Santa Barbara City Council members Wendy Santamaria and Kristen Sneddon retreated Tuesday night from the proposed 15-page rent stabilization ordinance they drafted, after a backlash over the proposal’s transparency.

Santamaria and Sneddon worked with “pro-bono attorneys” and tenant advocates to draft an ordinance that would have capped annual rent increases by 60% of the Consumer Price Index. They bypassed the normal city process, in which new ordinances and changes to existing ones are driven by the city staff, and then shaped by the council.

Instead, their goal on Tuesday night was to get the full City Council to put the ordinance on an agenda for a vote, but the plan failed.

In an ironic twist, it was Councilwoman Meagan Harmon, the council’s strongest advocate for rent stabilization, who halted the proposal. She said it was written behind closed doors, without public input and without “a single public conversation” about the policy specifics among the council members.

“We desperately need real, effective rent stabilization in this city,” Harmon said, “and we need the opportunity to build it together in public. We need our version of rent stabilization. We don’t need an ordinance that appears to be written under the cover of darkness.”

Harmon said the community, including the property owners, need to be part of the conversation. She worried that the proposed ordinance had already backfired and that it could hurt tenants.

“Putting forth a full ordinance and asking that it be agenda-ized, whatever the real intent, seems almost destined to pit community members against one another in ways that were totally foreseeable,” Harmon said. “Frankly, I am afraid that every single property owner who is paying any attention at all right now is probably thinking, ‘Wow, I have to go raise my rents immediately to the maximum,’ and that is so damaging on so many levels.”

She said there are “real-world consequences for tenants” by rushing the ordinance that only two council members worked on.

Early in the meeting, it became clear that the council members were backpedaling on the proposal.

At one point, Sneddon called it a “sample ordinance,” even though the memo she and Santamaria wrote stated: “Agenda item to send the following Ordinance adding Chapter 26.90 to Title 26 of the Santa Barbara Municipal Code related to Rent Stabilization to the Office of the City Attorney for legal review and recommendation of amendments or rewriting for consideration back to the Santa Barbara City Council for amendment and adoption.”

“I can understand how this process has been unwelcoming,” Sneddon said, “but the idea was to bring it forward and then be able to have the conversation from council, city attorney, city administrator input, public input, and also with our partners, the property owners.”

Santamaria said she wasn’t “married to the ordinance,” but did not acknowledge that there was an issue with transparency.

“This does not seem to be outside of the process for me,” Santamaria said. “It is very much well within our city charter that we can bring forward a two-person memo.”

While council members sometimes bring forward two-person memos to discuss an item, it is unprecedented to attach a fully written ordinance written by private attorneys and ask the full council to put it on an agenda for a vote.

Later in the meeting, Santamaria said, “I have no issue with this ordinance being rewritten, thrown away, cut it up, do whatever you need. What we need is clarification and stability for both sides of the issue.”

Santamaria, who was elected a year ago, campaigned largely as a tenant rights advocate. She said the idea that submitting the draft ordinance “was circumventing the public process is just simply incorrect.”

Several members of the public spoke on both sides of the issue. Tenants and tenant advocates called on the city to pass rent stabilization because rents are rising at an out-of-control rate and families are being priced out of the community. Property owners said they would have to stop investing in their properties if they can’t raise rents to match inflation.

“I don’t know what to tell my dear friend with a 2-year-old, whose rent has gone up 9% year after year over the last three years, what to tell the tenant help desk attendees each and every week who are maybe afraid to bring up the mold issue because they are worried about another hike, or the friend who is stuck in traffic commuting to her job every day,” said Stanley Tzankov, co-founder of the Santa Barbara Tenants Union. “I don’t know what to tell the neighbor who is looking for a ride to their job because they have fear of abduction from ICE.”

Property owner Rick Lang banged his fists together and said the ordinance pushes people against one another and he doesn’t want that.

“I’d like to ask all of you to stop demonizing landlords,” Lang said. “We’re also your community members. We struggle like everyone else to be able to survive in this town, and our tenants are not our enemies. They are not our victims. They are actually people we have a symbiotic relationship with. We need to support them because they help to support us.”

The City Council in the end voted 4-3 to direct staff to start a “work plan” to study rent stabilization and return to the full council for discussion by the end of 2025. The vote was 4-3, with Harmon, Sneddon, Santamaria and Councilman Oscar Gutierrez in support, and Councilmen Eric Friedman and Mike Jordan and Mayor Randy Rowse in opposition.

Although Harmon slammed the process, she said she supports rent stabilization but wants to pursue real solutions, not “rhetorical ones.”

“I actually do think that there is a way to do this better than simply how it is done everywhere else, which seems to be what was suggested to us with this ordinance,” Harmon said. “We do all of us such a disservice when we approach a policy as impactful as this with anything less than all of our creative legislative energy. I do think we can do better to protect good tenants and to protect good landlords.”