A rent stabilization ordinance for Santa Barbara is moving forward after an initial proposal failed to pass in October over a lack of transparency. 

While there’s still a long road ahead before an ordinance is approved, on Tuesday the Santa Barbara City Council agreed with a 4-3 vote to consider a temporary rent freeze in January while city staff drafts the stabilization ordinance.

Councilmembers Wendy Santamaria, Oscar Gutierrez, Kristen Sneddon and Meagan Harmon voted to support the temporary freeze. 

Harmon said it was a big moment for Santa Barbara.

“Certainly one to remember in the arc of our shared journey toward a more just, a more stable, a more resilient Santa Barbara,” Harmon said.

City administrator Kelly McAdoo explained that the city is set to hire a consultant next month to gather data and ensure the ordinance is tailored to the city’s housing needs. In February the city plans to hold a number of stakeholder focus groups to help develop the policies in the ordinance. 

If all goes to plan, the council will review a draft ordinance in March, allowing for public review before a final decision is made in July. If passed, the ordinance would be implemented in January 2027.

Self proclaimed small landlord Julie Weiner said without increasing rents, landlords can’t afford to maintain safe and healthy units. 

“I would like to say before you talk about limiting what we can charge, why don’t you work first on limiting what we’re being charged for things like water, property taxes, insurance — insurance has tripled for most of us,” Weiner said. “We don’t have any control of those costs, and if you can’t help us control those costs I don’t understand why you’d like to control how much we can take in in revenue so that we can maintain our buildings properly.”

Tenants encouraged the council to approve an ordinance, sharing how they were dealing with rapidly rising rent costs and working multiple jobs to afford to stay in Santa Barbara. 

A long-time resident since the 1950s, Trish Ainsworth, said she worries about being pushed out of Santa Barbara due to the high cost of living. 

“I live on Social Security, and my rent is going up dramatically every year and, frankly, I’m scared,” Ainsworth said. “I live in fear all the time, and I’m afraid I’m going to be driven out of my home, I’m going to have to leave Santa Barbara unless something gets done.”

There are a number of details that will have to be worked out before the ordinance is finalized, including what types of units, if any, should be excluded from the ordinance, if there should be a mandatory rental registry, and what an annual mandatory cap to rent increases would be.

Harmon said she didn’t want to exclude properties with a small number of units or older Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU). She did however ask that city staff consider an affordability exemption for landlords that offer units at an affordable rate.

“It is directed at the mom and pop landlords, many of whom were in this room tonight, who say that they keep their rent affordable and for whom this ordinance feels quite scary,” Harmon said.

Councilmember Mike Jordan said he would continue to not support the remedies in the ordinance, believing in the long run it would hurt the city’s housing stock and that it would only benefit current tenants and not future tenants. 

“I do believe it results in almost every, if not all locations that we’ve seen this, a loss in rental housing stock, a loss of housing production, a degradation of units that are in their upkeep; and in my mind it’s a benefit only to the current tenant,” Jordan said. 

He did pledge to “work honestly on the majority decision” and remedy any “probable consequences.”

Mayor Randy Rowse worried about the burden the ordinance would have on staff and if the city even has the ability to enforce an ordinance. 

“What we’re talking about is burdening our own administration when right now we can’t even put out the code enforcement personnel to take care of things like the illegal food vendors on the streets and they have the ordinances we have now, the camping ordinances, the sign ordinances,” Rowse said.