We owe the community honesty about how housing policies actually work — especially when their real impact goes far beyond what’s being promised.
The Santa Barbara City Council’s proposed “temporary” rent freeze doesn’t just pause rent increases for a few months. When combined with the city’s requirement that landlords offer one-year leases, it can lock rents in place for a year or more — even after the freeze officially ends.
If a rent freeze is in effect when a one-year lease must be offered, the rent must be set at the frozen level. Once that lease is signed, the rent is locked for the full year.
Even if the city later allows modest increases under a permanent ordinance, those increases can’t be applied until the lease expires.
Additionally, rent increases taken after Dec. 16, 2025, are counted against future allowable increases. That means small, local owners who raised rent just to keep up with rising insurance, utilities or repairs may be barred from any increases for years to come.
In Santa Barbara, most rental housing is owned by neighbors — retirees, working families and longtime residents. When rents are frozen while costs continue to rise, something must give: deferred maintenance, fewer improvements, or owners leaving the rental market entirely.
Strong renter protections and healthy housing aren’t opposites. But progressive policy should be transparent, balanced and grounded in real-world consequences — not built on mechanisms that quietly extend a “temporary” freeze far into the future.
Loy Beardsmore
Santa Barbara
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In his Jan. 5 commentary, “Rent Control Turns a Housing Problem Into a Class War We Don’t Need,” Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse is right that the city faces a housing crisis and that supply matters. But he’s wrong to say rent stabilization accomplishes nothing.
I’ve lived in the same rental for almost 10 years, and my rent has increased by about $1,000 a month. Every increase was legal — and still unsustainable.
For tenants on fixed or modest incomes, “legal” hikes mean slow displacement.
Yes, we need more housing. But new units take years to build, and much of what’s coming is priced far beyond what renters can afford.
In the meantime, tenants face constant increases — and too often slow-walking landlords who delay repairs while charging more.
For those of us in unincorporated Santa Barbara County, it’s even harder. City agencies can’t help, and county enforcement is limited.
That’s why rent stabilization must be part of the solution. Santa Barbara should be a place where people can live with dignity — not just a beautiful city for the wealthy and tourists, but one sustained by the people who keep it running.
Jo Romo
Santa Barbara County
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Mayor Randy Rowse argues that rent stabilization forces landlords to raise rents and worsens affordability.
This claim misstates both the policy and the economics. Rent increases since 2019 reflect chronic housing undersupply, rising construction and insurance costs, higher interest rates and inflation — pressures affecting markets with and without rent caps.
State law sets maximum allowable increases; it does not require annual rent hikes.
Framing tenant protections as “class war” obscures their purpose: reducing displacement and volatility in severely supply-constrained markets where tenants lack bargaining power. Housing is essential infrastructure, not a typical commodity.
Santa Barbara’s housing challenge will not be solved by rhetoric. It requires addressing supply constraints while recognizing that modest rent stabilization plays a stabilizing — not divisive — role.
Gina Quiroz
Santa Barbara
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I want to thank all the hardworking, clear-headed, thinking (versus dreaming) citizens, who wrote in the Jan. 2 letters to the editor in opposition to rent control here in Santa Barbara.
The piece of the puzzle that has been missing, or hidden so far, is the cost to run the rent control program. How many full-time, parasitic, $150,000-a-year bureaucrats will it take to administer the rent control program?
And, of course, who’s going to pay?
Jeff Havlik
Santa Barbara
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Last week, three letter writers sprang to the defense of property owners against rent stabilization. Later Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse chimed in with his well-known perspective.
Each of the writers cited examples of failed bureaucratic attempts or the current economic climate in which neither property owners nor renters have much control over winds that buffet them. They offered no alternatives.
One of the founding constitutional functions of our government is to “promote the general welfare” of its citizenry.
Many of us (I am not a renter) would include affordable shelter as part of those general welfare responsibilities of government. There is no analogous commandment or amendment to the effect, “Thou shalt be guaranteed a reasonable profit.”
The writers all stated or implied that Santa Barbara is an expensive place to live. I believe, as a result, we will never build our way to housing affordability.
The local housing market is insatiable. There will always be a buyer or renter with more money, willing to spend it to live here.
It is incumbent on government to balance free-market demand with the community’s need for a vibrant mix of service workers, wage earners and income spenders to support local businesses.
Writers may credibly argue that governments haven’t found the ideal balance of techniques for achieving or maintaining that mix, but it is not reasonable to allow developers or property owners to overly influence public housing policy.
Rent stabilization can be a valuable motivator and must remain in the toolbox for decision makers at all levels.
Richard Closson
Santa Barbara
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In their belief that tenants need protection from property owners, City Council members Meagan Harmon, Oscar Gutierrez, Wendy Santamaria and Kristen Sneddon are proposing a new citywide rent control ordinance.
Do tenants need protection from property owners? What rights and powers do property owners have that Tenants do not?
The rental market is a market. As such, contract rents are negotiated between property owners and tenants, each acting in their own best interest, of their own free will, without duress or coercion.
Each property owner asks a price needed to cover operating costs, expenses, reserves and contingencies, but also a price that is competitive with other property owners in the marketplace.
Tenant look for rental units that meet their needs, at a price they are willing to pay.
When tenants find a property they like, both parties enter into an agreement for a fixed term, at a price they both agree to.
During the term of the lease, except for utilities, the tenant is not responsible for any costs or expenses associated with the property, over and above what the tenant has already agreed to pay.
The property owner cannot require tenants to remain in a property they do not want to live in, or pay a rent they do not agree to.
No one in Santa Barbara is being held in a rental unit against their will, at price they are not willing to pay.
At the end of the term, usually one year as required the City of Santa Barbara, the landlord is required to continue renting to the tenant as long as the tenant chooses to remain in the property.
A property owner can only ask for the property back if:
- The property owner intends to move in
- The property owner wants to remove it from the rental market
- The property owner is required to by court order
- The property owner intends to demolish or needs to substantially remodel the unit
If a landlord decides to take the property back, the landlord is required to pay the tenant the equivalent of two month’s rent, or approximately 17% of one year’s gross annual income.
If a property owner does not pay this to the tenant, the city will criminally prosecute the property owner for not complying with this law.
The property owner is required to pay the tenant this amount even though the tenant has not paid for anything over and above the rent they agreed to pay, the tenant has also not acquired an ownership interest in the property, and the tenant entered into the agreement with the full knowledge it had an ending date.
The City of Santa Barbara has added this cost to property owners’ expenses at the same time they want to cap property owners’ ability to raise their rents to cover this cost.
If you think tenants already have enough protections, please attend the Jan. 13 City Council meeting to let Harmon, Gutierrez, Santamaria and Sneddon know you do not support their proposed rent control ordinance.
Rick Lang
Santa Barbara
• • •
According to the Jan. 5 article, “Vandenberg Could Become New Home for Heavy-Rocket Launch Facility,” the U.S. Space Force released a request for information about such a facility, but it could take some time for any interested parties to respond.
Even if a company has a few hundred million dollars to invest in this project, it will take several months to develop a plan and prepare environmental and safety documents before construction begins.
If a successful respondent is chosen by the Space Force, local government and environmental action groups, which are often willing to obstruct, delay and eventually deny projects like this will have no say in the final decision. It will be the Space Force that will be approval authority.
If built, this could bring huge economic success to Lompoc and Santa Maria as hundreds of construction jobs and eventually operational jobs are created.
Unlike government-funded programs, it is unlikely that a private developer would invest several hundred million dollars and simply walk away as the government often has done at Vandenberg Space Force Base.
This is a bold program; we will have to wait to see if it succeeds or if it’s just a dream.
Ron Fink
Lompoc
• • •
The Santa Barbara Unified School District is facing serious financial strain. That is exactly when the public should expect strong, independent oversight and when trustees should welcome it.
Instead, SBUSD board president Bill Banning publicly framed a routine Finance Advisory Committee discussion as a Brown Act problem, then supported a rule change that resulted in him becoming the committee chairman.
If the real concern were compliance or best practice, the fix was straightforward: Brown Act training and clearer procedures.
What happened instead looks like something else entirely — the board president putting himself in charge of the body meant to advise and scrutinize the board.
A show of hands during an agendized discussion is not automatically a Brown Act violation. The act’s concern is transparency: open meetings, posted agendas and no decisions made outside public view.
“Action taken” means a collective decision or vote on a motion or proposal — not an informal, nonbinding straw poll used to gauge interest.
What makes the claim especially hard to square is SBUSD’s own governance. The district already relies on nontrustee chairs for meaningful oversight and advisory work.
SBUSD’s Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee that oversees taxpayer bond dollars is chaired by a community member, as is the district’s Special Education Advisory Committee.
So the claim that nontrustee chairs are inherently risky is not only wrong, it is wrong in SBUSD.
Oversight cannot be credible when it is chaired by the person being scrutinized. At a moment when trust matters most, SBUSD chose control over independence and the public should be asking why.
Michele Voigt
Santa Barbara
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