There are heroes and villains in the movies.

But not when it comes to Santa Barbara’s housing policy.

Instead, several City Council members on Tuesday said that solving the city’s housing crisis will take collaboration and working together, without blame.

“We’re actually not moving farther apart; we’re moving closer together,” City Councilwoman Meagan Harmon said. “I know it doesn’t feel that way sometimes. There are going to be difficult conversations ahead. There’s no doubt about that.”

The City Council met Tuesday to talk about its housing priorities and provide feedback about how to move forward based on 10 recommendations by the Housing Crisis Ad Hoc Committee, which was formed two years ago.

The council took no vote but gave feedback to staff. While council members agreed on finding ways to dedicate a permanent funding source for the Local Housing Trust Fund, there was division on creating a rent stabilization ordinance. Harmon, Councilman Oscar Gutierrez and Councilwoman Kristen Sneddon support a rent stabilization ordinance.

Harmon said before it does anything else, the city should revisit the “right-of-return” issue in the city’s tenant protection ordinance. In the past few years, property owners have evicted or attempted to evict tenants to make repairs to the buildings, but then increased the rent significantly. Those tenants usually cannot afford to return to the units.

Right-of-return would allow the tenants to return to the homes at the same rent or a cap on how much the rents could be increased after the renovation.

Harmon said that all of the recommendations would take time and “a lot of community conversations,” and some of them would take several years to implement.

“To me, it is critical that we address what is a fundamental flaw in the existing ordinance as soon as possible to give some breathing room to move forward to think through these other items in a critical way,” Harmon said.

Gutierrez said he knocked on thousands of doors during his successful campaign for re-election and that there was overwhelming support for a form of rent control.

“My No. 1 priority would be rent stabilization,” Gutierrez said. “That has consistently been an issue that has been brought to me by the people in my district and other districts.”

Councilman Eric Friedman does not support a rent stabilization ordinance, but he supported one of the recommendations, which suggests tiny homes on city property.

“Ownership is the most secure way that you will be able to stay here,” Friedman said. “Once you have a place you own, all things considered there are still issues with it, you are not at the mercy of someone else, you are not at the mercy of government passing regulations to protect you.”

He also said there are benefits and consequences of a rent stabilization ordinance.

“The question is, when you weigh the benefits, do they outweigh the impacts?” Friedman said.

He said a rent stabilization ordinance could force owners of buildings built before 1995 to sell the buildings to out-of-town investors, who would tear them down, rebuild and then charge mostly market-rate rents to tenants for the new construction, hurting the renters who need housing the most.

Councilwoman-elect Wendy Santamaria spoke at the meeting and said the council cannot lose sight of strengthening tenant protections.

“As much as some folks might want to demonize that tenants have some sort of say over housing, it’s what is going to make us a sustainable environment,” Santamaria said. “We aren’t talking about housing remote workers. We’re talking about housing our firefighters, our teachers, our first responders. We need to make sure we are implementing a rent stabilization ordinance, a rental registry, really fund a right-to-counsel pilot program.”

Mayor Randy Rowse said the city has gone to great lengths to protect renters and tenants. He noted that the city created a Housing Trust Fund to help create new housing and that the developers behind the new hotel on Garden Street contributed $1 million to the program. Rowse does not support a rent stabilization ordinance.

“The problems are not going to be solved by trying to demonize one side of the equation,” Rowse said.

He said that one out of seven housing units in Santa Barbara is affordable by either subsidy or covenant.

“That’s not covering everybody — obviously, the demand is much greater than that,” Rowse said, “but that is pretty amazing, given other communities. So, we are not up here not doing things. We are not up here not caring about the situation. But having a solution that basically says ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ is not the way we are going to solve the problem. It’s not the way this community and we are going to move forward.”