by Deborah Brasket, SB CAN Executive Director

Affordable housing is an endangered species in Santa Barbara County, one that that needs protection.

More than 95 percent of households on the South Coast and 85 percent of North County residents who don’t already own a home cannot afford to buy housing, nor can they afford to buy the home they live in today, according to a 2006 Housing Element report.

Even worse, more than 57 percent of South Coast households and 48 percent of North County households cannot afford the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in their communities. In addition, more than 5,000 families are still waiting for help from the county Housing Authority.

By Deborah Brasket/Looking Forward

Last month, SB CAN was privileged to co-host a highly topical panel discussion called the “Future of Journalism: Keeping the Watchdog Alive in Santa Barbara and the Nation.”

The discussion focused on two primary themes — the decline of the traditional newspaper business and the potential benefits and challenges of new online trends, including blogs, Web sites and online newspaper editions.

The high-powered panel, moderated by popular local blogger Craig Smith, featured Jim Rainey, a journalist with the Los Angeles Times; Susan Paterno, journalism professor and director of the journalism program at Chapman University; Jerry Roberts, co-founder of Calbuzz and former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and Santa Barbara News-Press; Nick Welsh, Santa Barbara Independent columnist and news editor; and Dick Flacks, community activist and sociology professor emeritus.

The panelists agreed that journalism faces a perfect storm of problems — declining readership, declining advertising support and competition from new online news sources. Print newspapers have high costs and depend upon subscriptions, and even more heavily on advertising.

By Deborah Brasket/Looking Forward

On May 19, the California Legislature is asking the voters of California to help them do what they failed to do themselves — balance the state budget.

Sounds good, right? But they are asking us to do this by defunding programs that help the most needy and vulnerable among us — at-risk children and people with mental health problems.

It’s worth remembering that we are the ones who created these funding sources to begin with. In 1998 and 2004, Californians realized the state had failed to provide adequate funding for at-risk children and people suffering from mental illness.

Ballot initiatives were passed to remedy the situation, and since then, these programs have been saving the state millions of dollars every year in preventive care.

By preventing child abuse and providing health care for young children, we keep them out of hospitals and family courts. By treating mental illness in the early stages, we keep people off the street, out of institutions, and out of jails.

By Deborah Brasket/Looking Forward

Each year, SB CAN and the Santa Barbara Council on Research and Education honor community heroes in the northern part of our county who have made significant contributions to the community.

This year’s winners, to be honored at an awards dinner on April 19 in Santa Maria, are particularly impressive:

Buellton Is Our Town (BIOT) will receive our Looking Forward Award for strong leadership and vision in community building and civic engagement.

This all-volunteer advocacy organization mounted a block-by-block grassroots campaign to put an urban-growth boundary initiative on the ballot in Buellton last November. They won an overwhelming victory, with 69-percent voter approval.

BIOT is presently engaged in producing a grassroots democracy handbook for use by other community organizations.

Minga and Raul Ceja from Santa Maria will receive our Social Justice Award for promoting equality, respect and compassion for all people in our community.

By Deborah Brasket/Looking Forward

Every five years, state law requires that each county update its Housing Element to ensure that enough land is zoned for housing for all income levels.

This law, while imperfect, reflects the critical need for housing that is affordable for lower-income and critical-workforce residents, such as firefighters, police and nurses.

Like every public policy document, the state’s Housing Element Update (HEU) contains some questionable items. But, as a whole, it reflects the overall goals of social justice and environmental and agricultural protections that SB CAN and the majority of local residents strongly believe in. The document contains many progressive, enlightened recommendations, which would:

Encourage construction or conversion of existing facilities to emergency shelters, transitional housing and single room occupancy units to meet the needs of the homeless population.

Facilitate development of farm employee housing on agricultural land.

Work to expand opportunities for mobile home living, and establish incentives to encourage production of manufactured housing.

Seek funding for special-needs housing.

By Deborah Brasket/Looking Forward

Recently, the Santa Maria Community Coalition sponsored a Ride the Bus Day to encourage those who do not normally use our public bus system to try it out.

Participants discovered that while the Santa Maria Area Transit (SMAT) ran a smooth operation with friendly drivers, the routes often did not meet their needs, and the long wait between buses — as much as an hour in the Orcutt area — made transit an inefficient use of their time.

The fact is, SMAT simply doesn’t have enough buses and routes to make using the bus system attractive to those who have other means of travel. A poll conducted on a local Web site confirms this.

When asked, “What is the biggest reason why you don’t use public transportation,” 52 percent replied inconvenient routes, 44 percent said it takes too long, and only 4 percent said now that gas is affordable, they’d rather use their own vehicles to get around.

The poll results imply that if the routes were more convenient and the wait between stops shorter, more drivers would use the bus system.

By Deborah Brasket/Looking Forward

Deja vu” is how one reporter referred to the series of oil spills by Greka oil facilities last month, totaling 14,000 gallons, and the frustrated laments of Santa Barbara County supervisors responding to the new spills. This series of spills so clearly echoes similar happenings a year ago.

 Public celebrations all across the world and tears of joy marked the culmination of a truly amazing presidential campaign on Nov. 4.

In significant measure, the historic election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States was an unprecedented grassroots effort, the kind we at SB CAN believe in and celebrate.