Tenant Protections Put on Menu for Santa Barbara City Council
Majority Want to Hear Various Options
At the tail end of a budget meeting last Wednesday, four members of the Santa Barbara City Council said they wanted to look at a wide range of options that could afford tenants increased protection from the harsh realities of a market defined by an almost nonexistent vacancy rate and escalating rents. The move came after two tenants — working with the tenants-rights group CAUSE (Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy) — testified how they’d recently been evicted from their Westside rentals by Ivy Apartment Homes, a Ventura County property management company.
The four councilmembers did not embrace any one legislative fix but rather instructed City Attorney Ariel Calonne to report back in the New Year with a broad menu of choices. When that happens, it will constitute the most ambitious discussion of tenants-rights initiatives to hit City Hall in 30 years.
On the table will be possible language for a just-cause eviction ordinance, mandatory yearlong lease options, and even rent stabilization, otherwise known as rent control. The council last debated just-cause eviction protections — which bar landlords from evicting tenants for anything but nonpayment of rent and other explicitly prohibited behavior — in the mid-1980s. At that time, the measure was narrowly defeated, but as part of a compromise designed to placate tenants-rights advocates, the council created the Rental Housing Mediation program.
