A Future Here · Rent stabilization
People should have a fair chance to stay in Santa Barbara through a difficult stretch and find a home they can afford over time.
I support enforceable tenant protections. I oppose permanent local rent caps.
My approach pairs help for households at risk of displacement with a plan to make more year-round homes available.
These are existing resources. Eligibility, available funding, and services vary. The pilot below is a proposal and is not accepting applications.
For a notice or court deadline, seek legal help promptly. California’s tenant resource page includes legal aid information.
My position
Rent caps can protect covered tenants from large increases and help them remain in their homes. I take that benefit seriously. My concern is the longer-term effect on rental availability, investment in existing homes, and the people still searching for housing.
I favor targeted assistance, tenant-rights enforcement, and more housing choices. These measures address different problems, and each needs a workable budget and public accountability.
I have experienced financial strain in my own business and struggled to find rental help that fit my circumstances. That experience informs my support for assistance that can respond to a recent income shock, including irregular or self-employed income, within the funding rules.
A study of San Francisco’s 1994 rent-control expansion found benefits for covered tenants alongside a reduction in rental supply among affected properties. That is evidence of a real tradeoff, not a forecast of the same result in Santa Barbara. Policy design and local conditions matter. Read Diamond, McQuade and Qian’s study.
A randomized study in Santa Clara County found that temporary financial assistance reduced measured homelessness among eligible households in the study. It supports testing prevention assistance locally, with follow-up and evaluation. It does not establish how many Santa Barbara households a proposed fund would keep housed. Read Phillips and Sullivan’s study.
Short-term aid cannot close every continuing gap between rent and income. A prevention fund also does not provide the same ongoing rent-increase protection as a cap. Those limits should be explicit.
The plan
01 · Protect
Connect residents to accurate information, mediation, and legal help. Route suspected violations to the appropriate enforcement process.
People should be able to understand their rights and get timely help when a housing problem becomes urgent.
02 · Prevent
Propose a limited, 12-month displacement-prevention pilot delivered through a qualified existing provider.
Use short-term help where it can restore stability, and connect households with continuing needs to longer-term options.
03 · Build
Make suitable projects easier to deliver, help bring underused homes into year-round residential use, and publish progress through completion.
Proposed eligibility would consider financial need, displacement risk, and the likely usefulness of assistance. Recent income records should be considered where fund rules allow. Assistance would not require a waiver of legal rights.
Proposed 12-month pilot
Start by checking existing programs, unmet needs, eligible funding, and provider capacity. Bring a costed proposal to Council before making commitments to households.
Proposal, not an available benefit: the illustrative budget is $300,000. Funding has not been secured. Contracts, eligibility, award limits, and administrative costs would require review and approval.
Only through a specifically identified, lawful budget reprioritization approved by Council. No reliance on reserves or projected savings that have not occurred.
Seek committed philanthropy, County participation, or eligible grants. Each source’s restrictions must fit the proposed assistance. None is assumed to be available.
Planning allocations; final costs depend on provider quotes and program design.
About 45 households receiving direct assistance if the average award is $4,000. Average awards of $3,000 to $5,000 would support approximately 36 to 60 households from the $180,000 assistance allocation.
This is capacity arithmetic, not a prediction of evictions or homelessness prevented. Actual reach depends on award size, eligibility, demand, and the final budget. Households receiving several services would be counted once.
Housing + Safety
Displacement prevention belongs in both our Housing and Safety work. Use one program, one budget, and one set of results, with privacy protected.
Report requests, approvals, denials and reasons, wait times, and how urgent cases are handled.
Follow up at 3, 6, and 12 months. Distinguish staying in the same home from moving to another stable home, and disclose missing follow-up information.
Publish direct assistance, administration, legal help, and oversight costs. Report cost per household served without assuming downstream savings.
Show which households could not be helped and where an ongoing affordability gap requires another response.
A payment is an activity. Sustained housing is an outcome. Establishing how much homelessness the program prevented requires an evaluation that considers what would have happened without assistance.
Details and evidence
No. This page describes my policy position and proposals. It does not change existing law. Applicable state and local protections depend on the property and circumstances. Consult the City’s rental ordinances page and rent stabilization updates for current information.
There are existing programs. The City describes tenant-based rental assistance delivered with New Beginnings, Transition House, and the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara. Eligibility and availability vary. My proposal starts with identifying gaps in that existing system; it does not assume those organizations have agreed to administer a new pilot. Read the City’s program description.
I would seek an application process that can assess recent hardship and variable income, rather than relying only on a single older income snapshot. Eligibility would still depend on financial need, housing risk, and the rules attached to each funding source. This would be housing assistance, with no automatic entitlement based on occupation.
The goal is 500 downtown homes at different stages by 2031, with completed homes reported first and construction and issued permits shown separately. Each home would be counted once at its latest stage. A permit is not an occupied home. The Housing page explains that distinction and the delivery plan.
The pilot addresses selected immediate risks. The broader plan seeks more year-round rental choices, financially workable construction, and suitable affordable housing partnerships. Households with a continuing rent-to-income gap may need sustained subsidy or other support. Neither the pilot nor a housing production target guarantees a particular reduction in rents.
Page prepared September 6, 2026. The $300,000 budget, funding split, staffing allowance, and assistance range are proposed planning assumptions. They are not City appropriations, committed grants, provider bids, or independently validated forecasts.
My commitment is to pair immediate housing stability with more opportunities to build a life here, and to make the costs and results visible.
Housing · An educational calculator
Compare an illustrative adjustment under the June 10 draft with an increase you select. See the monthly difference and how constant rates compound over five years.
Historical draft illustration. This tool uses the June 10, 2026 proposal. It does not determine your legal rent increase or predict future rents. Check current City information.
Monthly rent after one adjustment
Monthly rent after one adjustment
The increase is assumed to begin at the start of year one and apply for all 12 months. Both scenarios use the full selected adjustment. A permitted maximum does not mean an owner will charge it.
Gross household income is held constant. Utilities and other housing costs are excluded.
Five annual adjustments, with the first at the start of year one. CPI and the comparison rate stay constant; each full adjustment is applied. These are hypothetical paths for the same starting rent, not forecasts of market rents or the cost of moving.
The June 10 draft rounds the CPI percentage change to the nearest quarter percentage point, then applies 60%, subject to a 3% ceiling and a 0% floor. With assumed CPI of 3%, the illustrative adjustment is 1.8%. On $3,000, that adds $54 a month.
For compounding, monthly rent after adjustment n equals starting rent × (1 + annual rate)n. The five-year rent total sums 12 months at each of the five adjusted rents. Amounts are rounded for display; calculations retain full precision.
Coverage, base-rent rules, earlier increases, notice requirements, and special adjustments can affect actual allowable rent. The draft also includes a fair-return petition process. This simplified tool does not model those legal determinations.
Different percentage growth rates for rent and expenses do not establish maintenance capacity or profitability. Those questions require starting dollar amounts and a fuller operating analysis. This calculator also does not predict rental supply, displacement, or homelessness.
Prepared September 7, 2026. The optional fee is a visitor-selected assumption. The proposed displacement-prevention pilot elsewhere on this page has a separate purpose and budget.