“Santa Barbara is not for sale” is a good slogan, one that mayoral candidate Kristen Sneddon used as a headline on her Oct. 31 commentary.

But it avoids the question that determines whether most of us can stay: Where will people live?

Santa Barbara’s housing problem is scarcity, not developers.

Teachers, nurses, firefighters and restaurant workers — the people Sneddon says she wants to protect — commute because they cannot afford to live where they work.

Blaming developers ignores decades of making housing slow, expensive and uncertain to build. When a city adds too few homes, competition intensifies, and people with less money lose out.

Sneddon supports 100% affordable projects by the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara. That is worthy but incomplete.

Subsidized housing depends on limited public funding and cannot meet the shortage alone. Private builders need financially feasible projects.

Treating every developer as a presumptive enemy risks producing less housing of every kind, affordable units included.

Comparing local developers to President Donald Trump, who has absolutely no say in Santa Barbara’s land-use decisions, does not answer the housing question.

Nor should faster permitting be controversial. A costly, unpredictable process can kill a modest project before construction begins.

Sacramento’s housing mandates reflect decades of cities, ours included, finding reasons to say no. Clear rules and predictable timelines offer a better path to meaningful local control than perpetual litigation.

Safety deserves a serious answer.

Wildfire, flood and evacuation risks call for objective standards applied consistently, not blanket resistance.

Planning should direct housing toward suitable sites while accounting for local hazards.

The test of “thoughtful, flexible planning” for State Street is whether a mayor will support appropriate housing when neighbors object.

The Housing We Already Have Matters, Too

Housing policy also determines whether people who own and maintain existing rentals can keep doing so.

Small rental owners lack corporate legal departments, yet the city’s ordinance provides for administrative, civil or criminal enforcement, alongside tenant claims for damages and attorney’s fees.

The ordinance places owners of five or fewer units under requirements that also apply to larger operators. Some small owners warn that renovation costs without corresponding rental income could make their properties unsustainable.

Those concerns deserve honest scrutiny, not arrogant dismissal.

Rising costs and uncertain legal exposure may persuade an owner to sell. A sale does not necessarily eliminate a rental, but conversion to an owner-occupied home or second home can.

Protecting renters and keeping small owners in business should be complementary goals.

Who Has a Seat at the Table?

Sneddon makes outside influence a central concern. Voters can also ask who shaped rental housing rules, and whose concerns were heard.

On Oct. 27, the City Council considered just-cause ordinance changes advanced by tenant-protection advocates rather than recommended by staff.

The changes would expand coverage, require owners recovering a unit for personal occupancy to remain three years instead of one, eliminate demolition as an eviction ground, and delay evictions of families with children until the school year ends. Sneddon asked about extending that protection to college students.

Previously, Sneddon and fellow Councilwoman Wendy Santamaria advanced rent “stabilization” through a joint memo that included a sample ordinance developed with pro bono attorneys and proposed narrowing exemptions.

Giving renters a voice is legitimate and necessary, but do small rental owners, people priced out, and those trying to build homes have comparable opportunities to shape policy?

A mayor who says the whole community should shape decisions in public should welcome that test.

Santa Barbara isn’t for sale. But it can still price its people out through homes never built and rentals lost, until the teacher, the nurse and the grown child hoping to return cannot find a place here.

Keeping Santa Barbara ours means building homes, sustaining existing rentals, and giving everyone who hopes to live here a voice in its future.

The question is not simply who decides. It is whether those decisions leave room for the people we say we want to protect.