Stronger Relocation Rules Pushed for Displaced Tenants

It is expensive to live here and people paying below market rent need to plan for the day when they will have to pay market rent and prepare accordingly. Failure to plan on their part should not create problems for others.

With three kids and an injured husband, Jaimes said, she’s moved twice since being evicted.

This might sound insensitive, but why not leave the area? Just about anywhere is cheaper than SB, so why stay and torture yourself?

First of all, SB is a city, not a private club, so y'all need to either get used to living alongside poor and working class people, or get on some good meds so their existence won't freak you out so much.

Secondly; I'm about done with the "Latinos and Families" mantra. This stuff is happening to everyone everywhere, and it's no fun for anybody. Try being 80 years old or disabled and finding yourself evicted; now THERE are two groups of people who are well and truly screwed no matter what they do...the elderly and the disabled. They can't play the race card or the kid card. They're just screwed.

And nobody cares.

The fact is that when you rent, you have nothing. The rent trap is simply as follows: a property owner lets you borrow the property for a fee... which can change at any time, and you can be kicked off that property at any time. There is zero security in being a renter. Renting is a fool's paradise.

The sooner people wake up and realize that more laws aren't going to fix this problem, the better. There has to be real competition in place before landlords are going to realize that their product just isn't all that valuable and the tenant market needs to be courted, rather than continually ripped off, then vilified by the "if you can't afford to live here, get the hell out" crowd.

Some solutions are mobile home parks with entry-level-priced, modest manufactured homes which can be purchased, along with an interest in the park itself, like a resident-owned co-op. No landlords, no renting, no nonsense. Eligibility would be income-based...and not for people making 75k a year, either, but more like the working stiffs who are gasping along on what passes for a living wage in this area.

No" programs", poverty pimps, "social services" or any of that other nonsense where overeducated parasitic twits "administer" things, feed off the desperation of others, and cherry-pick "consumers" to "receive benefits".

Just regular folks who work, or who are on Social Security, trying to get by in their OWN HOME TOWN, where frankly, they DO have every right to live.

And, (Gasp) how about an RV campground where residents are charged a rent based on their income, so motorhomers can get off the streets, and work towards the above mobile home park and ownership?

Instead of whinging about people living in vehicles on the streets, or people who can't afford thousands of dollars in monthly fees to occupy housing at the whim of a landlord, start offering realistic and humane solutions.

If you gripe, then you have to offer a real solution, and "get out of my personal Eden" is not a solution; it's the screeching of selfish brats who don't want anyone else to have anything at all, while they hoard everything for themselves.

Grow up and learn to share, kids. It's really NOT all about you.

"Almost always, the affected households are low-income, Latino, and families."

Ah yes, let's politicize poverty along racial lines, and of course, for "the children".

Here's the reality check folks: "low-income" is all that you need to describe the problem. Maybe if people claiming to speak for all the disenfranchised would quit pulling the race card and also realize that those who haven't performed the biological function of having a child are among those left out financially, something good could come of this.

It doesn't matter what color your skin is or whether or not you're part of an officially oppressed demographic, because poverty crosses all these lines. Was Eleanor Rigby a woman with children?...

If one is truly concerned about the plight of the poor/working class, then they should realize that poverty does not discriminate along racial lines or familial status.

I am a "Latina" and a single parent, born and raised in SB. However, when I realized that I could not afford SB, I moved to Santa Maria. While it may not be exactly where I wanted to live, I can afford to raise my kids, own a good size home and have some money left over.

I have to agree with some of the above, SB is not a club and if you can't afford the rent, simply put MOVE!! That is all there is to it, move out of SB and have a more affordable life. My house payment is still less than rent for a 3 bd house in SB.

This proposed County ordinance essentially would make the same rules apply there as already exist in Santa Barbara City.

The rental market still works fine in the City with those rules in place. The market clears. Profits are made. Commerce and trade continue. The sun also rises.

Santa Barbara never will have enough housing for everyone who wants to reside here, but at least maintaining the rental housing stock we already have is good public policy that local government can do something about.

And that is Change we need.