Rent control is highly contentious. Certainly many of its opponents are landlords who stand to lose the most financially. But even among those who agree that something needs to be done to help tenants, rent control isn’t a popular answer, since it seems to do more harm than good in practice by encouraging landlords to exploit legal loopholes to evict tenants — or even just evict them illegally, which is rarely contested in court.
It’s no surprise, then, that the vote to enact rent control in Santa Ana was hotly debated. The final vote was 4-3 in favor, but even the four council members that approved it all admitted it isn’t an optimal solution. The saving grace is that the measure also includes tenant protections. The opposition’s primary contention was that the measures aren’t too different from the existing statewide regulations, making it a largely redundant venture whose implementation and enforcement would be a waste of city and taxpayer money.
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