Santa Barbara’s long-debated citywide rent stabilization ordinance is on track for City Council adoption later this summer — to be implemented in January 2027 — though there are still some key details to be worked out as the city revealed a draft for public review over the next 30 days.
The City Council got a look at the 36-page draft ordinance at the end of a lengthy meeting Tuesday, with deliberations and council comments pushing past 10 p.m before the council’s four-vote majority pushed the plan forward, with many comments directing staff to make tweaks to the program’s rent board, petition process, and level of exemptions included in the ordinance.
This first public draft was the culmination of months of focused planning efforts, with the city administrator’s office and city attorney’s office combining previous direction from council hearings in late 2025 and early 2026 to outline a citywide rent cap on residential units built before 1995 (with exemptions aligned with state law for most single-family homes, condos, owner-occupied duplexes, and government-subsidized affordable housing). The cap would be set at 60 percent of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or 3 percent, whichever is less in any given year.
More than two dozen community members, renters, housing advocates, landlords, and real estate property managers stayed late to weigh in on the details of the ordinance. As usual, the item drew polarizing comments, with property owners opposing any form of rental increase regulation and housing advocates concerned that the latest version of the ordinance was missing some of the stronger pieces necessary to make an impact.
Several commenters were Santa Barbara tenants who were recently priced out of the area, who argued that a strong rent stabilization ordinance might have kept them from being forced away from their hometowns. Some were small-scale landlords who shared their struggles keeping up with rising insurance premiums and growing costs across the board.
When multiple commenters shared concerns about the draft deviating from previous council direction, City Administrator Kelly McAdoo responded by saying the draft was not meant as a final product, and the current version is a working draft that folded council direction into a legally solid foundation.
“We took the direction that council gave us, reviewed it with our city attorneys, and came forward with an ordinance that we felt was legally defensible — and tried to follow as closely as possible council direction,” McAdoo said.
The current version includes many of the major pieces requested by the four councilmembers who voted in support of rent stabilization. This reflects a targeted approach complete with a rental registry, rent board, program administrator, and a petition process for landlords and tenants to seek adjustments based on documented evidence.
The rental registry is considered as the backbone of the program and will be the first-of-its kind database for the city, collecting information on covered units’ addresses, bedroom/bathroom count, landlord contact, ownership data, and rental rates to track compliance. All units that are covered by the ordinance will be required to register, with non-compliant landlords prohibited from collecting rent or listing their units.
The registration fees for the estimated 13,000 units covered by the ordinance would go toward funding the program itself, projected to cost about $2 million a year.
Much of Tuesday’s deliberations were led by Councilmember Wendy Santamaria, one of the fiercest supporters of rent stabilization since being elected to the council in 2024. Santamaria said the draft was a “good start” but suggested a long list of amendments and research points to be ironed out before the draft is finalized this summer.
This included the makeup and powers allotted to the rent board. Councilmembers generally supported the idea of a five-to-seven-person board, with a composition reflective of the city’s population with a mix of tenants, landlords, or individuals without financial interest in housing.
“I do think that the majority of the city is renters, the majority of the board should be renters — just simply reflect what the population is,” Santamaria said.
Santamaria suggested that the rent board have more power to make decisions and potentially issue orders or make new regulations. City staff pushed back on this suggestion, saying it could complicate matters by taking away powers usually reserved for the City Council.
Santamaria also asked if the city could look into the petition process, which currently included pathways for both a “right to fair return” and capital improvement petition. Santamaria suggested the two petitions be folded together, and the city remove language tying the right to fair return to a specific standard.
Another added wrinkle is the addition of a concurrent policy amending the city’s Just Cause eviction ordinance, regarding the Ellis Act and the practice of withdrawing units from the housing market. The city originally considered including the amendments as part of the rent stabilization ordinance, until the city attorney’s office suggested the two be separated to avoid legal conflict.
Now, the Just Cause and Ellis Act amendments will be considered at the same time as the rent stabilization ordinance, though the amendments would be approved as separate changes to the city’s existing eviction ordinance. Both the draft rent stabilization ordinance and eviction ordinance amendments will be available on the city website for a 30-day public comment period from June 10 through July 10.
The council agreed to the plan to open the public comment period leading up to the scheduled formal introduction of the ordinance for adoption on July 28, where the council would finalize the details and approve an ordinance to begin in January 2027. Councilmembers Santamaria, Kristen Sneddon, Meagan Harmon, and Oscar Gutierrez voted in support; Mayor Randy Rowse opposed; and Councilmembers Eric Friedman and Mike Jordan abstained from the vote.