The Santa Monica Planning Commission voted unanimously this week to forward a sweeping "Missing Middle Housing" proposal to the City Council, recommending the city formally define a category of housing designed for middle-income workers who earn too much for subsidized housing but too little to afford what the market builds.
The plan, presented by Planning Commissioner Shawn Landres at the commission's April 15 meeting, centers on a "cottage court" development model: clusters of six or seven detached 850-square-foot units arranged around a shared courtyard, designed to read from the street as a large single-family home. The commission voted 6-0 to recommend the City Council adopt a formal definition of missing middle housing and initiate feasibility studies to incorporate the strategies into the city's next housing element cycle.
Landres framed the proposal around a constituency the city has repeatedly failed to house. "People like a firefighter and a teacher, a police officer and a spouse and nurse raising kids — these folks do not qualify by their income generally for LIHTC housing," he told commissioners. "They cannot afford the kinds of single-family residences or even most townhomes that are available in Santa Monica, and we do not really have a working program to get them housed."
The urgency behind the proposal is reflected in stark demographic data. Santa Monica Unified School District enrollment has fallen 24 percent over the past decade, from 11,300 students in 2014 to 8,623 in the 2024-25 school year. The city's 25-to-44 age cohort — prime family-formation years — shrank from roughly 40 percent of the population in 2000 to roughly 33 percent today. A starting teacher would need to spend 58 percent of gross income to rent a one-bedroom apartment in the city.
Landres cited the failure of previous efforts as motivation for the new approach. "We have tried through our moderate rate housing overlay — nobody's building to it," he said. "We've tried through our community assembly, congregational affordable housing program — nobody's building to it."
The plan targets households earning between 80 and 200 percent of Area Median Income — roughly $85,000 to $213,000 annually for a couple — with at least one unit per development deed-restricted as a "workforce covenant" at or below 200 percent AMI. To make such projects financially viable, Landres outlined eight specific regulatory changes, including loosening density limits to one unit per 800 square feet of lot area; creating a tiered fee structure under the city's Affordable Housing Production Program that rewards developers who include workforce covenant units; splitting the transportation impact fee into separate per-parking-space and per-bedroom components so that car-free developments are not penalized for vehicle infrastructure costs; pre-approved building plans with a 90-day ministerial review process; automatic R-3 building code classification for cottage court projects, saving an estimated 10 percent on hard construction costs; a revolving low-interest loan fund to bridge financing gaps; streamlined lot consolidation; and alternative compliance pathways for religious congregations to develop housing on tax-exempt land.
The financial case for the local pathway is central to the plan's design. On a standard 7,500-square-foot lot, a developer building seven cottages under the proposed local program and deed-restricting two units would generate an estimated $360,000 more in pre-tax profit than building six market-rate units under SB 1123, the state's existing small multifamily law.
The proposal arrives as Santa Monica prepares to implement SB 79, a state law taking effect July 1 that upzones properties within a half-mile of qualifying transit stops. Landres argued the two programs are complementary, with the missing middle plan filling gaps the state law cannot reach — particularly the roughly 4,200 R-1 and R-2 lots citywide that fall entirely outside SB 79's transit radius.
Some commissioners questioned the plan's construction cost assumptions. Commissioner Nina Fresco noted that architects she has spoken with put costs at $600 per square foot, above the $475 upper bound in Landres's analysis. Commissioner Leslie Lambert echoed the concern, telling Landres: "I think your construction costs are low and you think mine are high — so somewhere in the middle, maybe, is the truth. We really need to do the tests."
Landres acknowledged the uncertainty but argued the question was not whether to debate the numbers, but whether to study them. "Am I wrong by a factor of two?" he said. "I don't think so. But we need the study to find out."
The Los Angeles Chapter of the American Institute of Architects submitted a letter of support ahead of the meeting, calling the proposal "one of the most constructive, design-informed, and financially pragmatic housing policy discussions to come before a Southern California planning commission in years."
The commission's unanimous recommendation now goes to the City Council, which must formally define missing middle housing and direct staff to conduct an economic feasibility study before any zoning amendments or fee changes can take effect.