Re: City Staff is given great power over citizen home builders, like the Rain Tax
Dear Editor:
It used to be that once you built a new house, Building and Safety would sign off and you could move in. But now, City Council requires that a "Certificate of Occupancy" must be signed by many different "Staff" specialists before you can move in. Each of these specialists has been given the power to write pages of Directives that you must obey. These powers have grown without much supervision. This slows down the building process, adds uncertainty and expense, and overly controls the freedom of citizens who want to build their own homes.
We, as citizen voters, are indirectly responsible for this situation. We should learn more about it.
Here is just one example. One section of Staff is very focused on rain water. The federal Clean Water Act licenses Los Angeles/Santa Monica storm drains. The must guard against pollution like factory chemicals and people dumping motor oil. Neither the U.S. nor California define rain water itself as pollution. But for new residences, Santa Monica staffers do. This is ironic, since before roof water even reaches the street gutters, they have already been scoured by millions of gallons of rain from the streets (about 15 million gallons in a .75inch rainfall).
Actually, the City's well-engineered concrete curbs and culverts are a vast improvement over natural erosion. A glance down the side of the Santa Monica bluffs shows the mix of clay, sand, and silt that washed down for millions of years. In nature, rain returns to the sea, picking up sediment and vegetation. The shallow water marine life has adapted to, and expects, annual rain water with sediment.
It is not industrial pollution when rainwater flows off our well-maintained residential lots. That's why 95% of our neighbors are allowed to let their rainwater flow to the gutters. But the 5% who build a new house need a Certificate of Occupancy. So in those few cases, Staff can require you to capture of large amounts of rain to prevent it from leaving the property, or else you must pay a high fee.
Sensible water recycling is desirable. But Staff hopes that by injecting water into your expanding and contracting clay soil, it will not settle your foundations unevenly and crack stucco, or work its way the short distance downhill to continue peeling away the beach cliffs, but instead will run uphill and become drinkable.
They very much want this to be true. But is it? Maybe, if you're uphill of the wells. Probably not, within a mile of the bluffs. And you're lucky if injecting water into you soil's clay doesn't eventually settle a corner of your new house's foundation.
They charge you an "in-lieu fee" to avoid this experiment. They give you a form to calculate the fee. It's not just for rich developers. Say you need more bedrooms for the children. Land is so expensive that you can't afford to sell your smaller house in order to buy a larger one after paying taxes and commission. But you may be able to build a larger one on your present lot.
Imagine your new house will have 2,400 square feet of roof. I chose this size because across the street in Los Angeles, our sewer permit partner, up to 2500 square feet is completely EXEMPT from these fees (also exempt are all your neighbors).
For 2400 sq. ft. of new roof, S.M.'s worksheet concludes that 150 CUBIC FEET of rain water must be retained on your lot! You get options. If you don't want 150 cubic feet of rain barrels or cisterns, there are other methods, such as a 375 cubic foot gravel pit (it's larger because the gravel takes up part of the space), which is the size of a cube 13.25 feet on each side!
Although gravel pits tend to fill with dirt over time, you must maintain them, using tubes for annual inspections, informing the City each year of the condition, and repairing them for the life of the house! You must sign an agreement that you will inform any future buyer (if I were a future buyer shopping for this home, I would pass). If you don't agree, "You will not receive a Certificate of Occupancy without this final approval."
Instead of following these Directives, you may pay the "in lieu fee". For 2400 square feet the fee is currently $13,785 -- which is completely exempt in L.A. (their exemption is 2500 square feet). But it's worse.
The in-lieu fee can actually be closer to $25,000. This is because, unlike L.A., Santa Monica staff also demands payment for the pre-existing hardscape that was not considered polluting before, but now must be added to the fee, such as any remaining roof, patio, driveway, as well as the square footage of any ADU conversion. A few questions:
Does this, and the many other expensive Directives that must be followed to build a new house in Santa Monica, discourage and slow down new housing, reduce the number of new bedrooms being built, and add to the cost?
Doesn't State law exempt ADU conversions from excessive fees?
Doesn't AB 253 require all building permit forms and fees to be posted?
Consider how the City is taking advantage of a very narrow segment of the population. All the other people living in roofed houses all around the neighborhood are not subject to these demands.
The other citizens are free of the Staff power to withhold a Certificate of Occupancy. Even professional remodelers, if they alter less than 50% of their spec house, don't face these fees and Directives.
If rainwater running off our lots is damaging the ocean, S.M. should enforce the rules on everyone. If not, they should pick on no one. Staff shouldn't be given the power to arbitrarily charge much more "in-lieu fee" than their storm drain permit partner, L.A.
Like L.A., the fee should NOT include the already-existing surfaces unless the neighbors are also charged for theirs. It should NOT illegally include ADU conversions. And like L.A., it should exempt at least the first 2500 square feet, so that people get equal treatment, whether they're adding to their old home or building an unattached new home.
This is just one example of the extreme demands arising from the unrestrained "Certificate of Occupancy" powers of local Staff. People wanting to build a larger house should be encouraged, not treated as the enemy for wanting to add more bedrooms during the housing crisis.
Sincerely,
Mary Williams
Santa Monica