While permit activity in Santa Barbara County has remained steady in recent years, a cluster of planning permit applications in Isla Vista, along with a recent shift toward multifamily housing projects, reflect continued housing pressure in the area and fuel concerns about crowding and congestion in Isla Vista.

Santa Barbara County’s (SBC) Planning & Development department oversees the permitting process, which is necessary for the development of any new land usage and construction. The type of permits issued for a development can vary based on the building types, and some developments may require more than one permit.

Planning permits in SBC cover a range of projects, including housing and commercial developments. Travis Seawards, Deputy Director of the Development Review Division for Planning & Development, explained that permit applicants typically work with different outside professionals to navigate the process.

“[Applicants] usually hire … a contractor or a planning consultant, and they help people get through our process and then it gets assigned to a staff,” Seawards said. “We review the application and process it, depending on the size and the level of permits. Sometimes, it’s just a staff-level approval. Sometimes, projects need approval by the planning commission, so it just depends on the project type, but everybody applies through our online permit process.”

The majority of the permits requested between October 2024 and October 2025 in SBC were for developments in I.V.: out of 49 locations for which permits were requested, 33 were in I.V. While the number of overall planning permit applications has not increased in recent years, Joseph Dargel, a supervising planner of the Planning & Development in SBC, said that their composition has shifted, with multifamily housing planning permits now making up a larger proportion of application types throughout the county. According to Dargel, housing development is the predominant reason for permit applications.

“We have large multifamily housing projects all over the county, but there’s more in the Goleta and Isla Vista area,” Dargel said. According to Dargel, current multifamily applications in I.V. are for approximately 258 new units.

Any residence that houses multiple households — such as an apartment complex — can be classified as a multifamily housing unit; hence, many student housing properties in I.V. fall into this category.

“The multifamily housing projects are significantly helping the County reach our Regional Housing Needs Assessment pursuant to state housing law,” Dargel said.

Eleanor Gartner, an SBC district representative and the Communications Director for Supervisor Laura Capps, noted that developers are trying to respond to a demand for housing in I.V.

“Developers are going through the permitting process to build more,” Gartner said. “[I.V.] is also the densest part of Santa Barbara County. [The development helps] address the really large population that lives in a geographically pretty small area in the county.”

Despite efforts to accommodate more residents in I.V.’s dense community, students like Mimi Nguyen, a third-year economics major, still experience the strain and crowded conditions of I.V. housing.

“It’s very hard to find housing in I.V. It’s very cramped too, and it’s overly expensive and I do not enjoy living here,” Nguyen said. “I have friends living in Goleta, like Hollister Village. For the same price of housing, the places that they’re living [in] are much more modern, spacious and just newer.”

In addition to multifamily housing developments, Gartner noted a growing number of requests for developing Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) — additional living spaces, such as garages or basements, within existing housing spaces — in I.V.

Nicolas Amore, a fourth-year statistics and data science major, described his experience living in an ADU in I.V. as “fortunate,” noting that navigating the housing search in I.V. is generally difficult for students.

“This woman built a bunch of small … ADU units in her backyard,” Amore said. “Everyone gets their own room.”

Amore, who commuted from Goleta to UC Santa Barbara until last September, acknowledged that typical housing in I.V. can be unappealing to students seeking more private or less congested spaces.

“I just kind of got lucky with a Facebook Marketplace booking, and I found a really good spot,” Amore said. “I might be an anomaly, but I got a good deal.”

On Jan. 27, the SBC Board of Supervisors approved a series of ordinance amendments that, according to Gartner, is meant to streamline the permit application process. The amendments aim to make the overall application process clearer and more efficient to developers.

“The approved amendments … include important updates that support housing goals identified in the County’s recently adopted Housing Element,” the press release for the amendments’ approval reads. “These changes modernize commercial zones to allow more mixed-use development and adjust standards in multifamily zones—such as height, setbacks, and open space requirements—to better support housing at planned densities.”

“[The amendments can] make it just an easier process to [get] decisions made by county staff who need to sign off on the various parts of the permit. [Supervisor Capps] thinks it’s a great start, and she also believes that more can be done to make things even easier and for people to make decisions faster,” Gartner said.

While efforts to develop housing have increased the number of units that can house I.V. residents, I.V. resident Pegeen Soutar claimed in an opinion piece for the Santa Barbara Independent that legislation that has sought to streamline approval processes for housing development may have significantly accelerated the pace at which new units have been constructed in I.V. at the cost of street parking space.

“The number of cars in Isla Vista already exceeds the number of legal parking spaces on a regular basis,” Soutar wrote. “Visibility has become difficult for drivers, unable to see pedestrians and bicyclists … There is no overall plan for managing this massive amount of new growth in this highly populated and congested area.”

Nguyen attested to Soutar’s concerns about street parking and noted how the shortage has affected many students.

“I don’t have a car, but a lot of my friends have cars,” Nguyen said. “When they try to find street parking, sometimes it’s impossible.”

Such challenges reflect broader pressures on housing in I.V., and efforts to develop multifamily housing, ADUs and other units in I.V. are illustrative of both state- and county-wide responses to widespread housing crises.

“There’s a high demand for units, and the population growth has already occurred,” Dargel said. “The population is already here and needs housing units, so that’s why the legislature has [responded] to that need.”