FILE: Downtown Santa Barbara.

A little more than a month after its city council voted in favor of a precedent-setting rent freeze, representatives and residents of Santa Barbara remain divided over how to continue to tackle the wealthy city’s most pressing issue: housing.

On the one hand, both sides acknowledge that some kind of sweeping reform is necessary to address the housing and affordability crisis here. Both sides are also acutely aware that decisions made here could have implications statewide, and beyond. 

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However, that may be all that those for and against the rent freeze can agree on. The rent freeze remains contentious even as the city council works out a permanent ordinance.

Earlier this month, a group of Santa Barbara property owners and the Santa Barbara Rental Property Association, an organization that represents local property owners, filed a lawsuit against the city, calling the rental freeze ordinance unconstitutional. 

The Paseo Nuevo mall in Santa Barbara, Calif., is mostly empty on Oct. 17, 2025. 

The lawsuit, filed in federal court on April 3, alleges that the four city council members who voted in favor of the ordinance “abused [the council’s] discretion in introducing and adopting the Ordinances and failed to comply with its own charter.”

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The lawsuit further alleges that city council members “recklessly hastened the legislative process,” arguing that Councilmembers Wendy Santamaria and Kristen Sneddon introduced “a novel rent ordinance without public notice.” 

The lawsuit also alleges that the city of Santa Barbara and the council members disregarded public comment from property owners, saying that “some of the councilmembers laughed, shook their heads, or rolled their eyes at the concerns of distressed commenters, demonstrating an impenetrable bias.”

Barry Cappello, the attorney representing the property owners, told SFGATE last week that the rental freeze is in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause, which asserts that private property cannot “be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

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Pedestrians walks in the Funk Zone in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Feb. 26, 2026.

However, the rental freeze doesn’t involve the city of Santa Barbara taking property away from its landlords. Cappello, who was Santa Barbara’s city attorney for seven years in the 1970s, said to look at the rent freeze in a context........

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