August 2017 | www.santabarbarafamilylife.com | Santa Barbara Family & Life | 9
California homeownership rate drops to 54 percent By David Kim
Santa Barbara Association of Realtors
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alifornia is in the midst of a housing crisis that is even worse than previously thought. California has become one of the hardest states in the nation for first-time homebuyers to purchase a home. This trend has been fueled by housing affordability, job opportunities, housing supply, credit availability and homeownership rates among people ages 18-34. The crisis is very troubling for economists who believe it will have an enormous impact on the economic prospects of the next generation. One key factor stunting the growth of firsttime homebuyers is the surging of rent prices. High rents mean less money being saved for a down payment on a home. Stagnant wages since the 2008 recession also have attributed to the slow economic growth of first-time homebuyers. More than 130 housing bills have been introduced this year alone, many of them aimed at addressing the state’s housing shortage. High housing costs, a drastic shortage of homes to buy or rent, and the failure of cities and counties to adequately plan for growth is fueling this bombardment of new statutes, policy advocates say. According to the state Housing and Community Development Department, California needed 180,000 new homes each year over the past decade but built on average just 80,000 a year. The state will need at least 1.8 million new homes by 2025. The California homeownership rate has dropped to 54 percent, which is its lowest point since the late 1940s.
VENOCO CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7 Inc., the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County, and the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara, among others. “Over 20 years, we’ve donated $12 million and reached well over 200 organizations,” Carty said, noting that lost revenue after the Plains spill increasingly curtailed her company’s philanthropic reach. “There are organizations that will definitely feel the pinch.” Partners in Education, a program of the Santa Barbara County Education Office that leverages corporate, foundation, government and individual resources to prepare students for post-school life, received ongoing support from the company. “Venoco has consistently stepped up to the plate for education, giving nearly half a million dollars to our organization since 2001,” the organization’s executive director, Chelsea Duffy, told Noozhawk in an email. “Venoco was especially instrumental in ensuring that our Computers for Families program — which has delivered more than 11,000 refurbished computers to local families — could continue in perpetuity.” Duffy called out Carty as an especially dedicated volunteer and board member who
Photo contributed Board member Kelly Marsh, from left, board President Beth Sparkes, Executive Director Corby Gage, and board member Teri Gauthier enjoy the Coastal Housing Partnership’s Home Buying Fair at The Fess Parker Doubletree Resort on May 6.
Home-buying fair set for Oct. 28
egistration is now open for a “home-buying fair” designed to help local renters buy a home in the very expensive Central Coast market. Hundreds of local residents came through Coastal Housing Partnership’s Home Buying Fairs on May 6 in Santa Barbara and July 12 in
Goleta. The next session is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Oct. 28 at the Ventura Beach Marriott, 2055 E. Harbor Blvd. in Ventura.. The nonprofit Coastal Housing Partnership helps employers meet the challenge of attracting and retaining employees in a region with some of the highest housing prices in the nation. Since 1987, Coastal Housing Partner-
has “personally volunteered nearly 200 hours through Partners.” Carty called the bankruptcy procedure “a process of actively liquidating and selling assets,” many of which are not necessarily headed back to the State Lands Commission. The fate of facilities off the Carpinteria coast and the Ellwood Onshore Facility (EOF) near Haskell’s Beach and Sandpiper Golf Club in Goleta, which processed the oil and gas extracted by Platform Holly, will be determined during that process, which Venoco has estimated will take six months to a year. The city of Goleta has for a while been looking to shut down the EOF. The facility is considered a legal-nonconforming use of land that is zoned for recreation, and many residents fear it could cause some sort of spill or leak. Now, with Venoco throwing in the towel, oil and gas production in the Santa Barbara Channel’s state waters has come to an end. “This is definitely something that is a huge relief to the community,” said Linda Krop, chief counsel of the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center. Even as environmentalists hail the end of Venoco’s production, Krop said there are 23 other platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel region, 15 of which are still operating. “You can plan and have the best measures in
place to try to prevent an oil spill, but accidents do happen,” said Jenna Driscoll, watershed and marine program associate with Santa Barbara Channelkeeper. “Anytime we can move away from extraction techniques to more sustainable development is a good thing.” Venoco’s bankruptcy was also the final nail in the coffin for the company’s proposal to alter the boundary of its lease in the channel. If approved, it would have allowed the company to end its operations after about 25 years instead of the anticipated 40 years. The tradeoff would have been allowing Venoco to extract 40 million more barrels of oil than it otherwise could have — a big driver of residents’ oil spill concerns. It now falls on the state to decommission Platform Holly, which will take an estimated three years, depending on funding and the environmental review process. Especially with the platform sitting in a state marine sanctuary, the overarching consideration is what course of action would be most environmentally friendly. Completely removing Platform Holly down to the seafloor would disrupt the marine ecosystem that has developed around the platform’s submerged infrastructure, said Milton Love, a UCSB research biologist who studies fish populations around reefs and platforms.
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Staff report
ship has helped more than 10,000 local employees become homeowners through its education programs and benefits, which are provided through a network of local real estate partners. Membership in the partnership is open to any employer in Santa Barbara County or Ventura County For more information, visit coastal housing.org or email Corby Gage at corby@coastalhousing.org.
Those in shallow waters like Platform Holly serve as nursing grounds for hundreds of thousands of young fish in addition to a multitude of invertebrates such as sea stars, Love said. Platforms also enable the comeback of over-fished species, with Holly likely aiding bocaccio, widow and canary rockfish. Completely rooting out the platform would be expensive and require running charges down to its base, more than 200 feet below the surface, and blowing it all up. The huge amounts of destroyed materials — covered in dead sea life — would then have to be lugged somewhere that would accept them. That would kill off virtually all of the life attached to the platform, with repercussions for the wider ecosystem. Love said the idea of shearing off the top 100 submerged feet of Platform Holly has been tossed around, which should save the fish nursing below, but kill the mussels and associated organisms above. The task is further complicated by having to make sure large ships can coast over the remains without scraping their hulls, or, should the whole platform stay, the money it would take to maintain the above-surface infrastructure. That’s an option Love said he hasn’t heard anyone raise.