Austin Herlihy, executive vice president of Radius Group, says the Santa Barbara City Council is sending mixed messages on housing.

Council members say they support new housing, he said, but they are also stifling property owners by supporting elaborate tenant protections.

“There’s not going to be any incentives for landlords to fix units up,” Herlihy said on the latest episode of Santa Barbara Talks with Joshua Molina. “If you are going to put in capital improvements into an apartment building, you are going to want to see some sort of return on that.”

Herlihy said “the landlords basically are just not going to put any money into the buildings at all and wait for the tenants to move out before they will do any improvements.”

The city’s ordinance committee recently voted to recommend that a tenant who is evicted because a property owner wants to do renovations should receive the first right to return to the apartment after the work is completed.

The landlord would only be able to increase the rent by 10% from the time of eviction.

Watch the full conversation with Herlihy by clicking on the YouTube link below.

The ordinance comes as a result of a wave of so-called “renovictions,” where property owners evict tenants, improve the building, and then raise the rent dramatically to cover the costs.

The tactic has led to an exodus of families, largely Latino, who have left Santa Barbara over recent years.

Herlihy says he cares very much about the tenants who are displaced, but that the answer to providing affordable housing is not through tenant protections, but by creating more supply.

“I care about the community, and people in the community, and so-forth, but I think a lot of this stuff can be tied into new development,” Herlihy said.

To provide true affordable housing, the city should partner with the Housing Authority, he said, adding that the private market cannot sustain all of the city’s housing needs.

In fact, he said, the city makes it tougher for developers. Herlihy is one of the owners of the proposed 99-unit housing proposal at the site of the Tri-County Produce building on Milpas Street near the Santa Barbara Waterfront.

He said it’s been more than a year since the project has been submitted, and it still does not have entitlements.

“When I hear the city say, ‘We want housing,’ it feels more political than it does actual,” Herlihy said. “They are saying to everybody, ‘We want housing,’ but then when it comes down to it, all the same roadblocks are in place.”

Joshua Molina is a journalist and college instructor who interviews a wide variety of people on the issues of education, housing, politics, culture and business. Molina is a former reporter at the San Jose Mercury News and teaches journalism at Santa Barbara City College. Visit SantaBarbaraPodcasts.com or SantaBarbaraTalks.com to sign up for his newsletter and make a contribution.