Community Corporation and Venice Community Housing broke ground approximately a month ago on a 73-Unit Low-Income Housing Project at 1634 W. 20th Street. The groundbreaking was met with a matter-of-fact flurry of articles apparently pulled together from the development team’s press release. Online comments however were almost universally negative and in unmitigated, colorful terms.
I thought it would be interesting take a look at the threads running through the online comments since another recitation of the developer’s self-congratulatory comments seemed pointless. Mostly comments from community members seemed to congeal around four points.
1. The Development Is Evidence of the Developers Reinforcing Patterns of Structural Racism
One commenter said, “Another Regional Social Services project dumped in the historically segregated Pico Neighborhood that perpetuates segregation.”
Another said, “…Government Code 8899.50, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, requires low-income housing between Wilshire and San Vicente Blvd. The proponents of white privilege don’t want homeless housing in Sunset Park or between Wilshire and San Vicente Blvd.”
The over-concentration of social services and government subsidized housing projects in Santa Monica’s Pico neighborhood and the virtual exclusion of such services and projects from other, wealthier Santa Monica neighborhoods is a condition that has been given scant attention in official circles over the decades. It was, however, cited by the State of California in it’s rejection of an early version of Santa Monica’s Housing Element Plan. In a larger sense, the loading of lower income projects in the Pico neighborhood a textbook example how exclusionary single-family zoning and downzoning have replaced redlining in reinforcing longstanding patterns of discrimination in housing.
The fact that 1634 20th Street represents one more contribution to this over concentration and reinforces discriminatory housing patterns was not mentioned in any of the articles I read about the project’s groundbreaking despite the fact that this pattern of discrimination is so pronounced. The Pico Neighborhood is only four blocks wide and 1.4 miles long, yet it is home to 22 low-income and/or assisted living projects. In contrast, the residential portion of Santa Monica’s wealthy North of Montana neighborhood hosts zero such projects. The city’s second-wealthiest neighborhood, Sunset Park, is also home to zero such projects unless one counts those on the south side of Pico Boulevard which are on a busy non-residential street literally abutting the Pico neighborhood. In fact, east of Lincoln Boulevard, north of Santa Monica Boulevard, all the way to the Los Angeles border with the Palisades and Brentwood, there is only one low-income housing or assisted living project, and it is a senior living facility.
2. Cost
“$1.1 MILLION per affordable unit—before land costs. That’s what taxpayers are on the hook for in this new Santa Monica project. Read that again. One. Point. One Million. Per unit.”
Low-income housing projects such as these are built by private developers, but 100% of the costs are borne by the public. Developers are paid their profit up front thereby relieving them of any pressure to contain costs on the projects. More and more people are questioning a financial model wherein government funded housing units regularly cost three to four times the going market rate cost for similar units. Given that only a small group of developers, contractors, and subcontractors are allowed to work on these government funded projects and competitive bidding seems to exist in name only, it’s not hard to see why many critics describe the industry as the Homeless/Low-Income Housing Industrial Complex.
3. Not for the People of Santa Monica
“And everyone will qualify for it, but the real people of Santa Monica!”
This was a very common refrain on different threads. The fact is, occupancy in this development is determined by one’s place on a countywide list of applicants. No preference for Santa Monica residents is allowed. So, while Santa Monica government contributes to these developments and land in Santa Monica is being used, the developments do nothing to address the housing needs of Santa Monica residents in particular. The developer representatives of these corporations often start off community meetings saying that their projects address gentrification and dislocation, and while that may to some degree be true in a very general sense, the truth is that these projects have little, to no impact on gentrification or dislocation locally.
4. Subjugation
“Plantation living at its finest. The man keeps everything, and the tenants own nothing. It’s sharecropping 2025.”
Perhaps this states the issue a little dramatically, but in truth, there is no pathway to ownership for tenants in any of these projects. Additionally, tenants’ income is capped at the level it was when they qualified for their unit. Quite literally, if residents better themselves financially, they are evicted from their units. Despite all the language in this housing model about helping, the one thing that seems to have been omitted is helping people succeed on their own terms, independent of their corporate housing sponsors. For all practical purposes, the system seems designed to create a permanent dependent underclass with none of the advantages of self-determination and betterment that many of us take for granted.
The argument corporate representatives give for not incorporating a pathway to ownership for their residents is that funding does not exist to support an ownership model. Except that it does. These buildings, which are all paid for with taxpayer money, and the service contracts to maintain them, which are also paid for with public money, become private property at the end of their deed restriction term. Three Community Corporation buildings have already termed out and transferred to private ownership. Gradually all 80 of the other projects CCSM has done will do so as well. CCSM is well on its way to becoming a multi-billion-dollar corporation.
With resources like this, CCSM/VCHC could establish their own funding source for resident ownership. It’s simply a choice to be made. CCSM/VCHC can keep 100% of the ownership rights of the properties we paid to have build, or they could proactively make available to residents the opportunity to purchase and own their units.
In the end, it’s about power and empowerment. Should residents be allowed control of their own destiny? Should they have the same financial opportunities and rights as other Americans? Property ownership and the incumbent equity accumulation that the individual, not the state or some corporation controls, makes the move into middle class status and economic freedom possible. Do these projects uplift their residents, or are we looking at a paternalistic form of helping which permanently excludes these citizens from participating in the American Dream?
by Barry Cassilly