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% of the Consumer Price Index or 3%, 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. 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.
By capping my ability to adjust rents to market reality and inflation, 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.
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. 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.
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 (DSA) 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.
Sincerely,
Trace Sturgeon
Doctor of Education
Proud Santa Barbara Property Owner since 1991
