Santa Barbara City College and Allan Hancock College partnered to host the inaugural Upward Mobility Summit in Santa Barbara County on Jan. 24 from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., 

The summit included a panel featuring several SBC elected leaders. Wynne Bendell / Daily Nexus

The summit featured multiple panels with non-profit representatives and elected officials, who discussed current initiatives to combat poverty in Santa Barbara County, such as improving food security and new housing developments. 

Santa Barbara County (SBC) is estimated to have one of the highest poverty rates in California, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. The SBC  poverty rate is 16.9%, around 69,300 people, and the child poverty rate is 19.5%. 

The first summit’s panel focused on challenging narratives surrounding poverty with President of the nonprofit End Poverty in California, Devon Gray. He said that high poverty rates, such as the SBC’s, are due to structural failings rather than individual ones. 

“Rather than believing that poverty is an individual failing, we work to demonstrate how poverty is created by the systems and the structures and the opportunity hoarding and the segregation that makes poverty an inevitability from millions of people and ends up becoming quite profitable for others,” Gray said. 

Outreach Coordinator of Community Health Centers of the Central Coast Noemi Velasquez called for systemic changes at the nonprofit level, urging advocacy organizations to reflect on how they interact with impoverished communities and focus on the needs of the community. 

Velasquez works with the SBC Food Bank and implemented a community-centered approach by placing pallets of food directly in the communities, rather than solely in the food bank. 

“What we decided to do is address the social determinants of health by doing intentional work. And I think that sometimes organizations lack that. We sometimes expect people to come to us rather than us going to the people,” Velasquez said. “We decided that we were going to drop the pallets in the middle of the neighborhood and create access where people feel safe, where they live, where they play, where they pray and where they don’t have to travel to us as service providers.”

The summit ended with a panel featuring several SBC elected leaders, including Laura Capps, the SBC Board of Supervisors District 2 supervisor. Capps said that combating poverty in her district is one of her main priorities.

One of her goals is to get CalFresh participation for those who qualify up to 100% in SBC. She reported the current participation rate as 71%, attributing the ongoing rise in participation partly to UCSB signing up students who qualify for the benefits. 

“UCSB decided to step it up on CalFresh years ago, and they have enrolled so many students who qualify for food assistance. My colleague and I went to watch their annual enrollment. There were 150 students lined up with free pizza, to sign up for their CalFresh benefit,” Capps said. 

In addition to food assistance, Capps discussed the housing crisis in Isla Vista, where price gouging is a contributing factor to a lack of affordable housing.

“I do think it is important to say that we can end poverty. We can end this affordable housing crisis; we have the means; we have the motivation; we have the tools; we certainly have the greed at the basis of price gouging,” Capps said. “I can tell you story after story in Isla Vista in particular. I was just at a house, a 5 bedroom house, it has an ocean view but they are being charged $38,000 a month with a security deposit of $60,000. We have gouging; we have greed.”

During the town hall, City of Santa Barbara Councilmember Kristen Sneddon said that the Santa Barbara City Council is working to combat the housing crisis, with a recent initiative approved on Sep. 10 last year to open two trust funds specifically for affordable housing development with $2.9 million in each. 

Sneddon echoed the ideas of community-centered action from earlier panels by expressing the need for ongoing communication with every community member. She said that more work must be done by the city council, especially regarding community outreach. 

“It’s a really important point to be asking people what they want for their community, rather than having a top-down approach. So I am a big supporter of public input, public comment, public outreach in multiple languages, multiple formats to be able to share information,” Sneddon said. “But if there is a person who doesn’t feel connected or involved then we haven’t reached everyone and so that is an important reminder that we must do more.”

A version of this article appeared on p.4 of the Jan. 30, 2025 edition of the Daily Nexus.  

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