Hello SBTU Members and Supporters:

In short, we need you to urge the Santa Barbara City Council to better protect tenants against renovictions and landlord harassment tomorrow and over the next few weeks – check out how to do that below.

And, if you’re new to our fight against renovictions and want a lengthy explanation of why we’re doing this, scroll down to the “long story” section below.

The Short of the Long: 

CALL TO ACTION:

 City Council: Stop Renovictions & Landlord Harassment

Join us these next few Tuesdays at City Council – 

1. Tell us if you can attend public comment this Tuesday at 2pm at City Hall at in Santa Barbara in person, or remotely. Click here for details on how to do public comment and what you might say.
   
   Can’t make it this Tuesday? Join us once or multiple times these next few Tuesdays as we elevate this issue to Council this month, but the sooner the better.

2. Tell us if you can email the city council, if attending public comment is not possible for you. Click here for info on how to email and what to sa.
    

The Long:

The long story about why we’re mobilizing around this:
Throughout much of 2022 and early 2023, many of us were being displaced by renovictions. Renoviction = renovation + eviction. Landlords were tacking notices on our doors saying they needed to ‘substantially remodel’ units but it was just a way to get us out so they could double or triple rent. We threw ourselves at City Council throughout February 2023 and in March 2023, the City Council passed a law strengthening just cause eviction protections. 

In short, that law made it so that the landlord needs to get permits first, give early notice to vacate (ie, 60 days before giving 60 day notice), explain the type and scope of work to be performed, include permits and these explanations in the vacate notice, and submit everything mentioned her to the city’s community development department.

This was a huge win for us because while it didn’t ban renovictions outright, it makes renovictions much harder for landlords to do.

One week after our win on the city level, billionaire landlord Core Spaces issued renoviction notices to roughly 1,000 tenants at CBC & The Sweeps in Isla Vista. The city law we got passed didn’t apply to them because Isla Vista is in unincorporated Santa Barbara County, so we mobilized and got the County to pass a law nearly identical to the City of Santa Barbara. With continued pressure on the County, months later, we got the County Board of Supervisors to pass something even stronger than in the City.

Specifically, they made it so renovictions could only be done for safety & habitability reasons, and tenants had a right to return to the rental unit after fixes justifying renoviction have been performed. Unfortunately, despite all our efforts to push the county to add a rent cap to the right to return, they refused.

Why address tenant harassment?

If you heard recently about the 50 unit renoviction situation at 215 Bath Street, you may have heard that Koto Group issued notices that did not comply with the city’s existing law. One approach Koto and others use is to lie about laws on purpose to scare and confuse tenants into leaving. If they succeed at this, there’s no need to follow the law. Tenants leave, you double or triple the rent, and you make investors happy.

Somewhere around 90% of CBC & The Sweeps tenants left after Core Spaces’ lawyers lied about the law. Tenants were told that the law the county passed, which was identical to SB City’s, did not apply to them and that they would be served with eviction lawsuit papers any minute. The threat of lawsuit combined with lies was very effective.

Many cities have tenant harassment ordinances that include very specific definitions of harassment related to the landlord’s attempt to intimidate tenants into leaving. Some examples from the City of Oakland:

• Misrepresent to a Tenant that they are required to vacate a Rental Unit or otherwise entice a Tenant to vacate a Rental Unit through misrepresentations or concealment of material facts;

• Removing a housing service for the purpose of causing the Tenant to vacate the Rental Unit;

• Attempt to coerce a Tenant to vacate with offer(s) of payments to vacate which are accompanied with threats or intimidation. This shall not include settlement offers made in good faith and not accompanied with threats or intimidation in pending eviction actions;

• Offer payments to a Tenant to vacate more than once in six (6) months, after the Tenant has notified the Owner in writing the Tenant does not desire to receive further offers of payments to vacate;

• Influence or attempt to influence a Tenant to vacate a Rental Unit through fraud, intimidation or coercion. This includes threatening to report a Tenant or other person known to the Owner to be associated with a Tenant to any local, state, or federal agency on the basis of their perceived or actual immigration status. The prohibition shall not be construed as preventing communication with such agencies regarding an alleged immigration violation;

Eviction-related harassment could be inserted into our existing Just Cause Ordinance, or the City could begin drafting up its own separate and more comprehensive ordinance. Either way, we know that landlords will likely ramp up harassment and petty lease violation evictions as it becomes more difficult to renovict tenants.