NPO Ordinance Vote Tuesday
The Newsroom ran a story about how the Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance will be voted on by the Santa Barbara City Council Tuesday after three long years of debate, hearings and community meetings. The ordinance is designed to fight the mansionization of our neighborhoods. I bet the ordinance will pass...and any of you interested in being a member of the new committee that is formed can start applying on May 8th for meetings which would begin as early as July 16th. I guess our city government figures it will pass too :)
Labels: Santa Barbara City Council
posted by Sara De la Guerra | 4/30/2007 10:01:00 PM
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12 Comments:
Yes, yes lets get on and adopt the NPO. Then it's time for those preservationsist to get busy and figure out how to work on the housing and transportation problem. The problem with the NPO proponents is they are typically one issue or even self centered. Time to look at how your own seclusive lifestyles on the Mesa and San Rogue are affecting the housing shortage and causing terrible traffic by insisting on renting out their garage for living space and then driving everywhere on someone else's real "quality of life."
Don't kid yourself. The NPO preserves no neighborhoods besides those already living behind layers of gilded protection - the single family residence neighborhoods.
It is just one more way of building in city protection of wealthy landowner equity while making the left-over part of the city zoned for multi-family development carry the burden of denser and taller buildings.
Call this a Protect the Equity of the Rich and Destroy and Densify Everything Else Ordinance.
Large single-family properties are exactly where more building needs to take place. They are huge resource squandering blocks of land that need no further city protections.
A vote for the NPO is a vote for denser and taller buildings squeezed into the remaining low-income neighbhoroods that are already over-crowded, over-built and over-exploited.
If this means more density, I'm all for it. It's about time!
Yes, let's be like santa monica and have no open space, no trees to bind carbon, shade buildings from excessive solar gain, no avian wildlife.
Denser and taller buildings where zoning is allowed sounds good to me. If you want cheaper housing, you are going to have to make it affordable by design, i.e. lower quality, less energy efficient, denser, less open space, less amenities., etc. Why make those who have earned what they have pay the price for those less able. No one, i repeat, NO ONE has the right to live here.
Since we're already far beyond our carrying capacity, and the notion of sustainable community is a total myth without kicking out about 60,000 people, tell me how your denser, tenement style development will benefit the community rather than a select group of people who happen to not be able to afford the market rate. Welfare for all, why work at all?
Even better, let's push for 25% of our housing to be dense, tall and affordable with city subsidies - this will make a really terrific voting block that can dominate all future city elections and budget allocations.
A town like Santa Barbara should be a leader turning a majority of its housing stock over to the poor. What a compassionate community. Don't just stop with 13% of total city housing units getting city subsidies like right now.
et's not stop until 100% of city housing is city subsidized for the poor; not the rich.
Wringing hands and writing clever rebuttals does nothing because this city council will be known for one thing and one thing only - officially and legally turning this city over to the homeless, the RV dwellers who all got legal advantages that exceed every other single home-owning, tax-paying resident and voter.
Forget every single promise any of this city council makes when they hit the election cycle that they want to "protect the neighborhoods". They officially in a trail of public documents throw out that promise once in office - you need to read the facts about what decisions they actually to make, and the decisions they let the staff make for them before you bring any single one of them back into this all to powerful position. They lied to the nighbhorhoods and appear too stupid and too much of followers to even know what they have done when they approve staff report after staff report that continues to give this city away to the homeless and the RV dwellers.
This city council more than anything else has sold out the city -- and they did it legally and right under your noses.
Get involved, read city council agendas and staff reports and demand with your votes to throw these bums out once you learn what they threw away at your expense.
So what is the solution?
Nobody wants to see SB become Santa Monica (although it is right on the threshhold at the moment), and we are not going to build a wall around the city to stop population growth.
So what are the viable alternatives? Certainly not continuing to build bigger and bigger single family homes on smallish lots that take up space and resources but do not accomodate additional people... so what do we really do next?
I'm glad the City Council has resolved this issue and cleared the way for a progressive city. This will help us get the density we need to stop global warming and save the earth. The City needed to do this as part of its sustainability agenda.
Some sort of communial housing seems to be the answer grouping our workforce together where we need them.
Good question: What is the solution?
You can start by reading the "Third Year Action Plan" available on the city website that tell you just how the city sold everyone out for a measly $2.4 million dollars to get grants from HUD which serve to only create an echo chamber of self-perpetuating, but under performing and un- accountable "non-profits" whose only function is to self-perpetuate more HUD grants.
No results are ever demanded from them - only soothing "feel good" words and unconfirmed anecdotes. Just enough to keep the HUD money flowing while promising to give away the city planning process to the federal government in return.
Read the part in the HUD grant justification written by city staff that states with no justification THE MOST OVERWHELMING PROBLEM FACING SANTA BARBARA IS THE COST OF HOUSING.
There you have it - staff writes this justification to get $2.4 million dollars in HUD grants in return for promising to sell out all city planning, growth controls or market forces.
If you don't read this "Third Year Action Plan" and understand its fatal ramifications, you will never solve the problems this city council has been unable to recognize.
It is the shadow world of self-justifying grants that causes good council people to go bad at the voters expense. The staff runs your city - not your elected official. They just roll over and pat themselves on the back and do whatever staff tells them to do.
Who elected this staff and who set their agenda to make this statement: THE MOST OVERWHELMING PROBLEM FACING SANTA BARBARA IS THE COST OF HOUSING.
This is NOT Santa Barbara's "most overwhelming" problem. Not by a long shot. Buyers still find Santa Barbara affordable because they still keep buying houses.
So who exactly is setting this as Santa Barbara's "most overwhelming" problems? Should you start with the developers who seduce the staff and seduce the council members? Might be one place to look.
And now that you know, what are YOU going to do about it?
Loss of a sense of public safety IS THE MOST OVERWHELMING PROBLEM FACING SANTA BARBARA.
It should concern us all when a staff report reaches the conclusion that "cost of housing is the most overwhelming problem facing Santa Barbara."
It may be a problem for the few outside of Santa Barbara who want to live here, but cannot afford it. But how on earth was this staff person allowed to conclude in an official city report that this relatively minor problem is Santa Barbara's "most overwhelming" problem?
And why has no city council person come out and criticized this conclusion, but rather only parrots this same erroneous conclusion on any and all occasions.
Think it through - the residents of Santa Barbara are many, and their biggest concerns are the loss of quality of life for those of us who already live here.
Those who want to live here but cannot is NOT Santa Barbara's most overwhelming problem. It is their problem, not ours.
And you say this statement is sold for $2.4 milion dollars we get the fed's interferance with our city's business in return? This is shocking.
I can see why Goleta is finally saying no to this further mandated housing nonsense. Why won't our city council do the same? Can't they indpendently think their way out of a paper bag?
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