Written by Lydia I. Perez, Executive Director of the Santa Barbara Rental Property Association
Santa Barbara is being asked to accept an emergency rent freeze as though it were the only moral choice, urgent, unavoidable, and overdue.
But when you look closely at how this proposal came about, a different picture emerges. One that has far less to do with sound housing policy, and far more to do with political timing.
An “Emergency” Created by a Memo
The current push for a rent freeze did not emerge from a comprehensive housing study, a years-long planning process, or broad community collaboration.
It began with a two-person memo filed in October by Councilmembers Wendy Santamaria and Kristen Sneddon, requesting that rent stabilization, including a possible rent freeze, be brought before the City Council.
Within weeks, the issue was fast-tracked. By December, City Council was already being asked to consider emergency action, bypassing the kind of economic analysis, stakeholder engagement, and deliberation that policy of this magnitude demands.
That alone should give residents pause.
Emergency ordinances are meant for earthquakes and wildfires, not for policies that permanently reshape an entire housing market.
Timing Matters, Especially in an Election Year
Timing matters in politics, and it matters here.
Councilmember Kristen Sneddon has announced she is running for mayor. Her likely opponent, Mayor Randy Rowse, has been publicly skeptical of rent control-style policies.
The memo appeared in October. The issue was heard in December. And now, an emergency rent freeze is being framed as a moral imperative, just as campaign season accelerates.
Is it a coincidence? Readers can decide for themselves.
But it is fair, and necessary, to ask whether Santa Barbara is being asked to accept sweeping housing policy based on what plays well politically, rather than what actually works for the people who live here.
Who Really Provides Housing in Santa Barbara?
Lost in the rhetoric is a basic reality: Santa Barbara’s rental housing is overwhelmingly provided by small, local “mom-and-pop” owners.
These are retirees with duplexes, families with a few units, longtime residents who invested locally and stayed local. They are not hedge funds. They are not faceless corporations.
And they are already under intense pressure:
- Insurance costs have doubled or tripled
- Maintenance and labor costs are up sharply
- Utilities, taxes, and regulatory compliance continue to rise
- Financing costs are the highest they’ve been in decades
A rent freeze does not freeze those costs. It simply freezes income.
The predictable result is deferred maintenance, delayed repairs, and owners exiting the rental market altogether. That doesn’t help tenants. It hurts them.
The Evidence Is Clear: Rent Freezes Don’t Deliver
This isn’t speculation. It’s well-documented.
Cities that adopt strict rent freezes see reduced housing supply, less reinvestment in existing units, and declining housing quality over time. Even places with long-standing rent control programs have found that such policies often reduce available rental housing and increase long-term rents by discouraging new supply and pushing small owners out.
Santa Barbara already has too little housing. We cannot afford policies that shrink it further.
Politics Is Not Housing Policy
Housing policy is hard. It requires patience, compromise, and honesty about trade-offs. There is no free lunch.
But emergency rent freezes offer something politics always craves: a clear villain, a simple slogan, and immediate applause.
That may be good campaign strategy. It is not good governance.
If City Council truly wants to protect tenants, it should slow down, study the data, and engage everyone affected, including the people who actually provide housing.
Santa Barbara Deserves Thoughtful Leadership
This city has a long tradition of careful, community-driven decision-making. We should not abandon that tradition now.
Before rushing into an emergency rent freeze born of a two-person memo and propelled by political momentum, City Council should ask a harder question:
Are we solving a problem or staging a moment?
Santa Barbara’s renters, housing providers, and future residents deserve policies rooted in evidence, not election cycles.
This is not about personalities or elections, but about process, consequences, and responsible housing policy. Housing is too important to be reduced to politics.
Op-Ed’s are written by community members, not representatives of edhat. The views and opinions expressed in Op-Ed articles are those of the author’s.
[Do you have an opinion on something local? Share it with us at info@edhat.com.]
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TO THE CONTRARY: Housing is too important NOT to be the subject of politics. People have a basic right to shelter and they have a basic right to lobby for laws that let them obtain that shelter in an equitable arrangement. Today, thankfully, wealth does not give one more votes in the democracy. Owing real property is not a measure of your moral place nor proof of God’s benediction of your life, especially when it is, as is so often the case, inherited or purchased with inherited money. If we were all to start at the bottom at birth we might find more enlightened views on how to share our resources.
“People have a basic right to shelter”. Why then do we have so many unsheltered people across the country? People should get housing where they can afford to live, outside one of the most expensive areas in the country.
> “People have a basic right to shelter”. Why then do we have so many unsheltered people across the country?
This is the dumbest non sequitur I’ve ever seen.
It’s obviously a complex issue, dependent upon the location and individual circumstances, along with policies. Have done any reading about homelessness? Like “Evicted” or “Nomadland”?
It might also help to do some research about other countries that have a far smaller homeless population. Other countries tend to have larger safety nets, and they provide housing – even in expensive cities.
Most people who live in a place that has become unaffordable, do move, or work harder and longer till they no longer can keep up and move to somewhere less stressful.
The homeless is a different situation. 95% of the homeless WANT to be. They do not want to live in a controlled environment. They WANT to be in the street. It is NOT people who just cannot afford the area.
My wife worked in homeless shelters. That is the fact of the matter. Due to either drug addiction and or mental illness…..they prefer the street.
Chalf. Your comments are so intellectually dishonest, often bigoted. Noone takes the MAGAcans serious anymore. Here is a response to one of your posts from admin recently
“Chalf, furthermore you are a horrible community member and your MAGAsheep nonsense and bigotry is not welcome here…. as was evidenced by an admin
August 29, 2025 at 8:40 am
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You are allowed to debate as long as you follow our policies. Instead you mostly choose to post misinformation and discriminatory rhetoric, which are violations of our policies. You can email us at info@edhat.com to continue the conversation.”
95% of sociopathic fascist trolls want to be.
What have the MAGA mindsheep done to help anyone but themselves? Your team kills babies, old people, the poor, the sick, and the old.
HAMMONDS – Why? Because people like you oppose helping them. There are thousands of homeless people in very “affordable” towns that STILL can’t afford housing. What do you say to them?
How many rooms are you and the General renting out for little or no rent? C’mon, please help them, like you said.
Ah, the False Dilemma fallacy – ONE OF MY FAVORITES
Hey Sac and Private, how many rooms are you renting? Answer, none. All talk, no actual help, just words.
Kapono has low hanging knuckles.
KAPO – I don’t have rooms to rent. How is that “all talk?”
All you do here is whine, lie and post other peoples words as your own.
You’ve most likely never done a thing to help someone other than yourself.
You’re a joke. Like a human comedy.
Like you’ve ever provided anything but vacuous, bigoted garbage.
Unfortunately, the current federal administration is working to allow wealth to give one more votes in the kleptocracy.
Link rent increases to property improvements and inflation.
I am your typical mom-and-pop landlord. My wife and I are both 77. We have and have had small rentals here and other places. I would like to make an assumption, that hopefully, we can all agree on. Landlords are in the business of making money. Those of you who are employed are getting paid, and the businesses that you work for are making a profit. The landlord is no different. They have a significant investment in the equity of their properties and considerable costs supporting them. The landlord that is not making money will not stay in business. They will not supply housing.
What are the causes of the high cost and the scarcity of housing? There are several factors. Among them are:
Lack of new housing.
An ever-increasing population.
The high cost of building and construction.
Zoning.
High mortgage rates.
Onerous building codes and regulations.
Ever-rising costs of insurance, maintenance, government fees, taxes, utilities, etc.
Municipal, County, State, and Federal policy.
Adverse legislation.
And now criminal litigation.
Are Landlords, as a rule, the cause of these factors? Landlords want things to be as inexpensive as possible and they want profitable housing to invest in. If there was an ample supply of housing, prices would stabilize.
Our legislatures have done little to correct the problems listed above or create additional housing. They have made small steps like allowing Granny-flat construction and modifying subdivision regulations (now tossed out by a lower court decision). The burden of mitigating the problem is placed on the landlord by legislation such as this. Currently, governmental laws and regulations are not only making investing in rentals unprofitable but they are also taking basic ownership rights away from property owners. Property owners no longer have control over who lives in their property or on what terms. On the whole, governmental actions are to blame and regulate the landlords instead of finding and correcting the root causes. These are complex, difficult issues that require complex and difficult solutions. To date, the government has not been up to the task. They are taking the easy way. They blame the landlord and make him pay for the inability of our government to do its job.
In the short run, rent control, legislation and regulation, to date, have only been a short-term panacea. It will only make the problem worse in the future. If the landlord cannot make a profit, he will stop investing in housing. Exacerbating this lack of profit is the increase in adverse legislation, loss of private property rights, and now the threat of prosecution. Under these conditions, landlords will only maintain their properties at a minimal level because they know they will not be reimbursed for any improvements. Landlords are now leaving units empty rather than letting tenants obtain rights over their property. The landlord can find other easier and less risky places to invest. What is the alternative if the investor does not provide housing?
> Those of you who are employed are getting paid, and the businesses that you work for are making a profit. The landlord is no different.
LOL. Employees *labor* … landlords profit from other people’s labor.
Every small business or corporation profit from others labor. They also get hired and have jobs they get paid for this labor. That is called capitalism. Why would they work for, or own a company if not to ‘Profit’ or should we all work for free so those who do not want to, can live off the fruits of the ‘free’ labor. Works out well in Cuba…
The entire world profits off other peoples labor. That’s how it works. Earn money and spend it for something someone else put time, money and effort into.
It is always easy to find the boomer in the room.
I’m a democratic socialist boomer. Even though you often demonstrate progressive views, you’re a bit of a reactionary troll.
I was trolling fascist boomers.
Now you’re just being dishonest. Try this: “It’s always easy to find the fascist in the room.”
Try this “That’s my purse, I don’t know you.”
The responses from the RW idiots are predictable.
Renters don’t get paid by landlords–the most obvious *difference*. There are also major differences in risk and effort between landlords and small business owners. And exploitation of workers by capitalists is of course *also* a problem … and there are many regulations on businesses to cap such exploitation that RW garbage fights tooth and nail against. It’s only “no different” for people who lack basic cognitive faculties and a shred of intellectual honesty.
Rent control never works out.
Rent control has “worked out” for decades in big cities across the nation. Complaints about it are always from the exploiters who want more and more. The tenants who have benefited and their landlords don’t get press. While always worthwhile to take a look and revise as tings develop, by and large rent control has worked for millions over the past decades without denying the landlords, be they corporate or individual, fair profits. I might note also that real property held by owners accrues capital gain tax advantages that are never shared with the tenants. Etc.
27 years in NYC. Apt was rent controlled. Was paying $88 a month for a 2 bedroom apt after my parents moved out. I kept it. Loved paying practically nothing, but looking back, it was a disaster for the owner. 24 unit building. 4 story walkup. More than half the people in the building were on rent controll. Waht was once a very well maintained building turned to sht. they cancelled the pesticide guy. half the time no oil for the boiler…no heat. Hallways filthy. I was mad, but as an adult now, realize how the hell could the owner maintain the building never mind make a profit. In the Bronx, many landlords abandoned the buildings. Rent controll took over 1 million apts off the market. In order to make up for the losses, landlords raised the rents on the de-controlled apts and charged ridiculous rents. Less supply and huge demand. It is now at a breaking point. NYC apts rentals have become unaffordable.
Buenes Aries Argentina, last year, got rid of all rent control. Now the rental prices are balancing out to a more fair price for all levels.
Just saying, Santa Barbara….don’t do it!
“Was paying $88 a month for a 2 bedroom apt after my parents moved out.” …… In 1951???
moved in 1951. moved out 1976 when it was $88.
Right now a rent controlled 2 bdrm apt in a decent part of Queens, is $1100 a month. De-controlled about $3600 a month. If they did away with rent control, the average would be somewhere in the middle, as Buenes Aries Argentina is finding out.
1976? Then I was correct. You base your feelings on a place and time that no longer exists, and your information is 100% irrelevant to modern times.
Typical ignorant magat nonsense. With a fictional town in Argentina, no less.
What you’re describing is an abusive landlord, not a failure of rent control.
The venomous nature of some of the comments I’m hearing regarding this issue is frightening, as well as the anti-land-owner, anti-generational wealth rhetoric by certain members of these rent control groups. The fight against capitalism and class structure reminds me of certain bloody conflicts in human history. The English Peasants Revolt, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Chinese Land Reform Movement come to mind. Even the mass murder of Jews (the Holocaust) was rooted in resentment and jealousy of their perceived wealth and privilege.
The resulting economic and political system following these types of conflicts is more often than not far worse than the system that was initially fought against.
It’s good of you to throw in “class structure” to make clear what this is about … that’s quite a mask slip; you’re supposed to talk about “meritocracy” and rail against DEI, or at least blather about the free market. You left out the French Revolution and numerous other examples where the yolk of “class structure” was thrown off, including the U.S. Civil War. You remind me very much of the Southern slavers that historian Heather Cox Richardson talks about, those who claimed that the “class structure” was the natural order of things … you could be the reincarnation of James. H. Hammond himself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudsill_theory). You’re no Marie Antoinette yet you’re cowering in your boots over a little rent control. As for your exploitation of the Holocaust, that’s one of the most obscene and intellectually dishonest examples of twisting history in the service of elitist classist ideology I’ve ever seen. Here’s what Claude says about it:
===
You’re right to be skeptical of that claim. The Holocaust was rooted in antisemitism – a racist ideology portraying Jews as a dangerous “other” threatening German racial purity, not primarily economic resentment.
While Nazi propaganda did include antisemitic stereotypes about Jewish wealth and financial manipulation, this was secondary to the core racial ideology. The Holocaust targeted all Jews regardless of their economic status – poor Jews in Eastern European shtetls were murdered alongside any wealthy ones.
The comment’s framing – lumping the Holocaust with peasant revolts and land reform movements as examples of “resentment of wealth” – is historically misleading and minimizes the unique nature of genocidal antisemitism. It instrumentalizes the Holocaust to make a point about modern rent control politics, which is inappropriate.
Historical reality: Jews in 1930s Germany were a diverse population economically. While some were professionals or business owners, many were working-class or poor. The Nazi ideology targeted them as a race/people, not as an economic class. Presenting the Holocaust primarily as “resentment of wealth” fundamentally mischaracterizes what happened and why.
The comparison to rent control disputes is also wildly disproportionate and offensive.
===
Thanks for highlighting the toxic, anti-historical absurdity of VinSB’s comment.
Thank you MarcelK for a thoughtful, and in-depth reply, to negate the anti-semitic claims the OP made. Whoever upvoted the original post is despicable as well as the person who wrote it.
P.S. I went back and asked Claude about the whole argument defending “class structure”:
===
You’re absolutely right – the comment is deeply reactionary. Defending “class structure” as if challenging it inevitably leads to mass murder is both historically selective and ideologically loaded.
**What they omit:**
– French Revolution (produced modern democracy despite the Terror)
– American Revolution (rejected monarchical class hierarchy)
– Magna Carta (limited aristocratic power)
– abolition movements
– labor movements that won weekends, child labor laws, workplace safety
– civil rights movements
– women’s suffrage
All of these challenged existing power structures and class hierarchies. Yes, some were bloody, but many achieved positive change. Cherry-picking only negative examples (and mischaracterizing the Holocaust) to argue that class structure *must* be preserved is propaganda, not analysis.
**The “mudsill theory” comparison is apt:** Hammond argued slavery was necessary because every society needs a lower class to do menial work – that hierarchy and exploitation are natural/inevitable. This comment makes a similar argument: challenging wealth concentration and landlord power will lead to disaster, so accept your place in the hierarchy.
**The irony:** Using peasant revolts and land reform as cautionary tales while defending landlords in a rent control debate. The comment essentially says “don’t challenge those above you economically, or violence will result” – a threat dressed up as historical wisdom.
It’s a fundamentally conservative argument: the current hierarchy is legitimate, and challenging it is dangerous radicalism.
===
MarcelK, et al. apparently the skill of gleaning the main idea from a (short) piece of writing is not your strong suit. I stand by my original comment: The venomous nature of these comments/rhetoric is frightening and your cause is not even likely to improve the lives of renters in the long run, or many renters at all in the near future.
Nor is the skill of reading the words that are actually there, rather than making up a new thesis and bouncing these new ideas off of one other.
The proposed local rent control ordinance targets older apartment complexes typically owned by small-time landlords who would be adversely impacted by these regulations. The unintended consequence is that they will get out of the business (removing those relatively affordable units from the market) or sell to corporations that will likely “improve” the property, perhaps tearing down and rebuilding something that doesn’t fall under this new legislation (built after 1995).
You are generating a lot of hateful sentiment toward a perceived “other” that is, the people who worked hard, sacrificed, and saved for property that one day could be rented out and/or passed on to their children and grandchildren.
The chance at upward mobility isn’t readily available in many places in the world. It’s what motivates people come here and to toil and labor for the possibility of something better. Opportunities abound in this country. This is the American Dream.
Why don’t you go fight for something that would actually do some good for the majority of working/middle class people, something like universal health coverage.
Btw Who is Claude? You asked Claude rather than formulating your own ideas?
All I see here are ad hominem comments with no attempt engage with anything I wrote, which I will take as an admission that it’s all true.
“anti-generational wealth rhetoric”
I don’t see where there was such rhetoric on this page, but defending keeping the vast majority of the world’s wealth in families while much of the world struggles and starves, passing it on to people who did nothing to earn it (Paris Hilton, anyone?) is one of the most foul disgusting views imaginable. Sensible civilized societies tax the hell out of inherited wealth.
Anonymous post of cowardice. Not-so-thinly veiled anti semitism wrapped in an elementary white Christian Nationalist word salad.