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# Middle-class being run out of town by greed
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/middle-class-being-run-out-of-town-by-greed/
- Published: 2006-09-16T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T21:24:53.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Real Estate & Housing, Montana, #archive-import

This past week, Q-line asked: “How can city leaders address the apparent exodus of the middle-class in Santa Monica?” Here are your responses: ✆ “The current city leaders haven’t the slightest interest in reversing the mass exodus of the middle-class from Santa Monica. That has been quite obvious for a long time now. We are turning into a city of the wealthy. Mostly young, upwardly mobile and the dependent lower classes. Let’s see how they all get along. It will be a very strange medley. The only ones gaining are those lucky enough to move away from this twilight zone atmosphere which has become decidedly unpleasant, unsafe and unlivable.” ✆ “I remember when the bay area between Palos Verdes and Malibu was without doubt the garden of Eden. Now, it is the garden of e-gad. Where did all this human and automotive traffic come from? Now those who can leave the bay area, do leave. They feel that the high prices set by profiteers is not worth the effort of 40 hours a week, plus overtime to sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic and be robbed of their salaries to reside in overpriced, shoddy-constructed apartment dwellings that is a well-known form of hell, due to landlord greed, compounded by all the other poop one has to go through on a daily basis. Although those who can afford to live north of Montana Avenue and along San Vicente have the best of it. I’m aware they have their problems as well. Still living south of Montana Avenue is pure purgatory. I don’t expect any help from the city bureaucracy. All city bureaucracies sin on a daily basis and fall short of any form of glory.” ✆ “They have to address this problem about the unavailable housing. But what it boils down to is that the city of Santa Monica has made some disastrous decisions that led to more and more condos and apartments going up and putting more traffic into an already unbearable traffic unit. And there is no affordable housing for the working middle-class so that only the wealthy and the bums are able to live here. For what you would pay for a small box with no land here, you can get a pretty nice deal with some land not that far away. I won’t quote the cities but for the same price you can get a whole lot elsewhere. Finally, anyone who spends anytime here sees why they wouldn’t want to invest in any kind of living situation here. The bums have taken over the city and no one seems to know what to do about it and have just created a hell for all of us. You know, how many people have to write letters, have to be mugged, have to be assaulted or encroached upon everyday until something is done with this law-breaking crowd? How many letters to the editor before something has to be done about these people? Does the entire City Council have to be mugged or vomited on, or worse before they do something? You know, November is coming.” ✆ “The city needs to do something about affordable housing for people to live here. We have become a city of transient people, not a community of people who take root and want to stay here. We need affordable grocery stores. We need places to shop, not these yuppie stores that the city insists on having. To get people to come into the community you need to provide and cater to the people and the city of Santa Monica certainly doesn’t do that.” ✆ “The cost of living in Santa Monica is high due in part to high taxes and high fees that the city continually imposes. Also, the influx of thousands and thousands of illegal immigrants has driven down wages of the middle class. Do the city officials want to tackle either of these issues? I think not.” ✆ “If they do not do anything about all these bums, drunkards and noisy bums that harass people all the time, rich people, poor people, middle-class people won’t want to live in Santa Monica. That’s the main thing they should be worried about.” ✆ “Accepting as fact your statement that the average Santa Monica resident lives here only two years and then moves elsewhere, there are many plausible reasons — not the fact that few can benefit from rent control. Many renters view renting as temporary. Their jobs or goals in life may change and they are prepared to move to take advantage of a future opportunity. Many renters hope to own some day, knowing that ownership and equity will provide more long-term security than a pile of rent receipts. Every desirable place to live is expensive. This is an economic fact, despite what city leaders prefer to believe. Rent control, low-growth policies and bureaucratic delays only make housing scarcer and expensive.” ✆ “I think that the mass exodus of middle-class residents is a very, very good idea. I wish they would all mass exit and then we could secure the borders against new ones moving in. If you only stay here two years, then move, landlords can raise the rent some more. So, rent control is being defeated by the very people it’s supposed to support. Rent control was never designed to protect the middle-class. It was for the low-income, old lady on Social Security. And as far as making Santa Monica tick, if you talk to the city, you’ll find that tourism and alcohol sales are the two that make the city tick. Not the middle-, low-income bums living in affordable housing. Why don’t we demolish all the housing south of Olympic and put in high rises for the affluent? I like rubbing elbows with the affluent, not the middle-class people.” ✆ “Your very question perpetuates the lies of (Santa Monicans For Renter’s Rights) and rent control. If you look at the rental ads in this newspaper, you can see our rents are not and never have been higher than the rest of the county. One-bedrooms are going here for $1,200 to $1,500\. That’s what you’d pay in the hot, smoggy valley or Orange County, where the rents should be much, much cheaper, but aren’t. Rent control has forced landlords to try to get the highest prices for new rentals because they are losing money subsidizing their other tenants. If the middle-class can some how afford to pay $1,500 rent in smelly Orange County, they can afford it here in Commi-Monica by the sea.” ✆ “There is an horrendous exodus of low-income people from LA to Santa Monica. Why? Because of the massive low-income housing availability in Santa Monica. How do the buffoons on the City Council deal with middle-class flight? A negative example is by allowing the building of two six-story buildings in the 1200 block of Sixth Street. This will definitely help the traffic flow in the downtown area. No police officer lives where he works. Nurses and teachers make good money. What’s the matter with sacrificing to save some of it for home ownership? Give huge tax breaks to apartment owners to keep rental units on the market. And that strict new condominium building codes making it less desirable to rental units. I am appalled by how fast this city is deteriorating. Only our City Council is impressed with its own ability to ghetto-ize this town. The council loves the words of its social role model Darth Vader. ‘Impressive, most impressive.’”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 16, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/091606.pdf?ref=smdp.com)