By Beverly Johnson Santa Monica
Regarding your April 14 story headlined “Landlords look for rent control ‘abuses’”— let me get this straight: Seymour and Evelyn Waterman have been holding a rent-controlled apartment at the Shores, on the beach, for the last 23 years, but also own a home in Encino?
So this couple has the resources to: A) Own a home B) Rent a beach apartment (at the not insubstantial, albeit rent-controlled, rate of $1,180 a month) And, even as our city fathers (sorry Councilperson O’Connor, but it is and always has been mostly men running Santa Monica) cannot utter three sentences in a row without decrying the “emergency” of affordable housing, and the “plight” of the poor renter, this is OK?! Shame on all of you!
Obviously, Mr. Waterman himself has no shame. He is complaining that if he had to pay market rate for his weekend beach apartment, why, he probably couldn’t afford it.
Gosh, how many of us can afford to spend $1,200 on a weekend retreat? Maybe the couple spends 3 or 4 days a week at the Shores, or perhaps this is a slight exaggeration, since I imagine it is downright exhausting to run back and forth each week.
Or perhaps that’s an “average,” and the couple comes in with family and friends to spend a week each month at the beach. What fun for them!
As for his stated desire to “retire” to his rent-controlled apartment at the Shores, I wonder, at 85 years old, when DOES he plan to sell that home in Encino and retire?
Good God, it is one thing to have lived a long life in an apartment and have the right to stay there even into retirement — that is only fair and humane. That is what rent control (or Prop. 13 for that matter) was created for.
But the only word for this sort of arrangement is abuse. And it’s shocking that this gentleman doesn’t even “get it” well enough not to complain about being kicked out.
Should we presume the 10 to 15 percent of rent control tenants who rent control officials say are now in danger of being deprived of rent-controlled offices and weekend retreats (during our city’s permanent housing crunch) also don’t get it?
I’m only sorry that there’s no way to take these apartments away from all of them and transfer them to folks who are really in need. But then I’m sure the cycle of abuse will begin again with THAT group. So forget it, just throw the bums out!
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 25, 2003. Read the original PDF.