Santa Barbara Unified Holds Community Meeting on Teacher Housing Project 

When building any new housing, it’s important to consider the neighbors. 

The Santa Barbara Unified School District conducted its first community outreach meeting last Thursday in anticipation of its new housing development for teachers on the city’s Eastside at the abandoned Parma School site. 

Superintendent Hilda Maldonado called the school, which closed in 1989, a “very old, ugly abandoned building.” Maintaining a vacant building is not the best use of a school district’s land, time, or money, making it the perfect spot to be transformed into a revitalized living community.

“We’re not gonna be landlords,” Maldonado explained, as the City of Santa Barbara’s Housing Authority will be in charge of building and operating the new housing units at the site. “Our business is taking care of our kids and employees.”

Rental prices in the city are “too damn high,” said Housing Authority executive director Rob Fredericks. The Housing Authority’s mission is to provide the affordable housing the city’s low-income workforce so desperately needs, with a list of success stories to back them up. 

“So we thought, ‘Let’s link hands with Santa Barbara Unified,” Fredericks continued. The district will still own the land — they have to in order to comply with the 2016 Teacher Housing Act, which allows the units to be used for educators only — but the Housing Authority will act as the site’s de facto landlords. 

The Parma School Site is .66 acres located next door to the Trader Joe’s on Milpas. It was chosen, Fredericks said, because it is well-located and has no historic buildings, making it the “most underutilized site in the right area.” A recent form-and-fit study showed approximately 30 units are feasible at the site.

Fredericks said that the Housing Authority will work to make sure that “whatever we put in fits with the neighborhood,” is livable and beautiful, and “sits well with the neighbors.” 

“We take pride in being a good neighbor,” he added.

However, the development’s would-be neighbors expressed a variety of concerns, many of which echo the same worries that have sprouted from housing development talks around the county.

The community meeting was held at the Franklin Elementary School auditorium. Voices echoed around the space as Eastside neighbors whispered to each other and took turns asking pressing questions.  

Whether the Housing Authority would do a traffic analysis was the first inquiry. Traffic, one woman said, is already problematic for people who live around the site, especially since Aliso Street was recently closed off to through-traffic to accommodate bikes. 

“I foresee that being a nightmare,” she said.

Parking was a related concern. Another resident called the Eastside “sensitive to parking,” as the streets fill up quickly and parking can oftentimes be difficult to find. Currently, 40 parking spaces are planned for the 30 units, which the residents expect to be insufficient for families. 

Fredericks, in response, emphasized that affordable housing projects such as these “don’t require any parking,” but that they do not want to “be those people.” At other sites, he assured, “people don’t use all the parking spaces.” Additionally, a traffic analysis is planned. 

One man asked if the anticipated two-year process to start developing the units — construction will not begin until mid-2026 at the earliest — could be accelerated, calling it “a lot of time.” Fredericks explained that the timeframe is a product of the lengthy permit and entitlement process with the city, but that they are “hoping to get early reviews, and gain priority with the city.”

Other comments brought up the need to keep essential workers in the neighborhood, and one resident stressed that the housing should be accessible to teachers even making more than the low-income threshold — which is $91,200 a year for a single-person household — and that the raises granted to teachers following ongoing contract negotiations should be taken into account.

Fredericks responded that there will be a “big pool of eligible renters,” and school boardmember Gabe Escobedo jumped in to reassure the community that the Parma site will be the “first of many projects.” 

“We have people who can’t afford to live where they work, and they deserve to live here where they serve our students,” he said. “It’s a triage with the housing crisis.” 

The meeting was the district and Housing Authority’s first outreach to the community. However, there will be opportunities for public input throughout the process, they said. They are still in the early stages, and the next step will be starting the city’s planning application process “soon.”