I write as a 77-year-old lifelong Californian, born in 1949, the poor son of a farmer in Porterville, California. My mother was a school teacher. I followed in her footsteps as a school teacher myself, while working three and four jobs most of my life. I attended night school for years and earned five college degrees: a BA in Agriculture, a Master’s in Agriculture, a Master’s in School Counseling, a Master’s in Special Education, and a Doctorate in Education. I served my country in the Army. I scrimped, saved, and lived frugally until I could afford my first home in Porterville. Through continued hard work and sacrifice, I purchased property in Santa Barbara in 1991, at the age of 42.
This city, its climate, its beauty, and yes, its property values, rewarded a lifetime of discipline and effort. Now you propose to seize a substantial portion of that reward through a permanent rent cap at the lower of 60 percent of the Consumer Price Index or 3 percent, enforced by a first-of-its-kind rental registry and a dedicated rent board. This is not governance. This is theft dressed up as compassion. It is a direct assault on my constitutional property rights and, given my age, constitutes a form of elder financial abuse.
The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as well as protections in the California Constitution, prohibits the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. Rent control of this severity is a classic regulatory taking. You are not merely “regulating” rents; you are confiscating my right to the economic use and enjoyment of property I purchased with after-tax dollars earned through decades of labor. Courts have repeatedly recognized precedents that severe rent restrictions can rise to the level of a taking. California courts have also addressed financial elder abuse as the wrongful taking, appropriation, or deprivation of an elder’s property or income rights, which this proposal directly enables by stealing my rental income. Your proposal goes far beyond any reasonable police power and into outright redistribution of wealth, from responsible property owners like me, to tenants — many of whom have not made the same lifelong sacrifices…