Landlords question changes to evictions ordinance

By NEIL HARTSTEIN NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER

For weeks, Santa Barbara tenants who have been evicted or are on the verge of being ousted have appealed to the City Council for help in protecting them and their rights against landlords they say want them gone so they can raise the rent for new tenants taking their place.

On Tuesday, it was the landlords’ turn.

The landlords who showed up at the Santa Barbara City Council meeting insisted that they were following the rules laid out in the city’s tenant protection ordinance, that no loopholes were being exploited and that no “clarifications” needed to be made.

Several questioned why they were there in the first place.

“This is a tenant-centric disaster for property owners in Santa Barbara,” Paul Burns said.

The idea of requiring landlords to show “good faith” instead of just “intent” is unfair, he said, because “it’s not that clear what good faith means. It’s subject to interpretation.”

He was especially concerned about the proposal that any rental unit removed from the housing market must be permanent. “Now a landlord could remove it and then three years later decide to rent it again.”

“Permanently means forever,” he said. “It constrains the owners’ property rights. It’s a bludgeon in the hands of the city attorney against landlords.”

The real issue facing the city, he said, is “the incredible dearth of affordable housing.”

Frederick Lang agreed “good faith” is not an objective standard. “Do not make me a criminal because you interpret my motivations,” he said. “Basically it comes down to you can’t make somebody a bad person because you think you don’t like what they’re doing.”

Susan Horn said the council should ask to see the data “to see if this actually needed. Who do you believe, the tenant or the landlord?”

She complained that tenants are not satisfied with explanations of why they have to go or being paid a relocation fee. “They believe they should be let back in at the same rate.”

Please see EVICTIONS on A2 policymakers, could move it to 5.1%.

“Recent indicators point to modest growth in spending and production,” the Federal Reserve Board of Governors said in a statement. “Job gains have picked up in recent months and are running at a robust pace; the unemployment rate has remained low. Inflation remains elevated.”

Government reports say 311,000 jobs were added in February, and unemployment rose from 3.4% to 3.6%.

Inflation has soared in the last two years, making everyday goods and services more expensive for Americans.

The Feds’ key interest rate was 1% to 1.25% when the impact of COVID-19 slammed the country in early March 2020, and the rate dropped to 0 to 0.25% on March 16, 2020. In the next two years, stimulus and relief funds flowed into the economy as businesses struggled amid lockdowns and mandates; the rate stayed low until inflation took off last spring. Some experts feared that the recent bank collapses would make the economy too frail to withstand the rate hike, which are aimed at lowering inflation at a cost to economic growth.

“The [Federal Reserve] should pause on Wednesday,” Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square, wrote on Twitter ahead of the news. “We have had a number of major shocks to the system. Three US bank closures in a week wiping out equity and bond holders. The demise of Credit Suisse and the zeroing of its junior bondholders.” Because of the recent economic scares, others called for an actual decrease in interest rates. The Federal Reserve seemed to acknowledge those concerns in its announcement.

“In assessing the appropriate stance