Election 2024: The Battle for the Future of Eastside Santa Barbara

Eastside Santa Barbara has a long history as a diverse and culturally rich section of the city, and ever since the city made the move to District elections in 2015, the Eastside has remained the only district with over 60 percent Latino residents. But the district — which stretches along Salinas Street, down Cabrillo Boulevard, and includes the Funk Zone — is slowly changing, becoming more wealthy with more white collar workers, and this election will give voters a chance to decide who will guide the Eastside into this new era.

There are technically three candidates in the District 1 race (perennial candidate Cruzito Cruz is worth a mention for helping pave the way to district elections), but with less than 50 days left until election day, two have emerged as the leading candidates, both first-generation Latina women, and both fiercely passionate about fighting for the unique needs of the Eastside community, despite their vastly different political philosophies.

Incumbent Alejandra Gutierrez, who won the District 1 seat in 2019 by a slim eight-vote margin, was born-and-raised in Eastside Santa Barbara and has the advantage of previously built-in community support and five years of firsthand government experience. Her challenger, up-and-coming union organizer and housing advocate Wendy Santamaria, brings a progressive stance on housing policy, and in just a few years she has already proved to be a fiery public speaker with a wave of young, politically active supporters behind her.

Both candidates will be participating in the Independent’s District 1 City Council Forum on Monday, September 23 at “The Club” on 632 E Canon Perdido St., where they will make their cases for city voters. But first, let’s get to know each candidate.

Alejandra Gutierrez

Councilmember Gutierrez admits she never intended to be a politician, but jumped at the chance to run for city council five years ago to prove that somebody from the neighborhood could make it to City Hall.

“I didn’t come from a political background,” she said. “For me it was about being able to represent my neighborhood and district, as a female and as a Latina.”

Her father came to Santa Barbara from Mexico as a teenager, and one of his first jobs was at La Casa de La Raza community center, where the spirit of Chicano activism and neighborhood support rubbed off on the family. La Casa, she remembers, was once a vibrant cultural center, a place where Eastside families could host dances, get healthcare, or join a swing circle.

But in recent years, La Casa has suffered from a string of bankruptcies, new ownerships, and tragedies that have left it a shell of its former self. The loss of the resources, like the near closure of the Eastside Boys & Girls Club, is representative of the struggles to adjust to the post-pandemic changes to the neighborhood.

“Everybody’s kind of fighting for a spot,” Gutierrez said. “It’s getting more expensive and people from the outside are coming in buying houses.”

In her five years on the council, Gutierrez says she has fought for the interests of Eastside residents, her neighbors, who are often “left out of the conversation” — especially Spanish-speaking residents who can’t make it to a two o’clock council meeting.

“The city doesn’t always meet people where they’re at,” she said. “We’ve poured so much money into downtown, and we haven’t done that with Milpas. They do what they want in the district, and they take advantage because people don’t come out and voice their concerns.”

Despite the lack of attention, she feels that the Eastside businesses have thrived through the struggles by being a tight-knit community. “We’re really proud of Milpas,” she said. “We showed that anything you throw at us, we strive. On weekends you can really feel the life out there.”

Gutierrez says she has pushed for more transparency from the city, often pulling items off the consent calendar to grill city staff on details and making sure that community surveys properly represent the demographics of the city. But during her time on the council, Gutierrez’s willingness to vote against the grain, and her position on housing issues, specifically rent control, have made her a polarizing figure at City Hall.

“The whole country’s divided, and here the community is divided on the topic of housing,” Gutierrez said. “It’s either you’re on one side or the other, and you can’t be in the middle, which is ridiculous because we need each other — the housing providers need the renters and the renters need the housing providers.”

She has come out strongly against any rent control other than the state-mandated caps, and says that she worries about “mom and pop” landlords being swept up in catch-all restrictions intended to target price-gouging corporate landlords.

“Rent control is a band-aid. There’s a narrative that’s being pushed out there, and there needs to be a happy balance,” she said. “In order to do that as a policymaker you’re going to have to make decisions that take a lot of courage because you’re going to have to disappoint people. But you have to think long-term and for the greater good.”

During the 2019 election, Gutierrez had the support of the local democratic political machine, but since then she says her fierce independence against “political agendas” has led to these groups backing away from endorsing her reelection. The Santa Barbara Young Democrats, which endorsed Gutierrez in 2019, recently published a letter calling out her “troubling record of absenteeism,” alleging that she had missed one in every five city council hearings, including meetings to decide on affordable housing, budgets, and the hiring of the new city administrator.

A deep dive reviewed by the Independent found that Gutierrez was absent or late to 71 meetings between February 2021 and July 2024, a period during which she completely missed at least 47 meetings.

Gutierrez says that many of the absences were during the pandemic, when meetings were held remotely and she was dealing with personal and family illnesses. “During that time I was in my community, helping the people personally,” she said, pointing out the “educational pods” she created for children at St. George Community Church.

She says she will be focusing on her core base supporters, her constituents that voted her in and the folks that she will continue to support from the dais.

“I know myself well, I know who I am and I don’t compromise my values,” she said. “I’m always going to try and do the right thing even when it’s not the most popular. I’m more afraid of having to show my face to the people in the neighborhoods than to any of these political groups.”

Wendy Santamaria

Santamaria is also a first-generation child of Mexican parents, raised in the Inland Empire before moving to Santa Barbara to attend UC Santa Barbara. Her experience growing up in a heavily industrialized region — which was a “dumpling grounds for warehouses,” and where the largely Latino population was often ignored by the government —  led her to studying political science, public policy, and environmental ethics.

She began organizing in earnest when COVID hit and she saw behind the curtain of mass evictions and mass displacement of students and families in Isla Vista. When she moved out to Santa Barbara in 2020 she began to see the problem in every corner of the community, working as an organizer with Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) and helping push the needle on tenant protections and updating the city’s eviction ordinance.

But in her hundreds of hours meeting with tenants and speaking at public meetings, she says that she saw it was still difficult to get City Hall to truly address the needs of the city’s working-class residents, who were slowly being priced out of town in favor of higher-paying tenants.

Specifically, she noticed the city was only one vote away from the majority needed to move forward with items like rent control — or “rent stabilization” — and more progressive housing policies like a rental registry.

“Why won’t our representative listen and why won’t someone run against her?” Santamaria asked herself. “I want to open this door. That’s what led me ultimately to run for city council — It’s never really been in my plan.”

Santamaria gained a strong following that grows after every public appearance, building on the base of CAUSE and Santa Barbara Tenants Union supporters that have known her through her advocacy. From the beginning of her campaign, Santamaria has been pegged as the most progressive candidate, in terms of housing policy, in the city’s recent history. And while the divisive issue of rent control has been the center of debate, it’s only one part of Santamaria’s “housing reform package.”

“You can’t only build, and you can’t only have rent control,” she said. “It’s not meant to be a standalone policy. You need a combination of these things. You can’t solve the housing crisis with one solution.”

The policy package would take on the crisis on all fronts with rent stabilization; rental registry to keep track of illegal rent hikes; a rent board that could oversee issues and help “mom and pop” landlords on a case-by-case basis; a permanent “right to counsel” program; a residential vacancy tax to make sure units aren’t sitting empty; and a city partnership with the city’s Housing Authority to build affordable workforce housing.

Santamaria’s critics question whether her inexperience and big-picture ideals will make it difficult to get up to speed with all the issues coming across the council in the near future. But Santamaria is confident that her years of advocacy and building relationships with city staff and councilmembers have prepared her for the job and helped her understand the give and take of city government.

“I’m a big believer that if we want to fix an issue bad enough there is a way we can agree,” Santamaria said. “I am ready to work with our mayor, and I already get along with a majority of the council. I’m convinced they want the city to move forward, and if elected, these working relationships I’ve built are going to help me hit the ground running.”

From now until election day, Team Wendy is in full campaign mode, with neighborhood canvassing and phone banks six days a week. Even with her full time job, Santamaria says she is hitting doors and talking to constituents at neighborhood meetups and house parties.

“The amount of community support is overwhelming,” she said. “Things are bustling. It’s a crazy time, for sure.”

She says that she hopes Eastside voters take every issue into account, and not just decide on either candidate based on the issues of housing or rent control.

“I think the word rent control has been used as a boogeyman,” Santamaria said. “I would love for voters to look at everything: Look at who’s funding whose campaign; Look at what policies are being pushed. How do we achieve long term stability?”

These issues include addressing Eastside streets that are vulnerable to flooding; strengthening the power grid to prevent frequent blackouts; ensuring the Funk Zone flourishes; and bringing back “third places” for youth in the community.

“We need to remember what’s at stake,” she continued. “I think it’s important for folks to ask themselves: If we continue to have an absentee representative, what’s our city going to look like in a few years?”

So far, Santamaria has earned the endorsements of some of the major local political powers, such as the Santa Barbara County Democratic Party, Young Democrats, and former mayors Marty Blum and Cathy Murillo.