By MY WRITE BY BILL BAUER
I was recently asked to remove myself from yet another Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights (SMRR) meeting when LA Voice and many of our city’s affordable housing activists discussed tenant abuse and rent control issues.
SMRR has been a strong advocate for new affordable housing. While it may be well and good to develop hundreds of units of “affordable” housing for individuals and families desiring to move into Santa Monica, I wanted to know why the organization has been slow to respond with programs and strategies to protect thousands of residents now living in low-rent units from harassment and eviction (SMDP, Dec. 5, page 4).
I was informed it was a SMRR housing subcommittee meeting “not open to the public” and definitely not open to the press. So much for SMRR and public involvement. I left, but spoke briefly outside with Michael Tarbet, SMRR’s tenant issues guru. Tarbet assured me that SMRR was concerned about renters who were losing their homes due to redevelopment and hostile landlords.
Tarbet acknowledged that SMRR’s hotline lately had experienced a substantial increase in calls from renters seeking advice on problems with landlords. He said that SMRR advises tenants about their rights and suggested ways to resolve conflicts.
“One of the best tools is educating yourself about the laws, your rights and to network with other tenants for support,” he recently posted on the RentersAllianceSantaMonica blog. Tarbet and I shared our disappointment with the City Attorney’s office, which we feel was not being aggressive enough in protecting tenants.
With some of the most powerful people in City Hall — including two councilmen, Rent Control Board commissioners, both SMRR co-chairs and a number of high profile SMRR steering committee members — sitting in a social hall a few feet away, I asked Tarbet why nobody was pushing the City Attorney to prosecute more cases or advocate for increased tenant relocation fees.
How about creating financial disincen-tives to discourage eviction of low-rent tenants, such as increasing taxes on new redevelopments that replace older apartments — anything to slow the loss of existing affordable housing stock?
Tarbett shrugged. ————————— On another note: A number of pre-Christmas treats are on the agenda at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting.
The annual review of the city’s homeless services is one. This is where city staff whitewashes homeless problems and public discontent with glowing accolades about their “continuum of care” that has neither reduced the number of transients on our streets or been particularly effective in really helping the army of vagrants and drunks who’ve turned Santa Monica into their squat.
Among the items the annual review omits is the cost of monitoring, arresting and processing vagrant lawbreakers, para-medic service calls, recycling theft, clean up of encampments on streets, bluffs and under overpasses, etc.
It does say, “In fiscal year 2004-05, the city budgeted $1,823,391 to fund existing nonprofit homeless services. This does not include a HUD Supportive Housing Program grant. This amount is the same as that budgeted in 2003-04. For every dollar allocated to homeless service providers from the city’s general fund, the nonprofit organizations leveraged an additional $2.87 in non-city funding.”
That’s $7,055,000, plus a grant in the amount of $948,907 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for housing people who are homeless and addicted to alcohol, as well as hiring former Los Angeles County Supervisor Edmund D. Edelman as our new “homeless czar” at $200,000 for a year (SMDP, Dec. 7, 2005, page 1).
Plus a few hundred grand more for incidentals such as computer services for the nine city-subsidized service providers (enablers). Why can’t I shake the feeling that all of this is a staggering amount of money going down a rat hole?
The City Council also will decide on an appeal of expansion plans and an 11-car parking variance for the Unitarian Universalist Community Church at 18th Street and Arizona Avenue. Church neighbors are viewing the decision as either one for more development with inadequate parking or for maintaining what little quality of neighborhood life is left.
On Wednesday, the Planning Commission will decide whether to waive requirements for seven on-site parking spots for a proposed restaurant at 609 Broadway. Here we go again. The continuous waiving of parking requirements such as this one and the Unitarian Church is bad planning and negatively affects both the viability of commerce and community livability. (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica resident and a freelance writer.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 12, 2005. Read the original PDF.