Strong Opposition to Proposed Permanent Rent Cap

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.

I am now an elder. My rental income from Santa Barbara property helps sustain me in retirement after a lifetime of public service as an educator. By capping my ability to adjust rents to market reality and inflation (while your own costs-insurance, taxes, endless bonds, utilities, maintenance, and regulations-continue to skyrocket), you are deliberately eroding my financial security. This is elder abuse. California’s elder abuse statutes exist to protect seniors from financial exploitation and deprivation of necessary resources. Targeting the retirement income of elderly property owners through punitive rent control meets that definition in both spirit and effect. You are robbing seniors of the fruits of their lifelong labor while simultaneously driving down housing quality and supply.

Your “first-of-its-kind” rental registry and rent board will create a bureaucratic nightmare of compliance costs, privacy invasions, and arbitrary enforcement that will fall hardest on small property owners like me. Larger corporate landlords will adapt or pass costs along. Mom-and-pop owners who built this city will be crushed. The predictable results-already documented in every jurisdiction foolish enough to try this — are reduced housing supply, deteriorating properties, black markets, favoritism, and endless litigation. Santa Barbara’s housing shortage will only worsen as owners convert rentals to owner-occupancy, sell their properties (rendered below market value because of you!) or simply abandon maintenance.

I did not work multiple jobs, earn five degrees, serve my country in the Army, and save for decades so that the Santa Barbara City Council could later decide my property is a public utility to be price-controlled for political gain. This proposal punishes success, thrift, and investment. It tells every young person in California that working hard, delaying gratification, and acquiring property is a sucker’s game-because government will simply take the upside when you finally succeed. It reeks of the Democratic Socialists of America and Communist ideology that has infiltrated the Santa Barbara City Council, pushing wealth redistribution and government control over private property that has no place in a free society.

I demand that you abandon this draft immediately. Respect private property rights. Stop this assault on elderly property owners. If you proceed, I and many others will explore every legal remedy available, including takings claims, elder abuse protections, and whatever political consequences voters choose to impose. The people who built Santa Barbara deserve better than to have their life’s work expropriated by envious, vote-seeking politicians.

Strong Opposition to Proposed Permanent Rent Cap

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