Sometime this year, the Santa Barbara City Council is going to pass rent stabilization. The only question is what form it will take.
Last October, two City Councilmembers unveiled a 15-page rent stabilization ordinance that would have capped rent increases at 60 percent of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). That equates to roughly 1.7 percent. This is well below inflation and does not come close to the real-world cost increases property owners face such as insurance, utilities, repairs, and maintenance.
The backlash to this proposal was appropriately swift and negative. Even Councilmember Meagan Harmon, one of the council’s biggest advocates for rent stabilization, publicly condemned the proposal as secretive, poorly conceived, and likely to do more harm than good.