Workforce homes for hospital staff will benefit our community

by Marshall Rose

September 5, 2006

Today, health care in America is facing many serious challenges.  As providers,  physicians and hospitals are challenged to deliver the high quality care for which they are trained and equipped.  At the same time, healthcare professionals are in extremely high demand across the country. This is particularly true in California where growing demand outpaces the supply of new graduates.

Our Santa Barbara community is faced with even greater challenges as our critical healthcare providers (nurses, techs, therapists, etc.) find themselves unable to afford housing in the community where they work and where they will be most needed on short notice when disaster strikes.  With the price of home ownership in the Santa Barbara area continuing to escalate, the not-for-profit Cottage Health System is having increasing difficulty in attracting and retaining qualified employees.

However, we have an opportunity to lead the way in addressing this critical issue. Being able to develop workforce affordable homes on the former St. Francis site offers hope, and has been the plan since Catholic Healthcare West closed the 85-bed hospital in 2003 and sold the property to Cottage.

Since then, the Cottage board and many others in the community have been working diligently to put in place a plan that would respect the existing neighborhood and allow for a reasonable number of housing units.  We began a series of meetings with those who live in the St Francis neighborhood.  We explained our goal, listened to concerns, shared our design and adjusted the plan where we could.  It is more than three years now since the hospital closed and I can appreciate that neighbors have become accustomed to the decreased activity and noise in the area.  But we must move this plan forward if we are to begin addressing an issue that, if we do nothing, will negatively impact all of us in this community.

The proposed Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital Foundation Workforce Housing Program, with 70% affordable homes and no public funding, calls for 115 townhomes designed to blend into the existing neighborhood more appropriately than the current buildings on the site.  Reuse of these existing structures has been discussed before on these pages, but it will not be successful.  Employees have told us frankly they are not interested in purchasing units in a refurbished hospital, and honestly, I can’t blame them. Touring the shuttered hospital reveals all of the shortcomings of a building that was never meant to house families.  The non-adaptable buildings would have to be torn down in any case—more than 85,000 sq ft of them—and the interior of any adaptable ones completely gutted.

We certainly acknowledge the concerns about environmental issues of dust, hazardous materials and noise.  However, as is standard with every building project, we will meet all necessary mitigations required for a construction process like this—just as we are on a larger scale for the rebuilding of Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.  We will also recycle 95% of the total tonnage of concrete and steel from the demolished buildings.  Although the existing neighbors will feel the temporary impacts of demolition and construction, many future generations will benefit because more critical healthcare workers will be able to live near where they work.  The much lower profile and neighborhood compatible housing will be a permanent improvement to the lower Riviera.     

The new townhomes will be sold at workforce affordable rates to Cottage employees, and retained in perpetuity for such use.  In other words, when an employee leaves the hospital or retires, the unit will be sold back to Cottage.  Any price increases will follow City of Santa Barbara workforce affordable rates in place at the time of the sale, so that the employee can realize some gain, yet the unit price will remain attractive to future buyers.

A qualified, experienced and satisfied workforce is essential to the lifesaving work that is performed daily at our hospitals.  More than 20,000 of us were admitted to one of Cottage’s facilities last year; more than 60,000 of us sought emergency care.  We depend on these nurses and therapists; we need the skills of pharmacists and radiology techs; the laboratory scientists, dietitians, and more—each is important and each has a choice about where to live and work.  Long commutes will take their toll.  We need to acknowledge the complex infrastructure and needs of any community and recognize that the level of quality health care we enjoy through Cottage’s facilities is extremely unusual in communities of our size.  To keep it that way, we must start addressing the challenge of high housing costs and its impact on retaining first-rate healthcare workers.

We have an opportunity to take a leadership role in tackling this issue. The benefit will be ours and the Santa Barbara area will be a stronger, healthier and more vibrant community. 

Marshall Rose chairs the voluntary board of directors for Cottage Health System

This letter was published in the September 6, 2006 Santa Barbara News-Press.