Santa Barbara Unified ‘on Cusp’ of Securing 106 Units of Affordable Housing for District Staff

School Board Votes to Transfer Affordable Housing Portion of Project Planned for Eastern Goleta Valley to District

Santa Barbara Unified Superintendent Hilda Maldonado said the school district hopes to close escrow on an affordable housing project for district employees in April 2025. | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom

On Tuesday, the Santa Barbara Unified school board took a critical step in acquiring more than 100 units of affordable housing for district employees.

Work on securing affordable housing for teachers and staff began in 2021, and a real project is now beginning to come to fruition.

“I think we’re on the cusp now,” said the district’s legal counsel, Craig Price. “We still don’t have a guarantee.”

Price explained that the district entered into an agreement in 2021 to sell their 24-acre Tatum property in the Eastern Goleta Valley to a developer, Red Tail Acquisitions, for $17 million. Since then, the district has “expressed a keen interest in doing everything it could to make sure that the affordable units that are going to be a part of the project can be dedicated to district staff.”

Since 2021, the laws relating to designating affordable housing for specific types of employment groups have been evolving, Price said. For the affordable units to be dedicated to district staff, and to qualify for the federal tax credits that will pay for the development, the district must own that part of the property.

The board voted unanimously to amend the district’s purchase and sale agreement with Red Tail to transfer ownership of the affordable housing portion to the district, with a long-term lease back to Red Tail, for the units (51 one-bedroom, 26 two-bedroom, and 29 three-bedroom) to be designated for district staff for a period of 55 years.

“We are more than hopeful,” Price said. “We are really optimistic that by granting this amendment to the agreement, we will be able to move forward and have 106 units of affordable housing developed, without any cost to the district, beyond the property that we are putting into … the market-rate portion of the development.”

The structure is complex, he added, but it has to be in order to get past the various federal and state requirements for the project to go forward as planned. “Affordable housing does not pay for itself,” he noted, so the developers need nonprofit partners and ways to supplement the costs of building the project, which is where federal tax credits come in.

According to the district, it is expected that the resulting 106 units of affordable housing for district staff will be one of the largest such developments in the state.

“We are hoping to close escrow in April,” said Superintendent Hilda Maldonado, who thanked Red Tail for being open to the amendment. “This was not part of the original deal, and the fact that they are agreeing to give us some of these affordable units back … is quite the accomplishment. We have been tough negotiators, but for a good cause.”