The Santa Ana City Council voted to approve rent control and other tenant protections for certain properties in a vote on Wednesday. If implemented, the rent cap would be the first of its kind in Orange County.
The measure passed by a narrow margin of one vote, with four councilmembers in favor and three opposed.
“The simple truth is that we have a very sensitive community here, a renter community,” Mayor Vicente Sarmiento told The Orange County Register.
“More than 50 percent of our residents are tenants,” he said, noting that many of those renters live in overcrowded conditions. He attributed overcrowding to high, uncontrolled rental rates.
Under the ordinance package, which will require “final approval” before moving to implementation, rents in Santa Ana will be capped at three percent annually or 80 percent of inflation, whichever is less, for buildings built prior to 1996, as well as mobile home parks established before 1991.
Landlords will also face more limited circumstances under which they can evict tenants. For “just cause” evictions, which apply to tenants who have resided in rental homes or units for more than a month, landlords must serve tenants with an eviction notice in the language through which the lease was negotiated. The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2019 that more than 80 percent of Santa Ana residents spoke a language other than English at home.
Finally, the council approved $300,000 of COVID-19 relief funds to be directed to an “eviction defense fund,” as well as the hiring of a liaison for the rent control program until the city can form a formal rent control board and apartment registry.
Resident Manny Escamilla, an urban planner and rental property owner, told The Register he thought the measures were “a really reasonable proposal.”
But not all Santa Ana landlords felt similarly. According to The Register, one mobile home park manager called the rent control package a “socialist public policy.”
A spokesperson for the California Apartment Association said state law already provided sufficient renter protections, and that the new laws in Santa Ana were “excessive and extreme.”
The set of laws will take effect 30 days after receiving final approval. However, officials noted during Wednesday’s council session that forming a rent control board and apartment registry could take up to a year.
Because the rent cap was passed as a regular measure, not an urgency ordinance, it will return to the city council for a second vote, pending what a Santa Ana city spokesperson told KNX were "slight modifications."
The council is expected to vote again on the measure at its next meeting, scheduled for Oct. 5.
