The Average Unit-Size Density (AUD) Program

What the program allows

Base density in the zones where housing is allowed is 12 to 18 units per acre. An AUD project may exceed that if its units are small enough on average — a project-wide average of net floor area divided by units, not a cap on any one unit. The tier follows the lot's land use designation (2026 study):

• Medium-High — 15 to 27 units per acre, max average unit size 1,450 down to 905 sq ft.
• High — 28 to 36 units per acre, 1,245 down to 970 sq ft.
• Priority Housing Overlay — 37 to 63 units per acre, 970 down to 811 sq ft, and only for rental, employer-sponsored, or limited-equity cooperative housing.

Those tiers are not hard ceilings. Twelve AUD projects have used state or city density bonus law to exceed them, reaching 52 units per acre in the Medium-High tier and 122 in the Priority Housing Overlay. The city is plain about the aim: the program "was never intended to create affordable housing for low-income households."

The other incentives, and what they replace (2023 progress report):

• Height — the zones' 45-foot limit, 48 feet by right in the Central Business District, 60 feet by exception for Community Benefit Housing. Nineteen percent of projects were granted an exception above the maximum.
• Parking — in the CBD no minimum and one space maximum; outside it one space per unit up to two bedrooms and two at three or more, no guest parking, against 1.25 to 2 spaces for non-AUD projects plus guest parking at six or more units.

In return, AUD rental projects of ten or more units must provide at least 10 percent of units at an affordable rent for moderate-income households; five-to-nine-unit projects may build one such unit or pay $25.00 per net residential square foot; four or fewer are exempt. Rental projects that do not use AUD — those at base density, and those in the coastal zone, which the program does not reach — carry no inclusionary requirement (2026 study).

How this gets decided

Amending the program takes a Council ordinance, introduced at one meeting and adopted at a later one, after the Planning Commission and Ordinance Committee (city project page).

Individual buildings go a different route — environmental review, then the Staff Hearing Officer or Planning Commission, then the Architectural Board of Review — but those decisions are appealable to elected officials: Staff Hearing Officer to Planning Commission, Planning Commission to Council, design review to Council. Height exceptions granted at concept review are not appealable.

What is live right now

• The inclusionary requirement is being rewritten now — the only part of the program with an amendment in the record searched on 2026-07-28. SBMC 30.150.110, the AUD rental inclusionary section, is among those the city's Inclusionary Housing project is amending. Among the 2026 study's ten recommendations: extend the requirement to all rental projects of five or more units, not only AUD ones; raise the rental in-lieu fee from $25.00 to $50.00 per net square foot at ten or more units; and move the moderate-income rent target from 100 to 110 percent of area median income, raising the maximum rent chargeable in an inclusionary unit. No baseline prototype under the existing program is "likely feasible under current market conditions," the study adds, while density-bonus prototypes with very-low-income set-asides are (2026 study).
• Where that stands: the Planning Commission heard the study April 16, and a city project page states Council heard it and gave staff direction on May 5, 2026 — approved Council minutes for that date are not yet published, and this claim will be re-checked against them when they are; staff is drafting the amendments now, for adoption hearings in fall 2026 (project page). What Council directed that day is not established by the searched record: approved regular-meeting minutes run only through March 17, 2026 as of a 2026-07-28 search; this platform does not treat news accounts as the record.

How to be heard

• At the start of the 2:00 p.m. session of every regular Council meeting, any member of the public may address Council on any item not on the agenda — the channel open when nothing here is agendized. Meetings are at City Hall, 735 Anacapa Street; file a Request to Speak form before comment on an item is taken up. Speakers get 3 minutes, extendable by 2 if an audience member gives their time, and anyone who did not speak at 2:00 p.m. may speak in the 6:00 p.m. evening session (City Council Meetings).
• On the inclusionary amendments: project planner Dana Falk, InclusionaryHousing@SantaBarbaraCA.gov, plus an email-updates list on the project page.
• On an individual project: email CDAdmin@SantaBarbaraCA.gov with your name, email and mailing address and the case number — PLN2024-00227 for the 3805 State application at La Cumbre Plaza. Notice is mailed for the first hearing before each body only, and none when a body continues a project to a later date (La Cumbre Plaza page).

What the record says (each claim links to its source)

• Trial to permanent, and the share fought twice. A trial from July 2013, extended twice, the program became permanent with Ordinance No. 6129 on a 6-1 roll call, December 5, 2023, Sneddon opposed (minutes). On June 4, 2019 a Dominguez/Gutierrez substitute — 10 percent inclusionary inside the Central Business District, 15 percent outside — passed 4-3 (ayes Dominguez, Gutierrez, Sneddon, Harmon); the reintroduced ordinance settled at 10 percent everywhere (minutes). On June 22, 2021 a Sneddon/O. Gutierrez motion to return to 15 percent outside the CBD failed 3-4 (ayes O. Gutierrez, Harmon, Sneddon) (minutes).
• 2019: where the map and the standards were set. At a November 14, 2019 joint Council and Planning Commission work session, adding the Priority Housing Overlay along State Street from Arrellaga to Mission failed 3-4 then passed 4-3 on a revote; removing it from the Milpas corridor passed 5-2; eliminating the CBD open-yard requirement between Anacapa and Chapala passed 4-3 (minutes). On December 10 a motion to hold the height limit at 45 feet failed 2-5, the increase to 48 feet in the C-G and M-C zones then passed 5-2, removing the priority overlay from the Castillo and De La Vina historic districts passed 6-1 after a motion to keep it failed 3-4, and keeping the Brinkerhoff historic district at Medium-High density passed 4-3 (minutes).
• 2020: the Central Business District ordinance. Ordinance No. 5954, adopted August 4, 2020 by 6-1 (Sneddon opposed), added the High Density tier and Priority Housing Overlay inside the CBD, allowed 48 feet there in the C-G and M-C zones, and capped CBD parking at one space per unit. Its capacity table books +2,523 maximum units in the CBD infill area against 1,441 withdrawn from three historic districts and the Milpas corridor, a net +1,082 — but it casts the withdrawals as an amendment the City "will again" make within twelve months, so +2,523 is what it added. Whether that map amendment was adopted is not established by the searched record: the 2023 report calls the historic-district removals done and does not mention Milpas (Ordinance No. 5954).
• Ten years of results, as of May 2023. 973 units permitted and 1,439 proposed, against a need of 8,001 units for 2023-2031, less than a quarter of which was permitted in the preceding eight years. The average AUD unit is 716 sq ft against 1,468 pre-AUD: studios rose from 2 to 28 percent of units, units with two or more bedrooms fell from 75 to 43 percent, and three-or-more-bedroom units are 6 percent — which the report attributes to the January 2019 amendment doubling their parking requirement. 98.5 percent of proposed units are rental against 95 percent ownership pre-AUD; 61 percent of projects are under ten units. Of 4,885 eligible lots — 27 percent of the city's inland lots — the Priority Housing Overlay's 1,569 produced 574 of the 973 permitted units. Thirty-two units are inclusionary moderate-income rentals the AUD rule itself required; 11 were satisfied instead by in-lieu fees totaling over $168,000. July 2023 median advertised AUD rents ran $2,216 for a studio and $3,925 for a two-bedroom, needing incomes of $88,660 and $157,020 to rent without being rent-burdened; the two-bedroom rent "is not affordable to median or moderate-income households" and is attainable to middle- and upper-middle-income households (2023 progress report).

DRAFT — machine-drafted from the cited records on 2026-07-28, revised after neutrality audit round 1; awaiting the gate. Corrections: every claim above must trace to its linked source; report anything that doesn't.