Like the weather, people complain a lot about Santa Barbara’s excruciatingly unaffordable housing market. For 36 years, Rob Pearson has actually done something about it. During his 36 years at the helm of the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara — 30 as executive director and six as second-in-command — Pearson developed 40-50 housing projects, building 3,200 units of affordable housing for low-income renters, including Section 8. In terms of scale, scope, and magnitude, that puts him on par with regional mega-developers like Michael Towbes.
Under Pearson, the Housing Authority managed the seemingly impossible, shoe-horning mid-sized developments into tight spaces without generating intense backlash from neighborhood residents. By Santa Barbara standards, that’s akin to walking on water. Pearson — who retired late last December — credited compatible design and solid management for the before and after success of agency projects.
Pearson may have made a point of walking softly, but he also carried a big stick. He was not an easy foe to cross. Pearson did not single-handedly bring the curtain down on Santa Barbara’s burgeoning vacation rental industry. But when he got involved — issuing white papers on the impact of vacation rental industry’s impact on rental housing — it was the beginning of the political end for that industry. Before officially passing the baton to his second in command, Rob Fredericks, Pearson spent some time talking with Independent writer Nick Welsh. The following is an edited version of that conversation.