Santa Barbara to Consider Even Stronger Tenant Protections

In response to an alarming trend of mass evictions in Santa Barbara, both the city and county have recently adopted stronger protections for tenants, and now city officials are preparing to tweak the municipal code further to add even more protections relating to “just cause” evictions. These changes, which will be at the center of this Tuesday’s Ordinance Committee meeting, would give displaced tenants the first opportunity to re-rent their unit following a remodel and add more stringent protections against harassment from landlords.

The trend of “renovictions” — in which a property owner evicts or pressures tenants to leave in order to remodel or renovate their units and rent them out to new tenants at a much higher price — has occurred all over the state, forcing housing advocates to ring the alarm about the need for stronger legislation to protect tenants. In 2019, the state passed the Tenant Protection Act, and last year state officials doubled down by making the temporary protections a permanent fixture, passing higher relocation assistance amounts, and adding a new chapter regarding tenant harassment. 

The City of Santa Barbara passed its own tenant protections in December 2020, and in March 2023, the city code was made stronger once again to battle the wave of no-fault evictions by requiring permits for renovations. The County Board of Supervisors followed suit when it passed similar protections for tenants in the unincorporated areas of the county in June 2023.

Along the way, city and county officials have expressed a commitment to work with housing advocates to seal any other potential loopholes that property owners may be using to displace tenants in Santa Barbara. On Tuesday, the city’s Ordinance Committee will consider the latest protections, which if passed, could help prevent the large-scale evictions seen across the region.

A major change to the ordinance would force landlords to give tenants the “right of first refusal” when they are forced to leave a unit for a remodel. More specifically, the property owner must give a written notice informing the tenants of their right to re-rent and to relocation benefits. These changes, according to housing advocates with the Santa Barbara Tenants Union (SBTU) and Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), would help prevent the “bad-faith landlords” who use vague language in termination notices to pressure tenants who are unfamiliar with eviction law to “self-evict” and find new housing out of fear of becoming homeless.

There are a number of details that will still be up for discussion during the Ordinance Committee hearing, such as the length of time for a tenant to return and the price at which their rent would be set after renovation. The ordinance, as recommended by city staff, would give tenants the right to return the same unit “or a comparable unit for a period of two years” at a price that is no more than 10 percent higher (or 5 percent plus consumer price index) than what it was at the time of eviction.

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The other changes would explicitly prevent tenants from harassment and retaliation from property owners, agents, contractors, and employees of landlords. These types of harassment range from failing to perform legally required repairs to unlawfully entering units to threatening tenants with physical harm. New language proposed for the city code would also prevent tenants from being pressured into leaving — whether by misrepresenting facts or offering illegal payments — as well as preventing property owners and management from using a tenants’ immigration or citizenship status against them.

Many of the proposed changes reflect gaps in the law that — if implemented earlier in the process — may have helped prevent the evictions of hundreds of tenants in the city, including those at a 52-unit apartment building on Bath Street. And, had they been implemented at the county level, similar protections could have helped those evicted from a large student-and-family apartment complex in Isla Vista.

For some, like those at CBC & The Sweeps in Isla Vista, the current county tenant protections may have been too little too late. The once bustling complex that housed anywhere from 550 to 1,000 tenants is now a ghost town, after a company called Core Spaces purchased the property and within days notified all tenants that the four buildings would require all of them to vacate for a “substantial remodel.”

Now, according to SBTU co-founder Stanley Tzankov, who has been working with the Isla Vista tenants since the property was purchased last March, there are fewer than 20 tenants left, after Core Spaces’ “shameless harassment, misinformation, and coerced tenant self-evictions.”

On a recent site visit, Tzankov said he and other advocates were shocked to find what the mass evictions had turned the apartments into: an empty construction site with almost all of the 166 units vacated.

But the county’s tenant protections were passed after Core Spaces had already sent out notices to vacate, and because of the non-specific nature of the language in the ordinance, many of the tenants were left playing a “waiting game” against the new property owners. In the next few weeks, a judge will decide whether the protections apply in the case of six unlawful detainers sent to the remaining tenants — something that, Tzankov added, “could have been avoided if the County Supervisors followed our push to clearly state that the protections simply apply throughout all steps of the eviction process, which they shied away from doing.”

For the same reason, SBTU and CAUSE are recommending a few amendments to the proposed ordinance. This includes specific language which would protect tenants during “all stages of the eviction process,” preventing what advocates fear could become  a “gold rush” of renovictions before the law goes into effect.

Above all, the specific amendments affirm that landlords are to act in “good faith” when renovating units, displacing tenants, or removing the unit from the market. While property owners have the right to their business practices, Tzankov says, “landlords should act in good faith and runaway profits shouldn’t be the reason for continued displacement of our diverse renter community.”

The Ordinance Committee — made up of city councilmembers Oscar Gutierrez, Mike Jordan, and Kristen Sneddon — will hear the proposed changes to the city’s Just Cause Eviction Ordinance at City Hall on Tuesday at noon.