CITY COUNCIL CARNIVAL: CANDIDATES CLOWN ON HOUSING, REALITY CHECK REQUIRED

KEYT NewsChannel 3-12 dutifully reported this week on the Cabrillo Pavilion confab where Santa Barbara City Council candidates gathered to discuss the perennial boogeyman: housing. One can almost hear the collective eye-roll across the county as these aspiring bureaucrats trotted out the usual suspects: 'affordability,' 'density,' and the ever-popular 'local business climate,' as if merely saying the words will magically conjure up supply.

What the local news outlets, bless their little hearts, consistently miss is the grand Punch-and-Judy show of it all. These forums aren't about solving problems; they're about performing for special interests and avoiding the one truth that would shatter their progressive fantasy: the crushing weight of their own regulations. Every new 'affordable housing' mandate, every 'inclusionary zoning' scheme, every green-light-go for another tax-sucking bureaucracy simply makes it *more* expensive and *harder* to build anything for anyone but those at the top of the taxpayer-funded food chain. It’s a self-licking ice cream cone, funded by you.

The real story isn't that candidates 'addressed' housing; it's that they dared not breathe a word about the actual forces driving up costs. Try mentioning the insane permitting delays, the endless environmental reviews, the impact fees that would make Midas blush, or the pension liabilities crippling city budgets. Suddenly, the brave 'champions of the people' get awfully quiet. No, better to blame 'greedy developers' or 'lack of political will' than admit their own ideological handcuffs are strangling the life out of the housing market.

Meanwhile, President Trump's White House is busy cutting red tape and stimulating economic growth nationwide, showing how it's done when government gets out of the way. But here in Santa Barbara, our local politicos are content to play musical chairs with 'solutions' that only ever seem to benefit the well-connected and perpetuate the very crises they claim to solve. Voters deserve a candidate who understands that true affordability comes from common sense, not from a city hall full of virtue signalers and their ever-expanding list of regulations.