Watch: How State Enabled an 8-Story Tower Next to SB's Mission - and How the City is Pushing Back
Newsmakers TV takes a deep dive into that harebrained proposal to build a blockbuster apartment at 505 E. Olivos, and looks at the threat of eviction faced by hundreds of elderly tenants downtown
It’s difficult to imagine a bigger desecration of Santa Barbara’s iconic landscape then the hideous housing project some shady out-of-town developers propose to build adjoining the Old Mission.
A strip mall anchored by a Halloween Spirit pop-up on the Courthouse lawn? A Tyson chicken processing plant at the end of Stearns Wharf? A flashing Bud Lite sign on Trinity Church?
Risible suggestions maybe, but the scheme to construct an eight-story blockbuster apartment building at 505 E. Olivos Street is all too unfunny, amid the broader dynamic of the power grab over local zoning matters orchestrated in recent years by Gov. Gavin Newsom and his build-baby-build quislings in the Legislature.
On this week’s episode of Newsmakers TV, housing reporter Christina McDermott untwines the tangle of legal and policy issues shaping the impassioned controversy over the project, while her SB Independent colleague and editor Nick Welsh brings clarity to the political stakes.
“I’ve never an seen an issue that has unified people as much as this one,” Nick says.
As the newspaper’s Mickey Flacks Fellow, Christina is assigned to dig into the housing beat in depth and detail, and also worked with colleague Jean Yamamura to produce this week’s just-out cover story, which focuses on the uncertainty faced by several hundred elderly tenants on fixed incomes who live in two downtown buildings long owned by the Battistone Foundation, which is preparing to sell them.
Plus: The Angry Poodle’s rant about the looming, heartbreaking impacts on thousands of local residents who depend on government-subsidized medical care of Trump’s comfort-the-comfortable and afflict-the-afflicted tax bill
All this and more, right here, right now, on Newsmakers TV.
Check out our new episode below, or by clicking through this link. Our podcast is on Apple, Spotify, or on Soundcloud here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.