Isla Vista Move Out 2025 ended with MarBorg hauling away tons of furniture, mattresses, and garbage left on the street. Where else in Santa Barbara County do entire apartment buildings empty out every year for cleaning, painting, and repairs? Nowhere.
According the 2nd District Supervisor’s office, the annual renovation fails to address “basic health and safety needs of the properties,” hence the use of settlement money from UCSB to create an annual “Pilot Inspection Program” requiring owners to register their properties, notice tenants, and facilitate entry by county inspectors. The ordinance requires owners act as government agents for Santa Barbara County’s Planning and Development Department.
At a public meeting with representatives of Supervisor Laura Capps (she was ill and could not attend) outgoing Associated Student Senator Paolo Brinderson expressed concern that tenants be informed of the likelihood of their property being inspected and that they know their rights. Brinderson is correct — tenants must be informed that they are not required to allow a government inspector to explore their private spaces. A town hall held during finals week with a smattering of students does not inform tenants of their right to refuse entry to government agents.
Isla Vista tenants are low-income students who vote elsewhere and have no idea that Santa Barbara County exists, let alone that there is an ordinance empowering a government agent to enter their dwellings. Brinderson graduated, summer is here, and many student tenants are away from Isla Vista. The county sees this as a perfect time to trample on their rights.
Historically, Santa Barbara County building inspections are complaint driven. According to Jeff Wilson, assistant director of Planning and Development, the Pilot Program “will target areas based on properties that have received frequent tenant complaints.” If the county is already fielding and presumably addressing complaints the system is working as-is.
Supposedly the Pilot Program is “free” due to the use of UCSB’s settlement — received, ironically, after the county and City of Goleta filed a lawsuit against UCSB for not supplying promised housing for 25,000 students but admitting them anyway.
UCSB’s dorm packing is the reason many students live in areas of a property their lease explicitly states are off-limits for living. Some may be unauthorized occupants; a lease violation that could unhouse an entire group of students.
Ignoring the potential tangential costs to tenants, the expense to owners of noticing tenants and facilitating the entry of government inspectors is not free and never will be. If Isla Vista inspections are an annual ritual, like the expense of repairs and cleaning at move out, the cost will be passed on to tenants, whether by passing on the actual cost of the inspection, by increasing rents, or reducing the unauthorized housing by 10 percent.
Making owners misuse their right to visit a rental property to admit government agents violates tenant’s rights. Isla Vista tenants are universally uninformed of Supervisor Capps’s Pilot Program and their constitutional right to refuse entry. This ill-advised, hastily constructed ordinance elicited zero input from owners or students and tramples on longstanding California tenant rights.
If the pilot program is really about health and safety then UCSB’s dollars are better used advising tenants on reporting health and safety issues and following up with sufficient staff to address tenant concerns.
A program that violates tenant’s right to privacy is government abuse and a misuse of money earmarked for Isla Vista.
