Santa Barbara City Councilmembers Kristen Sneddon and Wendy Santamaria along with pro-bono attorneys have drafted a 15-page rent stabilization ordinance and are asking this Tuesday for the rest of the City Council to formally place it on an agenda for a vote.

The proposal calls for allowable rent increases of 60% of the California Consumer Price Index.

“Santa Barbara faces an ongoing housing affordability crisis that makes rent stabilization a critical need,” the first line of their letter states. “Rents are among the highest in California, while wages in key sectors such as education, hospitality, healthcare and service work have not kept pace.”

Typically, the City Council makes policy by directing staff to create an ordinance, and it goes through the city’s three-member ordinance committee. It is not common for members of the council to work independently on a full ordinance and then submit it to the city.

“Councilmember Santamaria and I worked with pro bono attorneys and drew on ordinances from other cities that had already been legally defended,” Sneddon told Noohzawk. “We wanted to save city staff time by offering a starting point, but we would of course want the final product to be developed by our own city attorney’s office.”

Sneddon said the item on Tuesday is just to set the date to be able to agendize the conversation to direct the proposed ordinance to the city attorney’s office for legal analysis or rewrite.

The proposal also calls for the elimination of the Rental Housing Mediation Board in favor of a Rental Housing Stabilization Program, with a program administrator. Property owners can apply for exceptions to increase or decrease the rent, based on factors such as increases or decreases in property taxes and unavoidable increases or decreases in maintenance and operating costs, according to the proposed ordinance.

Although Tuesday’s meeting is only to decide whether to place the matter on an agenda for discussion, property owners are expected to testify on Tuesday about the proposal and its transparency.

In the past, Mayor Randy Rowse and councilmembers Eric Friedman and Mike Jordan have opposed the ordinance, while Santamaria, Sneddon and councilmembers Meagan Harmon and Oscar Gutierrez have supported a form of rent stabilization.

Councilmember Harmon has been the strongest advocate for a rent stabilization ordinance during her six years on the City Council.

“I have long been a supporter of rent stabilization, and I am looking forward to this week’s council discussion on the issue,” Harmon said.

Also on Tuesday’s council agenda is the proposed adaptive reuse ordinance, which aims to relax requirements for developers to build housing if they build within an existing commercial building. Much of the debate centers on whether to require developers to include affordable units. The city has a 10% inclusionary housing requirement for new development.

Developers have said that it is too expensive to build downtown and that requiring inclusionary housing would halt most projects.

The meeting begins at 2 p.m. at City Hall, 735 Anacapa St.

Councilman Gutierrez, a board member of the California Sister Cities International and the council liaison to the Sister Cities Committee, is on a California Sister Cities Leadership Summit in Japan to speak to the United Nations University about Santa Barbara.

The summit ended on Oct. 11, but Santa Barbara Sister Cities has a trip to Weihai, China, on Oct. 23, so Gutierrez decided to stay in Japan until then so he can attend that trip as well.

Gutierrez plans to connect to Tuesday’s council meeting remotely.