Typically you'd only calculate long term rent when you crunch the numbers, but Santa Barbara has a shortage of hotels/places to stay, so airbnb/short term rentals, like @Rohme Williams said, should be a solid bet.

Then it reached poor positive cash flow, ok positive cash flow and eventually positive cash flow.  

Picking a specific market and understanding trends from there by using local resources will be your best bet for success.

@Brian ChoiI would say your best bet may be to ask if they do commercial loans if you are looking at an apartment that is more than 5 units and if they do lend on that show them the numbers using the calculator so you can present yourself well rather than just being another voice on a phone.

You either had poor screening parameters or a bad PM.

I have read Rich Dad Poor Dad and have now begun to read others published by BiggerPockets!

ALL of my problems have come from tenants who did not flow through my screening process (credit score was poor or unknown because of my ineptitude or failing to screen or because I inherited the tenants from a prior landlord). 

I think your best bet is putting 20% down with the 20K.

I began looking into Real Estate after first reading Rich Dad Poor Dad last summer during the COVID-19 quarantine, which completely changed my mindset and led me to dive deeper into financial literacy along with real estate investing.

My hope is that you are perhaps an overwhelmed landlord who might be looking to offload a headache.Someone who is getting close to being in a bad financial situation because of Covid or the rising cost of living.Someone who has lost all the equity in their home/is worried that it is in such poor condition that you won't be able to get any value out of it.If so, I’ve been doing a lot of research and I think we can help each other out.My goal is that by searching off-market, I will be able to find something within my price range and because the market is so high, you might be able to get more value for your home than you would normally.If this sounds like something that you would be interested in, I would love to hear from you!