Quick Take
The Santa Cruz City Council unanimously approved a city ordinance to bring government-assisted living facilities with expiring rent restrictions, including the downtown St. George Residences, under the same protections mandated by a state law that limits the size of single-year rent increases. The ordinance will go into effect on Oct. 24, just a week before St. George residents were facing rent hikes as high as 200%.
Applause erupted from the Santa Cruz City Council chambers on Tuesday afternoon when the council unanimously approved a new city ordinance that will limit rent hikes at the St. George Residences on Pacific Avenue — and other government-assisted housing like it in the city — effectively closing a loophole in state legislation.
The ordinance, originally submitted by Councilmembers Scott Newsome, Sandy Brown and Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson, brings St. George under the same rent caps mandated by 2019’s Assembly Bill 1482, which limited rent increases on multifamily rentals to whichever is lower between 5% plus inflation or 10%.
The rent hike limits that AB 1482 established do not apply to buildings with expiring rental restrictions, like St. George. The building has offered subsidized rents to tenants since Swenson Builders rebuilt the apartments after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The agreement that kept the rents restricted is set to expire 20 years later, on Nov. 1 of this year, at which point residents would face rent hikes as high as 200% in some cases. Many tenants said it would put them on the precipice of homelessness.
Tenants were joined at the meeting by advocates and organizers from the Monterey-based group Communities Organized for Relational Power in Action (COPA) and the Association of Faith Communities of Santa Cruz. The groups became involved in advocating for the tenants in recent months, as many residents spoke to their pastors about the rent hikes they were facing, spurring their involvement.
As the emotional group of 20 St. George tenants celebrated the ordinance’s passing, COPA organizer Eli Holliday emphasized the important role they played in getting the ordinance approved.
“You met with Councilmember Newsome, you submitted letters to the editor, you tried to meet with [Swenson parent company] Green Valley Corporation,” he said. “I want to make sure you all know that you are responsible for this win. This did not happen, you won it.”
The ordinance will go into effect on Oct. 24, just a week before the planned rent hikes, which means that the building’s owner, Barron Ranches Inc., a company connected to Swenson Builders, can increase rent by only 5 to 10%.
Grass Valley-based William Van Roo, an attorney representing Barron Ranches, protested the new ordinance when it was first introduced earlier this month and vowed to pursue legal action to block it. In a memo sent to Santa Cruz city attorney Tony Condotti, Van Roo said that the ordinance is a “very short-sighted attempt to address an issue that will have severe negative impacts.” He also said that the ordinance is unconstitutional, despite the fact that AB 1482 does not preempt any local ordinance that is more protective and covers the same or similar issues.
Kevin Cummings, a 31-year-resident of the building and retired paralegal, said with Holliday’s help, he discovered the value of working as a group. He had been in back-and-forth communication with both Barron Ranches and Santa Cruz city representatives for weeks.
“I was kind of slow to come to the fact that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts,” he said. “We came not as one person with one issue, but as a community with an important issue that affected many people.”
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