceived as a skyscraper. The mayor, Randy Rowse, known 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 growing 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 known as “builder’s treatment.”
It permits builders to bypass native zoning restrictions and construct greater, denser initiatives 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 yr, however didn’t change into official till the state licensed it in February 2024.
Opponents of the proposed Santa Barbara improvement, clockwise from backside left: Cheri Rae, Brian Miller, Evan Minogue, Tom Meaney, Fred Sweeney and Steve Forsell.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Occasions)
A month prior, in January, the builders submitted their plans. And since they included 54 low-income items, town couldn’t outright deny the undertaking.
“The builders had been taking part in chess whereas town was taking part in 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 pressure cities to do one thing about housing.”
Santa Barbara, a rich metropolis that pulls 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 preserve a cap on town’s inhabitants at 85,000. Within the late ‘90s, actor Michael Douglas — an alum of UC Santa Barbara — donated cash to protect town’s largest stretch of coastal land.
Hemmed in by the Santa Ynez Mountains, town is dominated by low-slung buildings and single-family houses. The median dwelling worth is $1.8 million, based on Zillow. A metropolis report final yr detailed the necessity for 8,000 extra items, primarily for low-income households, over the approaching years.
Stephanie and Craig Smith, the builders of the undertaking at 505 East Los Olivos Road.
(Ashley Gutierrez)
Assemblymember Gregg Hart, whose district consists of Santa Barbara, helps the language within the funds invoice requiring the environmental assessment. He doesn’t wish to see the proposed improvement tower over the Outdated Mission and blames the builder’s treatment legislation for its introduction.
“It’s a superb illustration of how damaged the ‘builder’s treatment’ system is,” mentioned Hart. “Proposing initiatives 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 town.
Nonetheless, the controversial legislation doesn’t exempt developments from assessment underneath the California Environmental High quality Act, generally known as CEQA, the state’s landmark coverage requiring a examine of the undertaking’s results on site visitors, air high quality and extra.
The builders behind the Los Olivos Road undertaking sought to keep away from the environmental assessment, nevertheless, due to a brand new state legislation that permits many city infill initiatives 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 assessment 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 assessment.
Santa Barbara residents who oppose the undertaking mentioned they didn’t ask for the invoice.
But when the assessment finds that site visitors from the event would overwhelm fireplace evacuation routes, for example, they might have a better time preventing the undertaking.
“We don’t wish 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 Progress 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 current day, Sweeney pointed as vehicles lined up alongside the primary 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 acknowledged.
In keeping with 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.
Monique Limón is president professional tem of the California state Senate.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Occasions)
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 “a whole lot of neighborhood involvement and participation,” she mentioned. “By way of 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 file.
“Each piece of laws I creator or assessment, I achieve this based mostly on the wants of our state but additionally with the lens of the neighborhood I characterize — whether or not that’s housing, training, environmental protections or every other points that come throughout my desk,” Limón mentioned.
The builders filed a lawsuit towards town and state in October, claiming that SB 158 targets one particular undertaking: theirs. As such, it could be unlawful underneath federal legislation, which bans “particular laws” that targets a single particular person or property.
The house presently situated on the proposed improvement website.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Occasions)
The go well with claims that Limón promoted and ushered the invoice by means of the state Senate, argues that it needs to be overturned and questions the required environmental assessment, which might probably 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 automotive, I do know what it means to battle 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 initiatives, particularly when carving out exemptions from legal guidelines they’ve imposed on everybody else within the state.
“It’s exhausting to disregard when laws is drafted in a narrowly tailor-made method — particularly when such language seems late within the course of with little public enter,” mentioned Sean McMorris of excellent authorities group California Widespread Trigger. “Payments developed on this method danger fostering public cynicism in regards to the legislative course of and the motivations behind narrowly targeted policymaking.”
UC Davis College of Regulation professor Chris Elmendorf, who makes a speciality of housing coverage, known as the invoice’s particular language “actually unusual” and questioned whether or not it could 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 might 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 towards a current pro-housing motion within the space.
“It’s definitely out of the atypical,” mentioned Lala. “This isn’t the sort of transfer that we wish to see repeated sooner or later.”
