UCSB Looks to 2025

First why didn't Margaret Connel write this? She is the most informed Indie writer on Goleta and this is our biggest current issue. Please whoever is responsible, give Margaret as much space as she wants to follow this story. Our community needs to immediately come to terms with the fact that the UCSB LRDP is the single largest new development project in the history of South Santa Barbara County. The amount of residential development is beyond what our community can sustain and we need to do something about it. Our only hope is the Coastal Commission because the University beauracracy puts on a good show but is completely unresponsive to the local public. The University has many available alternative approaches to the future of the campus including acquiring property in IV just recently approved for residential development under the IV Master Plan. We need to do something about this before it is a fait accompli. Enrollment should be permanently capped at 20,000 students.

UCSB is proposing 4,339 new housing units, removing 1,036, for a net increase of 3,303 housing units.

... duh, sbreader. Margaret Connell covered the story a week or two ago. I figure the more housing UCSB builds the more IV slum lords will complain.

W-nut, the LRDP and its EIR were only released on Monday, Mar. 24.

2,700 of the units are for families, faculty, and staff who don't/won't live in IV anyway.

UCSB has been segregated from the community since 1954. If this LRDP goes through, the segregation will only get worse.

It is hard to imagine UCSB's housing operation managing all that new housing. They are a remarkably inefficient, cost+ sort of operation. In the end I doubt they'll be any cheaper than the free market, and they'll be worse in quality.

A friend of mine who is an Assistant Prof at UCSB is on the wait list for the new UCSB faculty housing out on Phelps Road... she just about freaked out when she learned the price would be $600,000 for 1200 sq ft, +$250/month in rent to UCSB for the land + $500/month for condo association fees. For that kind of money she realized she can buy on the open market... Pacific Palms is actually cheaper.

7dophins, I understand the plan's just released but the complaint was that Connell should have covered the story so the piece would be more critical. She did cover it.

I thought most were worried about UCSB effects on the community not that it was too segregated from the community. I get "integrate the good stuff and segregate the bad stuff" but it seems more balanced to expect both the yin and the Wang.

I don't know about the figures you mentioned, or how appropriate the comparison is of University vs. market housing. But, again, I thought the problem was that university folks were buying local real estate and driving the prices up and the locals out. Then when the university proposes to build its own, they're too segregated, too remote, and should buy or rent local market housing. It's no wonder to me why they don't seem to listen to the "community." Folks just want it both ways, all good, just for them.

I don't know any U folks who have enough money to buy real estate, W-nut! Most young faculty live in an apartment until they get an offer from another U somewhere, when they split. Staff are in an even worse position. The idea of staff and faculty housing is a good one, except it looks like UCSB can't build affordable housing... the North Campus prices are so high they've priced their own faculty out of the market, while the market at least for similar condos on the South Coast is plummeting.

There is all sorts of weird segregation involving UCSB... more UCSB folks have historically lived in Santa Barbara than Goleta, at least back when UCSB folks could afford a place. Santa Barbara was so favored that there is a ramp from the northbound 101 to 217, but none from southbound 101 to 217! And so historically the staff and faculty are segregated both from Goleta and from Isla Vista. No wonder Goleta and Isla Vista both have been real pissed off at UCSB... most of the decision makers at UCSB were and are clueless about those places because those decision makers hardly know the micropolitics of IV and Goleta.

So this LRDP proposes to concentrate all sorts of housing on the UCSB campus on the perimeter of IV. Goleta will get all mad from the perceived impacts, and probably Goleta is wrong... since the folks in the UCSB housing will mostly walk or ride bikes to work. But the historical segregation will make Goleta suspicious and pissed off. The GWD, GWSD, GUSD, and City of Goleta will go nuts raising impact fees, and UCSB will end up just paying, and charging back to the occupants of the new housing, and so the new housing will end up being kind of expensive.

Probably the UCSB employees who live in the future housing will end up being in debt to UCSB after 30 years of living on campus. And UCSB will make them feel guilty for it.