1-on-1. SB’s City Council District 6 is Dominated by Renters. Realtor Alexander Stoeber Is Selling Himself to Them as “the Change Candidate”
Having overcome enormous personal adversity, the high-energy and sunny candidate has built a successful life in Santa Barbara and says he's ready to give back to the community.
Alexander Stoeber, a candidate for the District 6 seat on Santa Barbara's City Council, is trying to perform political jujitsu.
In a downtown district about 80 percent populated by tenants, he’s trying to convince voters that their best chance for a representative at City Hall is a guy who opposes rent control and sells luxury real estate for a living.
It’s a hefty political challenge, to be sure, but the 34-year-old Stoeber has overcome a host of bigger, more turbulent and traumatic obstacles in his personal life. So he’s confident that his communication skills and understanding of the complexities of housing policy will help him make the sale with voters.
“I see myself as the change candidate,” he said in a Newsmakers interview.
“When I’m door knocking, when I’m talking to people who are renters in Santa Barbara, they’re not all screaming about rent stabilization and rent control. They’re saying, ‘We don’t have any other options to go to. There’s no competition for our landlord.’ So we need more competition in the market,” Stoeber said.
“I think right now we’re having a hard time in Santa Barbara really seeing through the scarcity mindset that we currently have. And I really want to focus on a growth-minded mindset that’s focused on affordability today and abundance tomorrow,” he added.
Humble roots. The 34-year-old Stoeber (STO-ber) was born in Humble, Texas, and his upbeat and sunny manner belies a childhood torn apart by divorce, ugly custody fights and his mother’s drug addiction — a period he spent moving from place to place, sometimes homeless. He finally found stability in Turlock, where he became a star student and won acceptance to UCSB, earning a degree in political science and selling his first property — his fraternity’s house (Sigma Pi), which needed bigger quarters after his term as membership chair expanded the rolls.
After graduation in 2015, he worked a series of jobs — in tech, telecommunications, data analytics and as a fundraiser for the university — before getting his real estate license in 2019. Since then, he said, he’s sold about $75 million worth of property, from Hope Ranch to Carpinteria.
“My track record is coming from homelessness to selling real estate in the most beautiful place in the world,” Stoeber said. “I see myself as the one who has had to pay my own bills with my own revenue, my own sales, the one who’s picked myself up.”
State of play. District 6 includes downtown and Oak Park, among other neighborhoods, and has the highest percentage of renters — about 84 percent, according to U.S. Census data — of any district, and the lowest percentage of homeownership.
In the race, Stoeber faces an uphill battle against Santa Barbara Unified School Board member Gabe Escobedo, a UCSB recreation department director who is endorsed by the Democratic Party and has been actively engaged with local politics and policy for years, including a term as a city planning commissioner.
With no comparable background or experience in community affairs, Stoeber also failed to vote in city elections in 2017, when Gregg Hart was elected to represent District 6 in the first year the district system went into effect, or in 2021, when voters overwhelmingly backed incumbent Meagan Harmon, who is now termed out — and when there also was a contentious citywide campaign for mayor.
In our interview, Stoeber said he had “not ever missed an election.” Presented afterwards with a copy of his voting record, obtained via the California political data service PDI, however, he said that while he voted in every presidential and national election since registering in Santa Barbara, he regretted missing the two city-only ballots. He explained the discrepancy in an email exchange.
“For years I treated national elections as the ones that mattered and local elections as background noise…That was exactly backward from what I believe today.
The city council has a huge effect on our lives. I believe it’s more important than almost anything I was focused on nationally instead. What changed is that I started paying attention to how the decisions actually get made - the budget, permitting, State Street, public safety staffing, housing that never gets built. I realized these were the things I complained about most and understood least.
Once I saw that, sitting it out stopped being an option. I got involved, and now I’m running.”
Asked why he’s running now, Stoeber said he believes he has important perspectives that are currently lacking at City Hall. He not only views the city’s business through a private-sector lens, he said, but also would focus on new ways to spur economic development instead of fixating on regulation and taxation.
“I think there’s a space for career politicians, but it’s not Santa Barbara City Council, especially in District 6,” he said. “I’m running because I love Santa Barbara so much. It can be abundant. It can really have the feeling of safety. It can have the feeling of affordability.
“We have the resources for it,” he added. “State Street can be that center of awe that I remember when I came here in the beginning. And right now it doesn’t. And I think that the city council has had a lot of time to make changes … we’ve had a lot of time for change in Santa Barbara. And I don’t think that (council is producing) the change that we need.”
On the issues. Our conversation with Stoeber is the latest in a summer-long series Newsmakers is doing with candidates for council and mayor. In our campaign interviews, we ask the candidates for their views on four key issues. Here’s what he said about them, lightly edited for clarity:
Rent control. Stoeber said he opposes both the rent freeze council previously put into effect and the stabilization ordinance nearing passage. “It should be voted on by the people … I think it is a Band-Aid. I think that it is something that will create immediate relief for tenants right now. I don’t think it is a policy that is backed up by case studies or any long-term studies that have been done in other cities … Without a doubt, it will pinch (housing) supply, and our affordability is going to go down if we do have rent control. I’ve done a study on what it means for a $3,000-a-month rental in Santa Barbara — I think the savings is like $100 a month with rent control. And yeah, that does impact the bottom line for a lot of people, but we are spending hours and hours and hours debating this, almost like it’s a full-time job talking about rent stabilization and not talking about the other solutions.”
State Street. “I walk State Street almost every day. I’m out there. I see people smoking meth. I see people using State Street as a toilet. I don’t have the experience of it being sacred right now … We have the longest promenade in the country … I think that there is a space and time for a pedestrian mall, but it’s also our center of commerce right now. There are times in our day and our week where we can open it up so that businesses can get shipments … we need to make it as dynamic as possible with retractable bollards and a clear mode schedule for what mode State Street is going to be in.”
Budget. “My background is in technology and automation efficiency. And that’s what I think we need right now — automation, bring in some AI … I think we can make our city staff more productive, and I think we can do better with technology.”
Ranked-choice voting. "I have such a low voter turnout district that I don't want to make it any more complicated … I wouldn't be averse to (putting it before voters)."
Check out our conversation with Alexander Stoeber via YouTube below or by clicking this link. Our podcast is available on Apple, Spotify, or on SoundCloud. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 5 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on weekends.
Newsmakers’ Candidate Conversations. To offer Santa Barbara voters early introductions to contenders for four City Council seats, including Mayor, in the Nov. 3 election, Newsmakers is publishing one-on-one interviews with the candidates over the summer. Upcoming interviews include mayoral candidates Wendy Sims-Moten and Kristen Sneddon. Here is who we’ve spoken with to date:
District 4
District 5
District 6
Alexander Stoeber candidate for District 6, Aug. 3.