Council to review affordable housing compliance
CITY HALL — Elected leaders traded barbs Tuesday night over how the city’s least expensive apartments are divvied up among Santa Monica residents and outsiders.
After voting to give nonprofit developers more autonomy in building new housing projects, the City Council entered into a charged discussion of whether Santa Monica residents and workers are getting a fair shake in the quest for cheap rentals.
There are more than 3,000 units reserved for low-income households in Santa Monica and hundreds of new units are in the pipeline. Housing officials give preference to local workers and residents when possible, but said nearly half of new units are filled by people who previously lived outside the city.
“We’re talking about spending Santa Monica people’s money to provide this housing and I think folks, whether they’re right or wrong, they don’t feel that way,” City Councilman Bobby Shriver said at the Tuesday meeting.
“Everybody in the world wants to live in Santa Monica,” Shriver continued. “It’s a very, very desirable place.”
Shriver called for a report detailing how applicants are chosen to fill low-income housing vacancies. The overwhelming feeling on the street, he said, is units ought to be set aside for teachers, firefighters, police officers and others.
Local projects that rely on any amount of federal funding cannot give preference to Santa Monica residents and workers. Ron Bare-field, City Hall’s housing administrator, said projects recently have been able to rely less on federal funds as local developers pay for the privilege of not including affordable units in new projects.
City Councilman Richard Bloom said some preference for local residents was good, but added the practice can be taken too far.
“When we use terminology like, ‘We don’t favor affordable housing for people from New York’ — well, should New York be closing its doors to people from Santa Monica?” he asked.
“We live in a mobile society,” Bloom added. “Homeless people, and people who are forced out of housing, people who need to leave their housing but can’t afford it, come from all walks of life and they come from all parts of our country and all parts of our region — and we need to bear that in mind.”
City Councilman Ken Genser called the discussion “divisive” and “a waste of time.” If any discussion was merited, it should have focused on overall density in Santa Monica and also examined private developments, Genser said.
“One of the council members tonight said, ‘Everybody supports affordable housing.’ I wish that were true,” Genser said. “I don’t think that is the case in this city. I think most people do, but I think there is a very vocal minority that does not.
“And I think there’s a very vocal minority that uses nasty misrepresentations to try and make their arguments against affordable housing — and I really believe it to be code words against poor people and code words against minorities, and people wanting to gentrify neighborhoods and eliminate poor people from those neighborhoods,” Genser added.
“I’m not saying my colleagues here want to do that, but I think that some may be falling accidentally into that or being seduced by the arguments being made.”
Shriver took exception to the insinuation. “I just want to say that I am not inadvertently being seduced by anybody to harm poor people,” he said. “I want to be very clear on that, and I take offense at that.”
“I just want to say that I am not inadvertently being seduced by anybody to harm poor people... I take offense at that.” — — BOBBY SHRIVER City Councilman
The discussion of how to pick applicants for affordable housing units was raised during a discussion over how much latitude nonprofit housing developers should have in building affordable projects with City Hall funds. The council voted 6-1 to increase from $5.4 million to $9 million the amount of money those developers can spend on projects without approval from the City Council. The vote also increased from $4.5 million to $8.4 million the amount developers can spend on converting old buildings into affordable units without council approval.
City Councilman Bob Holbrook, the lone dissenting vote, raised two related issues, first pointing out that public housing projects have a less intensive public review process and are approved more quickly than private projects. That means residents often are caught unaware by the size and scale of projects slated to be built in their neighborhoods, Holbrook said.
What’s more, as long as affordable housing projects draw families from outside of Santa Monica, the local schools will continue to swell, causing a cycle where the school district slashes programs and continually returns to City Hall for help, Holbrook added.
“Why do I want Santa Monica more congested than it already is, unless it’s directly benefiting Santa Monica residents first?” he asked.
Attempting to reassess the situation, City Councilman Herb Katz asked that a separate public meeting be scheduled.
“I just think it’s a good idea, based upon the fact that (with) most of the citizens that I’ve spoken with … there’s confusion on what is and what can be, and what isn’t allowed,” Katz said. “And I think clearing it with the public, clearing it with ourselves, is healthy. When you’re afraid to have a discussion, that worries me more than anything else.”
Katz’s request failed in a 3-4 vote. Genser raised a subsequent motion that was backed by the entire council to review the city’s lack of compliance with Proposition R, which was passed by voters in 1990 to ensure that 30 percent of new developments in Santa Monica be affordable.
“I am stunned,” Genser said earlier, after Katz proposed the public meeting to discuss affordable housing. “I don’t know why we’re going to focus on the few … affordable units that we can build in this city by marshaling our resources carefully and trying to say, ‘That’s a scapegoat for overcrowded schools’ and ‘That’s a scapegoat for traffic’ or this or that, when maybe we need to change our ability — although the state limits us severely in doing this — for the commercial development and the privately funded development.”
Genser said he backed giving some priority to local residents, though he said the process already was handled well.
“I also don’t think it’s such a huge issue about if someone who doesn’t live in this city gets into an affordable unit,” he added. “In the range of issues that are affecting this city, is this one that we want to focus on? I think we need to prioritize.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 13, 2005. Read the original PDF.