Dear Mayor and Councilmembers,
My last-minute plea is that, if you move forward with rent stabilization, you implement it incrementally and make the implementation genuinely agile.
I offer this perspective based on 29 years of working with state and local governments to build large-scale government systems, including the State of California, the County of Santa Barbara, and numerous states, cities and counties throughout California and across the country.
Over those years, I have had the benefit of seeing both sides of major government implementation: large, monolithic projects that failed, and large projects built incrementally using agile methods that succeeded.
One of the most important lessons I have learned is how, at the outset of a project, we can never know everything we will learn once a new system is actually operating.
There is already some phasing in the city’s proposed implementation, but phasing deadlines is not the same thing as phasing decision-making.
I urge you to consider a genuinely agile approach.
- Phase One could be the minimum viable program: implement the basic rent-stabilization requirements, provide clear education to landlords and tenants, use existing city resources wherever possible, and begin collecting the information absolutely necessary to administer the ordinance.
- Phase Two could be a minimum viable rental registry: collect only the information that experience demonstrates is actually necessary. Don’t build an elaborate registry today on assumptions around what we might need tomorrow.
Then stop and measure.
After six months, bring the results back to council. How many questions did the city receive? How many complaints? How many petitions? How many enforcement actions? How much staff time did they actually require? What did the program actually cost? What is the cost per case? Are rental units leaving the market? Are there other unintended consequences?
- Phase Three should occur only after this review: if the data demonstrates that additional staff, technology, enforcement resources or registry functions are necessary, authorize them.
If the demand isn’t there, don’t build them.
If something isn’t working, change it.
If an administrative component is costing far more than anticipated for very little benefit, simplify it or eliminate it before it becomes institutionalized.
And before each significant expansion, come back to council for an affirmative go/no-go decision based upon actual Santa Barbara experience.
Agility does not mean abandoning the objective. It means allowing what you learn during implementation to determine the best and least burdensome way to achieve the objective.
The administrative costs being discussed are substantial and they affect the entire community. Whether those costs ultimately come through registration fees, the General Fund or other city resources, they are not somehow isolated from the rest of Santa Barbara. Resources devoted here are resources that cannot be devoted elsewhere, and administrative burdens ultimately affect renters, property owners, homeowners, businesses and taxpayers.
After 29 years of watching large government projects succeed and fail, the single most important lesson I can offer is that Santa Barbara does not need to decide today exactly what its rent-stabilization bureaucracy must look like several years from now.
Start with what is necessary. Measure what happens. Learn. Adapt. Then decide what to build next.
I hope you will take the time to consider this request from someone who loves this city as much as you do, and who has tried to contribute to this community in very tangible ways.
I am asking you to bring that same spirit of care and pragmatism to implementation.
Respectfully,
Jenna