“Rent stabilization is coming,” Santa Barbara City Councilmember Meagan Harmon said matter-of-factly at Tuesday’s City Council hearing, during which the council voted 4-3 to direct city staff to formally create a work plan on a rental stabilization ordinance to be brought back before the end of the year.
Councilmembers Wendy Santamaria and Kristen Sneddon authored the two-person memo asking the council to revive the discussion over rent stabilization, a topic that almost always draws a lengthy debate and council chambers packed with passionate public commenters.
Tuesday’s hearing was no exception. Even with the explicit direction that discussion would be strictly confined to whether the city would formally agendize a future hearing on rent stabilization, council deliberation and public comment often veered into measuring the merits and potential dangers of a citywide rent cap in Santa Barbara.
More than two dozen property owners, real estate investors, landlords, and housing provider representatives showed up to warn the city councilmembers against pursuing any form of rent stabilization. “Kill it,” one landlord said. “Nip it in the bud,” said another.
Some said that they would sell their properties if the city tried to cap rents at anything less than the state limit of 5 percent plus the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Others said any government limit on rents would force landlords to abandon property maintenance, rent exclusively to students, or convert their units into short-term vacation rentals. One landlord suggested a headline for local newspapers: “Major Earthquake Hits Santa Barbara Property Owners.”
The property owners speaking against rent stabilization outnumbered the tenants and housing rights advocates nearly two-to-one, though one tenant who spoke reminded the council that landlords were far more likely to be available to show up to speak on a Tuesday afternoon.
The landlords spoke of profit margins, bureaucratic red tape, and increased costs for repairs, maintenance, and utilities; the tenants shared stories of untenable rent increases that often outpace wage raises, leaving more renters paying larger portions of their gross income to afford to stay in Santa Barbara.
A recent city survey — included in Councilmembers Sneddon and Santamaria’s memo — found the median price of a one-bedroom apartment in Santa Barbara is now $2,890, while the median cost of a two bedroom is around $3,940.
The city has been pursuing the prospect of rent stabilization in public meetings for several years now. The topic was one of the three main priorities that came out of the city’s ad-hoc Housing Crisis Task Force last December, and since Councilmember Santamaria was elected last year, the City Council has a four-to-three majority in favor of a rent stabilization ordinance.
The memo written by Councilmembers Santamaria and Sneddon brought the topic back before the council, and while it was not necessarily a surprise to the rest of the council, the fact that the memo included a draft ordinance pre-written by pro-bono lawyers almost derailed the discussion for al least one councilmember.
Councilmember Harmon, who has been a fervent supporter of rent stabilization during her six years on the council, expressed her concerns about the specifics included in the memo — which detailed a proposed cap of 60 percent of CPI — and worried that the council’s rush to get the ordinance done would be perceived as a lack of public transparency.
“Putting forth a full ordinance and asking that it be agendized, whatever the real intent, seems almost destined to pit community members against one another in ways that are totally foreseeable,” Harmon said. “I’m just begging us to be a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more inclusive, a little bit more focused in our approach to developing a rent stabilization policy moving forward. There are real-world consequences for tenants when we don’t do that.”
She said she was “clearly, unequivocally committed to seeing rent stabilization in Santa Barbara,” but urged the council to be thorough in finding a way to make the ordinance specifically tailored to the community. “We need our version of rent stabilization,” Harmon said.
Councilmember Harmon worried that taking too aggressive an approach would “further entrench” the opposing sides of the argument and could alienate landlords that the city should be welcoming to the table to design a proper ordinance. She floated some ideas that might help address the valid concerns of landlords, such as exemptions for those who charge less than a certain threshold of affordability, or other specified carveouts for mom-and-pop landlords.
Councilmember Sneddon said she was open to changing the details of the proposal, as long as the council gave clear direction to city staff to formally work toward a rent stabilization ordinance. “The goal of today is to be able to move forward with an agendized item so we can have a conversation,” Sneddon said. “We have not yet taken a vote that yes, we are in favor of rent stabilization.”
Councilmember Santamaria, whose support for rent stabilization was a core part of her 2024 election campaign, also said she wasn’t tethered to the details in the two-person memo. She said she and Sneddon were only hoping to help city staff and the city’s attorney’s office with a jumping-off point based on similar ordinances in other California cities. If the city set a date for a formal discussion, Santamaria said, then they could talk about “the meat and potatoes.”
“We can’t live with the uncertainty — neither side,” Councilmember Santamaria said.
Mayor Randy Rowse and Councilmembers Eric Friedman and Mike Jordan voted against the motion to pursue an ordinance formally. Mayor Rowse called the two-person memo “overly provocative” and worried that the rhetoric around rent stabilization demonized property owners.
Councilmember Friedman had concerns over the logistics and staff time that would need to be set aside for rent stabilization. He worried that the time taken on drafting a rent stabilization ordinance would take away from priority initiatives such as the short-term vacation rental enforcement program. “Right now, I don’t have the confidence that resources won’t be pulled from the vacation rental ordinance,” he said.
Before the final vote, Councilmember Friedman told property owners to pay attention to the writing on the wall: The council has four votes to approve rent stabilization, and it’s likely that the city could see it come to fruition in the near future. “You need to come to the table,” Councilmember Friedman said to property owners and real estate representatives in the crowd. “You have Councilmember Harmon, who’s open to it. If you all are open to it, it could go a long way to getting something that you might be able to work with versus something more draconian.”
In a 4-3 vote, the council directed staff to create a work plan for a rent stabilization ordinance, with the intent of returning for a formal hearing before the end of the year. Councilmembers Councilmembers Oscar Gutierrez, Harmon, Santamaria, and Sneddon all voted in favor.
