The Santa Barbara City Council voted Tuesday night to require landlords to provide one-year leases to tenants — and took a huge step toward approving a “just cause” eviction ordinance.
The vote was 6-1, with Councilman Randy Rowse opposed.
A Just Cause eviction ordinance would prohibit evictions except in cases where a tenant has failed to pay rent or otherwise violated the terms of the rental agreement. The council’s vote means City Attorney Ariel Calonne will draft a proposed ordinance, which will next go before the city’s Ordinance Committee.
Rowse walked out of the meeting after the vote because he was upset that the council disregarded a city task force’s recommendation against a just cause ordinance.
“We are really off the rails here,” Rowse said. “We need to make decisions that are practical, not political.”
Rowse said most of the problems with tenants being evicted unfairly in Santa Barbara involved people who did not have a written lease.
“We have had some anecdotes,” Rowse said. “We have had some stories. We have had absolutely zero statistics. I don’t know why we are trying to write an ordinance based on emotions.”
More than 100 people packed the council chamber at City Hall. Advocates for the tenant protections say that landlords have too much power in Santa Barbara, and that City Hall needs to step in and balance the scales.
According to the city, Santa Barbara has 36,918 total dwelling units, including single-family homes. There are 18,569 multi-family rental units, and about two-thirds of Santa Barbara residents are renters.
In addition to the mandatory leases, the task force, which included renters and property owners, had recommended tenant-displacement assistance for mass evictions — defined as 20 percent of residents at a property over 12 months — for properties of seven units or more.
The amount of assistance would be four times the median advertised rental rate as determined by the city, or $5,000, whichever is greater.
The council did not support that ordinance, however, but instead directed Calonne to include tenant relocation assistance in the just cause eviction ordinance.
Although he voted to move forward with the just cause eviction ordinance, Councilman Jason Dominguez said he didn’t think it was the answer to protect residents.
He said landlords will just raise the rents on tenants if they want to get rid of people. Santa Barbara does not have rent control, so none of the local measures would block property owners from raising the rents.
He claimed that 9,000 Latinos left Santa Barbara since 2011.
“Of the 9,000 people who left Santa Barbara, 8,999 were probably because rents were raised,” Dominguez said.
Councilwoman Meagan Harmon, who is running for re-election after she was appointed by the council in March, unabashedly voiced her support of renters.
She said about 81 percent of the people in her District 6 are renters. She disputed Rowse’s claim that the vote was political.
“It’s not political,” Harmon said. “To me it is a moral imperative. The level of disruption people feel with mass evictions is profound.”
Harmon agreed with Rowse that a just cause eviction ordinance may not always be necessary, but when the system fails renters, “it affects disproportionately those who are most vulnerable.”
Councilman Oscar Gutierrez agreed. He said the protections don’t go far enough.
Mayor Cathy Murillo said people’s lives “are hanging in the balance here.”
“I wholeheartedly support a just cause eviction ordinance,” Murillo added.
Rowse toward the end of the meeting was upset with Councilman Eric Friedman, who said he would have preferred to wait a year to see how effective the mandatory one-year lease and proposed relocation assistance would work before moving forward on a just cause ordinance.
Despite his concerns about moving forward on the ordinance, Friedman voted for it anyway.
Rowse quipped: “I have not seen anyone debate themselves so effectively as Mr. Friedman. I am not sure who won.”
Friedman fired back: “I did.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
