UC Santa Barbara is an Eastside housing project’s newest and only tenant. On August 10, the university announced in an email that it had recently signed a master lease for the new 36-unit apartment building at 219 East Haley Street. The property, called Alena on Haley, contains studios and one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments, as well as a townhouse and penthouse. It will rent to UCSB faculty and staff for approximately market rate, with a one-bedroom starting at $2,950.
On the high end, one-bedrooms could hit $4,000 per month, and two bedrooms could reach $4,500. The price for the town home and penthouse are not listed.
With the Haley property, UCSB adds a second rental option for its faculty and staff near downtown Santa Barbara. The university bought the 80-unit Soltara apartment complex on East Gutierrez Street in late 2025, along with several other properties nearby. At the time, UCSB announced Soltara would be “economically viable” workforce rental housing. When UCSB announced the purchase in November of last year, about 50 of the 80 units were already occupied — leases the university said they would honor.
Market-rate units in Santa Barbara will only be a viable option for some UCSB employees, as salaries for faculty and staff at UCSB range widely. To afford a $3,000 one-bedroom rental unit in Santa Barbara and not be considered rent-burdened, a person needs to make more than $90,000 a year. That’s far from a UCSB groundskeeper’s salary, which falls at a max of about $72,000 annually, or a child development teacher, which caps out at $80,000 per year, according to university data. But, a first-year associate professor’s salary, which stands at about $103,000 annually, could afford the unit.
Still, Alena on Haley will add to UCSB housing offerings. Along with Soltara, the university owns three other properties where it provides either rental housing or homes for sale for faculty and staff. Currently, all three of these housing options have waitlists.
Closer to campus, UCSB’s 540-home housing project is still in the planning stages. The Ocean Road project, which would add homes for sale and rent for university faculty and staff, is at least 18 years old and has not yet broken ground. In March 2025, the UC Board of Regents approved an alternative financing method for a “reimagined” form of the project, with more density and a focus on rental housing, as reported by the Daily Nexus. The university is facing a lawsuit from the community group Sustainable University Now (SUN) over violations of the California Public Records Act over the project. The coalition had requested, through a records request, several documents regarding the status of the project.
As for the apartments on Haley, the project is at least seven years in the making. In 2019, story poles went up on-site and the city’s planning commission held a concept review hearing. At that time, public commenters expressed concern over the project’s size and its impact to the local area. The project was approved in January 2020.
The property is owned by an LLC called Haley Street Holdings, which is managed by Price Taylor Enterprises LLC. Matthew Taylor confirmed that he and the Price family own the property at 219 East Haley Street.
“We’ve been working on this project for quite some time. Everyone knows it is difficult to get housing done in this community, and we are very appreciative of the partnership with UCSB,” he said in a statement to the Independent. “It’s great seeing them double down on their commitment to our city.”
Taylor is also a developer for the proposed 680-unit housing project at the Macy’s end of La Cumbre Plaza. The project, called the Neighborhood at State and Hope, is in an area the city has deemed suitable for mixed-use redevelopment.