Santa Barbara City Council candidate Wendy Santamaria’s advocacy of extreme and counterproductive rent control policies should be highlighted in the final phase of the decisive 1st District council race. As advertised on her campaign website, she favors a maximum 2 percent increase in rents per year, irrespective of inflation or other increases to property owners in such areas as insurance, utilities, or repairs. She supports a “rental registry,” in part funded by renters, that would be an expensive new bureaucracy that would interpose itself between renters and property owners. She also favors a vacancy tax that would increase the cost of rental housing by leading property owners to take rentals permanently off the market rather than temporarily.
The Eastside has many small, local mom-and-pop landlords. These proposals would harm many of these individuals, their families, and the renters to whom they rent. There would be much less construction of new rental housing and increased corporate ownership of the existing rental stock. Residents in the 1st District who are in favor of more rental housing, and lower rents, should vote against Santamaria.
