San Luis Obispo recently proposed creating a new database that could fill knowledge gaps in the city’s rental landscape.
Called the rental housing registry, it’s a roster that tenant advocacy groups say could help with housing growth. Rental property owners would log their name and contact information, details about the location and number of units they own, rent levels and occupancy statistics, and eviction history, among other potentially required details.
SLO Tenants Union member Barry Price credited the group as the motivating force behind the city’s decision to work on the database. He told New Times that the Tenants Union has been advocating for the registry for more than two years.
“We just started hearing more and more from tenants who we were speaking to that rents were skyrocketing, that conditions were deteriorating, and landlords and property managers were not being responsive,” he said. “In a city where nearly two-thirds of the residents are renters, that’s not really an acceptable situation.”
Price was among the dozens of people who weighed in on a rental registry system floated by city staff during a City Council study session on Feb. 24.
Comments from renters, advocates, real estate agents, and property owners lasted more than an hour before the City Council directed staff to study the viability of a program that would require the registration of all rental properties.
“Right now, we’re making a lot of our most consequential housing decisions without a complete picture of the rental side of the market,” City Councilmember Emily Francis said. “I don’t think that’s really good governance, it’s just kind of guessing.”
Such registries are used as decision-making tools by local governments to craft housing policies and achieve goals like stabilized rents, creating eviction protections, and improving substandard living conditions.
SLO is estimated to have almost 15,000 rental units. The city’s staff report said that a community group of property management companies counted a little more than 8,200 professionally managed units.
“We hear a lot of anecdotal stories from our community about issues such as the price of renting, safe housing, and other issues,” SLO Housing Coordinator David Amini told New Times. “But we don’t have access to a data source to really concretely be able to say with certainty, like, ‘Here’s what the average rent is in the city for this year,’ or, ‘Here’s the amount of two-bedroom apartments that we have.’”
City staff looked to 35 cities across California—including Palo Alto, Berkeley, Beverly Hills, San Francisco, Antioch, Concord, Davis, and Monterey—that had their own mandatory rental registry systems.
At the Feb. 24 special meeting, staff presented the City Council with two other options—a voluntary rental registration system and another where the city uses the existing business license process to gather information on rental units.
Most renters and the Tenants Union favored a mandatory registration that would cost the city between $10,000 and $50,000 a year for the software, and from $300,000 to $500,000 annually to staff three full-time employees to manage the program.
Amini mentioned a “roll-out process” if the City Council ultimately votes for a mandatory rental registry. Spanning at least a year, the process wouldn’t allow enforcement as an incentive for people to register their properties. The city could also reduce the annual registration fee during that period.
“This would come at a cost to the city of approximately $200,000 in unrealized fee revenue,” he said. “So, there may be delays in reaching the full coverage of the software and staffing program.”
The bulk of the cost would be recouped once the roll-out period ends when code enforcement and fee collections begin, according to Amini. He added that Monterey currently covers about 90 percent of the rental registry costs after implementing the program two years ago.
Real estate agents and many property owners resisted the idea, expressing concerns about breach of privacy at the City Council meeting.
Amini told New Times that the online registry shouldn’t be confused with a website like Craigslist where information on rentals is publicly available.
‘We don’t have access to a data source to really concretely be able to say with certainty, like, “Here’s what the average rent is in the city for this year,” or, “Here’s the amount of two-bedroom apartments that we have.”’
—David Amini, SLO housing coordinator
“The data is mostly kept private,” he said. “In most registries, they don’t have a public-facing component, and really, the landlord is the one who logs in, creates an account, and answers a bunch of questions about their units, pay their rental registry or also the business license fee.”
Other naysayers complained about the annual registration fee that could range from $25 to $250 per unit.
“Evaluate whether existing enforcement tools such as the city business license program, which could simply and cost effectively be upgraded to accomplish everything the registry is aiming to do, and in the process not add another regulatory layer and save hundreds of thousands in additional costs, which would be levied on property owners who will simply pass those costs onto their tenants,” realtor Steve Ferrario said. “I know I will.”
Tenant Union member Price criticized the opposition, adding that the annual fee would only be a minor cost increase.
“To me, that sounds like the perpetrator promising to perpetrate even more,” he said. “But I think it’s honestly a red herring. The fees are small.”
To Price, rental registries aren’t “anti-housing or anti-landlord,” but “pro-housing” in that they protect landlords who comply while weeding out bad actors—allowing renters to check if landlords are legitimate while protecting their rights and helping them sidestep scams.
Though the Tenants Union appreciated the City Council for understanding the value of a mandatory registration system, Price said the union is disappointed by the lack of urgency.
Along with consulting other cities that have successful rental registries, city staff will outline a local program structure, software solutions, estimated costs, staffing needs, and a potential fee structure for the 2027-29 budget.
“They could at least have some of this information for the general plan update. The city is about to embark on an update for the housing element of the general plan and yet they don’t have this critically important information,” Price said. “We’re disappointed that they kicked the can down the road for another two years.
“That seems to us like a capitulation to a small group of wealthy and well-connected landlords and realtors.” ∆
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in March 5-12, 2026.
My apologies to others who want this, but my taxes are too high, my required filings with government are too extensive, the complexity of my life comes from response to claimed benefits of more information being provided to government and the presumption that government and all its functions will make me better off. I would favor less government at almost every opportunity, leaving society and free markets to make most decisions. Those disciplines seem more fair minded, more effective and less tyrannical than government providing another program.