On a recent episode of the Santa Barbara Talks, land-use consultant Garrett Gorin said the city’s controversial new rental proposal in the city of Santa Barbara has angered some members of the community.
“None of us knew this thing was going to come,” Corinne said. “They didn’t like any awareness at all. I read about that from your article (Nozuk).”
Santa Barbara suggested allowing vacation rentals in most residential areas of the city, but regulating them significantly to make owning one more difficult. The city also wants to find ways to collect transit occupancy taxes on the approximately 1,000 rents that are currently not permitted.
The council submitted the proposal to the city’s planning committee, which will now focus on a framework for a potential vacation rental law.
“It was amazing when I saw this thing coming,” Goren said. “Everyone hated her.”
Corinne is a senior Santa Barbara planner. He works with developers on a variety of residential projects across the city. He is the director of Vanguard Planning.
In this podcast, he also talks about housing in Santa Barbara, the State Street boardwalk, and the future of the funk district. Goren said design councils sometimes go too far in organizing housing-related projects.
“This stuff should be more than just an art project for your child,” Goren said. “If we don’t build it, there’s no point in it. If you have to get something detailed yet and that’s a lot of expense to build it in order to get it approved, you can’t afford to fund it, then what have we accomplished.”
Goren said Santa Barbara is experiencing a housing crisis and that the city needs to approve more housing before California steps in and takes away the city’s planning authority.
“It’s a crisis like the outboard engine of the 747 caught fire and parts of the plane were missing,” Goren said. “That’s the situation we’re in. Our design review boards and the community who are at least involved in this stuff are involved in trying to figure out ‘Okay, let’s not do anything about it until we make sure we really get the paint color.'”
Goren also defends Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rouse, who has been vocal in his concerns that State Street does not take into account the needs of all businesses, and appears to be serving restaurants in the 500th building.
“I agree with Randy,” Goren said. “As a planner, you can’t use one use and design something like a downtown retail center around one use only. Restaurants are great. It’s a great thing here. We should have them. But we shouldn’t. Every place on State Street has a restaurant.”
Josh and Jordi Podcast
Also this week, check out a special edition of Santa Barbara Talks, where Josh Molina and Geordie Armstrong, teachers at Santa Barbara City College, talk about teaching, social media, and changes in students emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Consider making a donation to this podcast by clicking here. Subscribe to this podcast by clicking here. Josh Molina has been a Santa Barbara journalist for 20 years. He also covered the city council for the San Jose Mercury News. In addition to his work as a reporter at Noozhawk, he teaches journalism at California State University, Northridge, and Santa Barbara College. Please subscribe to his You Tube channel for more content.