FORE! GREEN GRASS OR GREENER GRAFT? COUNTY SWINGS AND MISSES ON HOUSING!

Well, bless their hearts over at the Santa Barbara Independent. They’re pondering why the municipal golf course isn't being bulldozed for 'affordable housing.' One practically needs a caddy to navigate the sheer intellectual roughage of such a question. Perhaps, and this is just a wild theory, it's because ordinary folks actually enjoy affordable recreational activities that don't involve endless public meetings, environmental impact reports longer than Ulysses, and construction costs that would make even a Saudi prince blush.

The real scandal isn't that a golf course exists, but that the County's own regulatory regime makes any new housing — 'affordable' or otherwise — a financial black hole. Every green initiative, every 'community benefit' carve-out, every protracted zoning battle adds zeroes to the price tag. The Independent seems to imply that if only we paved over a beautiful public amenity, all our housing woes would magically vanish. It's almost as if they believe 'affordable' housing is built for free and doesn't also get ensnared in the very bureaucratic briar patch designed by the same people who champion such projects.

Now, here’s an angle the Independent probably won’t print: follow the money on who benefits from the current housing scarcity. It’s not the struggling families, that much is certain. It’s the developers who navigate the labyrinthine permitting process, the consultants who charge hourly rates higher than a triple-bogey, and the politicians whose campaigns are funded by those very interests. Every time a new 'affordable' project is heralded, it's a testament to the fact that the actual cost of building anything here is astronomical, largely due to the very progressive policies supposedly aimed at helping people.

So, before we start eyeing our golf courses as sacrificial lambs for the housing gods, maybe, just maybe, Uncle Sam's green-obsessed, regulation-happy local acolytes should look in the mirror. Or better yet, look at the county's balance sheet. Perhaps if the county stopped spending like a drunken sailor on pet projects and focused on reducing the insane regulatory burden, housing would actually become, well, affordable, without turning our public parks into concrete jungles.