Housing is one of the most pressing issues in Santa Barbara and if Proposition 33 passes in November, rent control could be up for discussion by the city.
"Even though it's a failure every time and every economist knows it's bad, almost every municipality has some form of rent control," said Dr. Peter Rupert, UC Santa Barbara economics professor.
Rupert argues that rent control is a big part of what’s driving the housing crisis.
"If landlords can't increase the rent to get the market rent, then they have no incentive to keep the place up. Developers have no incentive to build new housing," Rupert said.
Less housing and more demand cause rents to go up, according to Rupert.
But for CAUSE policy advocate Frank Rodriguez, rent control is the best way to keep housing affordable.
"People are being priced out of our community and we want to limit the ability of corporations to be able to increase rents to the point that we're displacing our domestic workers, our service sector workers," Rodriguez said.
Currently, Santa Barbara does not have rent control, but that could change if Prop. 33 passes in November, giving cities more control over rental increase rates, which currently can be up to 10% a year.
Professor Rupert and Rodriguez agree that housing is a major issue but they have different ideas to address it.
"It's solvable. Number one, get rid of rent control. And the other part of rent control is telling land developers that 20% or 30% has to be below market. That's the same, actually, as rent control," Rupert said.
Instead, he suggests expanding Section 8 housing vouchers and incentivizing landlords to accept them.
For Rodriquez, the solution is capping rental increases to 2% yearly on apartments built before 1995.
"Because we believe that allows landlords to make the profit that they deserve but at the same time, allowing renting families to plan out their life," Rodriguez said.
