A new affordable housing project is set to be built along Schoolhouse Lane in Cambria.
Cambria Pines is a three-acre housing development that will have 33 units and serve lower-income families and those experiencing homelessness.
“Those folks who are making no more than about 60% of the area median income will be eligible to apply,” said Ken Trigueiro, People’s Self-Help Housing CEO and President.
Thirty-five-year resident Ken Cooper previously owned a motel in town and saw how his workers struggled with the rising cost of rent.
“Because of that, everybody left, and then it became a shortage of those kinds of workers because there was no place for those folks to live,” Cooper said.
Trigueiro says People’s Self-Help Housing built its last affordable housing project in Cambria in 1997.
“That was the last year any affordable housing has been built in Cambria,” Trigueiro said.
Cambria Pines will be built next door to the 1997 project. Trigueiro says another affordable development is greatly needed.
"On the existing property, we have over 200 families who are on the waitlist. A lot of those families are living in Cambria and have doubled or tripled up in housing arrangements or are working in Cambria, but they can’t find any affordable housing, so they are traveling into the area for their jobs,” Trigueiro said.
“The one that they built there has been very successful, and it housed a lot of people,” Cooper said.
Cambria Pines will feature a community center, a learning center, an outdoor playground, and a laundry room. The three-acre housing development will be on nearly six acres.
“The rest we’re putting into a conservation easement so that it can be preserved in perpetuity in its natural state,” Trigueiro said.
On Tuesday, the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors unanimously awarded the project $1.3 million using SB 1090 funds.
“To help us really be more competitive at the state level for tax credit financing. That should be the last stop before we get going,” Trigueiro said.
The $28 million project is being funded by other financing partners like HASLO and the SLO County Housing Trust Fund.
“But the rest of what we need is about $19 million, and that’s what we’re going to the state to get an allocation of tax credits for,” Trigueiro said.
He says that if the project does get an award from the state, they expect to break ground next spring.
