Lack of first responders living in city a concern for officials
CITYWIDE There’s a small window of opportunity separating a free-flowing ride up the I-405 Freeway and stand-still traffic and Trang Guzze nails it almost every time.
After all, her nearly 44-mile commute from Garden Grove to Santa Monica depends on it.
A registered nurse at Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital, Guzze is sure to leave her Orange County home at 5:30 a.m. every day in order to arrive at work on time.Missing the mark by 20 minutes could be the difference between an easy 45-minute drive and a two-hour nightmare.
“There’s that magical 20 minutes that causes traffic,”she said.
A hospital employee the past three years, Guzze and her husband, who works in Los Angeles, purchased a home in Garden Grove after getting married in May 2007, considering several options including properties in the San Fernando Valley.
The Westside — with its famously high housing prices — was never in the mix.
“The prices are so much more affordable in Orange County and it has all the perks of not being the valley,”Guzze said.
Hers is a story told by many people who work but don’t live in Santa Monica, spending eight-hour days in a picturesque city where home — and often rental — prices are out of reach.There’s a gaping hole in the local market, existing between the very low-to-moderate income properties — commonly categorized as affordable — and the market rate condos and houses that run in the high six-figures to millions of dollars range.
The lack of what has been dubbed as “work-force housing” — residences catered to the middle class — has stirred considerable discussion among city and public safety officials,educators,and members of the nonprofit and business communities,hoping to create opportunities for people to live where they work.
The City Manager’s Office last year assembled a committee that explored the concept in depth, including the role City Hall should play in future developments and the definition of “workforce housing,”whether it should be dictated by profession or income level. The committee held its final meeting several months ago and is expected to make a presentation on its findings to the City Council.Those recommendations could be folded into the Land Use and Circulation Element,which is the update of the city’s general plan and will dictate how land is developed for the next 20 years or more.
While the committee wasn’t able to reach a definition, it did recognize there are three different populations that could be served, most notably first responders — public safety and medical staff — and workers who provide public benefits, such as teachers and social service workers.
Then there are the workers from the retail and service sectors of the city who typically fall on the lower end of the salary scale but might earn too much to qualify for affordable housing. One of the issues the committee struggled with was determining the cutoff point for income levels that would qualify for workforce housing,according to Iao Katagiri,who chaired the ad hoc group. National studies on the topic found that some workforce housing projects in other cities covered income that was as high as 180 percent of the Average Median Income, which in Santa Monica would be anywhere from $100,000 to $110,000 a year per household, Katagiri said.
“There was a consensus that we have a good low-income affordable housing program and those in no way should be diluted because of the concentration of workforce housing,” Katagiri, who is the director of community relations at the RAND Corp., said. “There is recognition that housing prices in Santa Monica, even with the current slump, are very high.”
In general discussions regarding workforce housing, first responders are commonly mentioned as the most appropriate beneficiaries as the lack of police, fire and medical employees living in the city is considered a public safety issue.
“When talking disaster preparedness, it’s scary your doctor and nurses and police officers live so far away,” Samantha O’Neil, the director of governmental affairs for the Chamber of Commerce, said.
The chamber has long been an advocate for workforce housing,which it believes would also improve the quality of life by cutting down traffic created by incoming commuters. Jay Trisler, who heads the Santa Monica Police Officers Association, said that housing for first-responders is one of the biggest issues facing the union,noting that only a handful of officers live in the city.
“We have quite a few police officers who would like to participate in workforce housing to live within the city,”he said.
Another group that has long sought lower-priced housing is the Santa Monica-Malibu Classroom Teachers Association, which for years has said the cost-of-living in the city is driving highly-qualified educators away.
“For our teachers, homeownership is out of reach,”Harry Keiley,the president of the union, said. “With the increase of renting, the home rental market has become out of reach for many teachers.”
The average teacher in the district makes $68,000,which is slightly higher than the median household income as defined by the United States Census Bureau. The average salary for beginning teachers is a little less than $45,000 and an educator with more than 20 years of service makes about $89,000.
The district has had an issue with teacher retention the past few years,not only because of high housing prices in the city, but because of increased commuting costs. The way to make a project possible could be to create a public-private partnership that pairs City Hall and companies, O’Neil said. Any type of workforce housing development will most likely not receive financial assistance from City Hall, but rather help in the planning phases by expediting permits, City Manager Lamont Ewell said.
“I don’t think the government should have to subsidize workforce housing, but we can provide tools and opportunities for the private sector to create it,”Ewell said.
He added that workforce housing would not only benefit the hospital and government employees, but also workers from some of the larger corporations, including Google, Sony and MTV.
Creating opportunities for those companies could have a significant impact on traffic.
“We could have a more balanced community by retaining the middle income levels in our community,”Ewell said.
Patricia Hoffman, who co-chairs Santa Monicans for Renters’Rights, agreed that while workforce housing projects are important,subsidies should be for projects benefiting low-to-moderate incomes.
“The subsidies should go to people who are earning less,”she said.
A handful of cities in the state have helped facilitate the development of workforce housing, including Santa Barbara.
The California Department of Housing and Community Development last year wrapped up three rounds of grant funding for cities and counties that helped move workforce housing projects along. From 2005 to 2007, the department gave away more than $68 million to 261 cities, according to Jennifer Seeger, the work-force housing program manager.
Mayor Pro Tem Richard Bloom said that in planning for future developments, City Hall should not only be thinking about current workers, but future ones.
“It would be a shame if we become a community of rich and poor and very little in between,”he said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 23, 2008. Read the original PDF.