Devon Wardlow, a housing advocate who wants to keep downtown State Street closed to vehicles, said she is running for City Council in District 4 to “protect” Santa Barbara.
“I believe I have the public policy experience and real deep knowledge of this community to be an effective City Councilmember,” Wardlow said. “I am passionate about protecting what we all love in Santa Barbara.”
Wardlow spoke with the News-Press and appeared in an hour-long episode of the podcast Santa Barbara Talks with Josh Molina.
Four people are competing for the open seat in District 4, which covers San Roque, the upper Eastside, Coast Village Road, and a portion of the foothills. In addition to Wardlow, Monte Wilson and Genevieve Taft-Vasquez have pulled papers to run for the seat.
Jason Dominguez has also said he plans to run. Kristen Sneddon currently serves in the district, but she must step down because of term limits, and she is running for mayor.
Wardlow has spent five years on the city’s planning commission, where she has consistently voiced strong support for housing.
Wardlow said housing challenges can only be met by using “multiple tools in the tool chest.” She said “subsidy, stabilizing and the supply side” are keys.
“It is so critical that we identify an ongoing funding stream for the local housing trust fund,” Wardlow said.
She said the City Council needs to do everything it can to support the Housing Authority financially so that it can go out and get matching state grants.
A rent stabilization policy, she said, ensures that current tenants are able to stay in their homes “and have that security that they know their rents aren’t going to go up super-dramatically every year.”
The last piece, she said, is the supply side.
“There is a coalescing around a shared vision that we should focus on housing downtown, where housing will serve the other big priority we have downtown, which is the economic revitalization of State Street.”
Wardlow said she supports State Street in its current configuration—closed to cars.
“I love that it is closed, I like how it is, I know there is a lot of room for improvement and I am confident that is what we will do with the State Street master plan,” Wardlow said.
She the downtown feels like a “community center.”
Still, she recognizes that even though she personally enjoys State Street, her views should not dictate the policy around its future.
“What I think is most important from a policy perspective is what the businesses on State Street say they want,” Wardlow said. “They are the ones who are there every day.”
She said that she met with many businesses downtown.
“I heard, from my perspective, overwhelmingly, that the businesses that are there today want it to stay closed,” Wardlow said. “To me, that should be the biggest barometer of where we should move forward from a policy perspective.”
Wardlow currently works as the head of public policy for Obvi, a company that uses AI to help reduce traffic fatalities. She previously worked in public affairs in the cannabis industry. She’s also held jobs at Facebook, Lyft, the U.S. Department of Labor. She has traveled and worked in the Middle East.
Wardlow also worked in Washington D.C., as an intern at the White House during the Obama Administration.
She said her family moved around a lot as a child and that she moved from Manhattan to Santa Barbara when she was 13. She graduated from Santa Barbara High School.
“I think Santa Barbara has the best quality of life,” she said. “In the morning I can go on my favorite hike, then I can go to the beach, then I can catch a show at the Bowl,” Wardlow said. “To me, this is kind of the best-case scenario for quality of life.”
Serving on the Santa Barbara City Council, she said, is the next extension of her love for Santa Barbara and commitment to public service.
“It’s just another level of being engaged in policy in a community that I love so much,” Wardlow said. “I enjoy this kind of work and I think I can be very impactful.”
Wardlow said she will work to be a consensus-builder on the council.
“We have a very big, shared foundation that regardless of where you sit on different issues, everyone, and I truly believe this, everyone who is an elected leader, or city staff, and engaged community leaders, everyone is trying to do the best they can to really protect what we all love about Santa Barbara,” Wardlow said. “
Wardlow said diverse perspectives matter when shaping public policy.
“It’s about listening to one another, identifying those shared priorities, and then working together to execute on a shared vision for our community,” Wardlow said.
