Two county-owned properties in the heart of downtown Santa Barbara could become the test cases for the conversion of government land into affordable housing, as the board of supervisors voted Tuesday to pursue proposals for workforce housing at the probation building on Carrillo Street and to consider a future redevelopment on the county campus just a few blocks away on Anapamu Street.
For more than a year, Supervisor Laura Capps — who called affordable housing her “number-one policy goal” — has been nudging her colleagues to consider the “silver bullet” of offering up county-owned parcels for affordable housing, an idea she’s been pursuing since she began seeing other regions exploring similar projects across the country.
“The government needs to lead by example,” Capps told the Independent as she walked through the deserted parking lot behind the County Administration building at 105 East Anapamu Street, across the street from the county courthouse. The lot is half-empty most of the time, she said, and has the untapped potential for up to a hundred units of low- and moderate-income housing…