The Santa Barbara City Council voted 4-2 Tuesday to tighten the city’s eviction ordinance, adding a 10 percent cap on rent increases for tenants displaced for renovations, along with two more provisions intended to protect tenants from a process that’s come to be known as “renoviction.”
For more than two years, renters have shared firsthand experiences of “renovictions,” in which property owners evict tenants for a substantial remodel and rents are raised beyond what the original tenants could afford. In 2023, the city began pursuing changes to the city code to address the problem, with several amendments gaining unanimous approval from the Ordinance Committee in December 2023. But when the proposal came across the City Council in January 2024, it was tweaked at the last minute, granting tenants the right to return if they were kicked out for renovations, but putting no limit on what property owners could charge for rent.
Even back then, Councilmember Meagan Harmon warned that the ordinance left the door wide open for legal renovictions using what she called a “loophole” in the law that left residents vulnerable for displacement. The loophole, though seemingly small and highly specific, “punches way above its weight” in terms of its impact on the community, Harmon said on Tuesday…