> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # It takes a community to look out for its own - URL: https://www.smdp.com/it-takes-a-community-to-look-out-for-its-own/ - Published: 2006-03-09T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-24T23:35:42.000Z - Author: Guest Author - Tags: Opinion, Ocean Park, #archive-import *By EYE ON THE CITY BY ELIZABETH RIEL* By any account, Santa Monica resident Judy Church\* is a success story. At times, though, she didn’t know how she was going to make it. When her daughter was 18 months old, Judy’s husband left. Her mother was diagnosed with leukemia just as she started to put herself through graduate school. Judy could only afford to live in a tiny one-bedroom apartment on Ocean Park Boulevard. It had cockroaches and barely any room for furniture. Still, she got her master’s degree and became a teacher. She raised her daughter, who graduated at the top of her class from Santa Monica High School and attended an elite university, becoming a teacher herself. Just when Judy thought she could take a deep breath and relax a little, she was diagnosed with cancer. Which she battled and won. What makes Judy’s story especially poignant has much to do with Santa Monica and the support she received along the way. That support came when Judy’s daughter was attending John Adams Middle School. Judy found affordable housing through the Community Corporation of Santa Monica (CCSM), a non-profit agency that provides housing for lower-wage working families and seniors. Suddenly, their lives changed for the better. “Almost overnight, I felt such a sense of relief. My daughter and I finally had some place to call home,” Judy said. “I didn’t have to worry about whether we’d be able to stay in Santa Monica. We were in an apartment that was clean and well-maintained. It was freshly painted with a patio outside. I could keep my daughter in a stable environment in the same school with the same kids, getting opportunities I knew she wouldn’t have anywhere else.” It’s no secret that Santa Monica is an expensive place to live. Or that there’s a shortage of affordable housing, especially for families. Condo conversions, the state’s weakening of local rent control, and a stratospheric real estate market have made a deadly combination for middle-and lower-wage working families trying to find a place to live. The city’s main source of affordable housing, CCSM, does an outstanding job of thinking outside the box to develop new buildings and rehab older ones. However, there is still a waiting list for almost all CCSM applicants that can last several years. Judy and her daughter were on that list for nearly six years because of the scarcity of two-and three-bedroom units. Overall, CCSM applicants only have about a 5-percent chance each year of securing affordable housing; families, even less. One solution to the shortage is to require developers to include a certain number of affordable housing units in their buildings — like inclusionary housing. Inclusionary housing would save City Hall an enormous amount of time and money, and help avoid inequitable property taxes and NIMBY issues — concerns some people have raised about buildings that are exclusively for affordable housing. Affordable housing is not a hand-out nor a free ride. Tenants have to pay rent, file annually with CCSM, provide income information, and abide by the terms of their contract. On a practical level, providing affordable housing for our lower-income service workers, as well as middle-income professionals who serve our community — like teachers and firefighters — would cut down on congestion and traffic and add to our local economy. But perhaps Judy sums up the benefits of affordable housing best: “As a teacher, I see kids every day who are so stressed out that they can’t function in basic ways. They don’t have the security of a permanent home and a regular routine; they can’t learn. Then as a community, we end up paying in the long run.” The City Council next month will be discussing the issue of affordable housing and studying a proposed ordinance to require inclusionary housing. That’s an idea that has long been championed by City Councilman Kevin McKeown. For Santa Monica residents, it comes down to the question of what kind of community do we want to live in? A community that’s diverse and accessible to our kids, to people who work here, to people who were raised here? Or do we want to live in a place that’s for sale to the highest bidder? Residents answered that question when they passed Prop. R in 1990, which mandated that 30 percent of all new multi-family housing be permanently affordable to and occupied by low-and moderate-income families. After all, don’t we want more people like Judy Church in our community? \*Judy Church is not the real identity of the woman who benefited from CCSM, which referred the woman to Riel. (Elizabeth Riel is a Santa Monica resident. She) *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 9, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/030906.pdf?ref=smdp.com)