Agency controls more than 1,000 units in SM
A local pizza parlor will become the site of 50 new affordable apartments if a nonprofit housing developer closes escrow on the land in January.
It would be the 78th property that Community Corp. of Santa Monica would own locally. The nonprofit organization owns 1,182 rental units citywide and plans to build another 179 units over the next four years.
CCSM executive director Joan Ling declined to say how much the 30,000-square-foot property, which is the site of Shakey’s Pizza restaurant, 3021 Santa Blvd., is worth.
CCSM has spent more than $150 million buying and upgrading real estate in Santa Monica since the organization was formed in 1982.
Affordable housing in Santa Monica is so in demand that CCSM turns away about 2,900 applicants each year. Despite that there are only 100 vacancies each year, close to 3,000 people apply to live in the apartments, many from outside Santa Monica.
The people that rent the apartments represent a broad swath of the community, from low-wage workers who earn less than $14,000 a year to white-collar types with families of four who make up to $67,000 a year. The rents range between $300 to $1,200 a month, said Ling, who said the average rent is between $550 and $600.
CCSM will take requests this January from people who want to apply for housing. When an apartment that matches their needs becomes available, CCSM contacts the individual or family and asks them to apply for the unit.
Because housing in Santa Monica is in constant demand and market-rate rents continue to climb, CCSM, which buys properties using state, federal and local money, has played an increasingly important role in the city over the past two decades, officials said.
“Affordable housing is important because it means people can live and work in the community,” City Councilman Herb Katz said. “We need affordable housing or we gentrify ourselves. If you look around, you see that if you don’t have affordable housing, you gentrify yourself, you become a one-class city.”
“We need affordable housing or we gentrify ourselves.” — — HERB KATZ Santa Monica City Councilman
4E8,CCSM earns nearly $10 million each year, primarily from rent on its properties. About 45 percent of that money is spent on building repairs and improvements, 30 percent to 35 percent goes to repaying mortgages, and 15 percent is spent on administration. Another 5 percent to 10 percent is kept as a cushion for unforeseen costs and rising insurance rates, said Ling, who earns $95,000 for managing the nonprofit.
Some have criticized the nonprofit for concentrating too many of its developments in certain areas of Santa Monica, such as the eastside Pico neighborhood. But Ling said despite appearances, the affordable units are spread evenly throughout the city.
“It’s kind of misleading for people to say we dump all of our affordable housing in the Pico neighborhood,” she said, adding that although there are more structures in Ocean Park and the Pico neighborhoods, the average number of units per building is less. Ling also said CCSM can only build in multi-family neighborhoods and not where there are single-family homes exclusively, such as north of Montana Avenue or in Sunset Park.
But Don Gray, a neighborhood activist and former chairman of the Pico Neighborhood Association board, said the sheer number of projects has upset many residents.
2C8,“As much as anything, it’s the type of projects,” he said. “Whenever it involves seniors, it always goes elsewhere. The type of housing that goes into this neighborhood is strictly this multi-family, low-income type. I don’t know how you can talk about diversity when there’s so little diversity in the public housing that has gone into this neighborhood.”
There are about 24 properties in the Pico neighborhood, which accounts for more than 30 percent of CCSM’s inventory.
Thirty-eight percent of the units CCSM owns have one bedroom, 25 percent have two bedrooms, 14 percent have three bedrooms and less than 1 percent have four bedrooms. Another 23 percent are studio apartments, according to CCSM documents.
Ling said the demand for the larger units is intense, partially because once families are allowed into the units they rarely leave. But putting more large units on the market is difficult because most of the properties CCSM buys are made up of smaller units.
That’s why building new projects is so important, Ling said. She said there are three properties in Santa Monica that have been bought by CCSM in recent years and most of them are scheduled to open in 2006.
Those properties include a 44-unit building to be built at Santa Monica Boulevard and 26th Street, a 41-unit building at Broadway and 16th Street and a 44-unit building at Main and Pacific streets.
Some have questioned whether CCSM actually serves people in the community. But Ling said the organization gives preference to locals.
“When you mush it all together, when there’s a unit open, there’s about a 50-50 chance the person moving in is a Santa Monica resident or worker,” she said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 22, 2003. Read the original PDF.