Santa Barbara County's recent $3.7 million settlement with UCSB over the university's failure to build student housing will help meet intense demand for new rental units countywide - while yielding "transformational" changes for Isla Vista, Supervisor Laura Capps said this week.
"Housing in I.V. impacts housing everywhere," the Second District representative on the Board of Supervisors said, in a return appearance on Newsmakers TV.
Since her election in 2022, Capps has carried on a high-energy, high-profile campaign to address a raft of intractable health and safety issues afflicting I.V., the tiny box of UCSB-adjacent, unincorporated county land which is among the most densely populated half-square mile sites in California.
In a conversation with Josh Molina and the genial host on Thursday, she detailed some of the direct benefits to its thousands of residents - not only students but also working families -- arising from the legal resolution the county reached last March with UCSB. Settlement of the suit, which alleged the university failed to meet the housing requirements of its increasing population, includes a promise to provide an additional 3,500 beds for students, as well as more than 1,800 new housing units for university employees.
On July 9. the supervisors also approved a plan devised by Capps' office for millions of dollars in new efforts aimed at improved living conditions in I.V. including a first-ever rental inspection pilot program; legal and other forms of aid for tenants; construction of new facilities to improve safety and prevent accidental deaths caused by people falling from the bluffs; plus a host of infrastructure upgrades
Capps, a former communications aide in Washington to former President Bill Clinton and the late Senator Ted Kennedy, also offered her thoughts on the perilous political state of play for Democrats in the presidential race; she didn't exactly talk us off the ledge, but spoke optimistically about Santa Barbara's communitarian values and activism, depicting them as a bulwark against the authoritarian vagaries of a second Donald Trump term.
Plus: Political Wishcasting: - Election Day is 110 days away and, as every school child knows, four months is an eternity in politics.
All this and more, right here, right now on Newsmakers TV.
Check out our conversation with Laura Capps via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Channel 17, broadcasts the program every weeknight at 8 p.m. and on weekends at 9 a.m. KCSB, 91.9 FM, airs the show on Mondays at 5:30 p.m.
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