By Marin Gloksteter
Bill Bauer mentioned in his recent May 5 column (“Does Santa Monica care?” page 4) that the city allows mixed use commercial development with residential apartments above, but then allows some of the residential to actually be used as commercial. The city then acts as a developer to build more high density traffic inducing public housing projects claiming more housing is needed for those who cant afford to buy in Santa Monica.
In some places where private land owners are only allowed to build three or four units, the city allows itself to build 25 or 50 traffic impacting units on the same size lot all in the name of providing more needed housing.
Another situation where the city turns a blind eye is wealthy tenants who occupy rent controlled units and use these units as cheap offices, vacation rooms for friends visiting from out of town or simply as cheap storage. Probably at least 10 percent of the units in the older buildings are being misused in this way by tenants who have other properties.
If the city actually enforced rules to make sure that tenants who are property owners are exempt from rent control then there would be a significant amount of housing freed up for the local work force like police, teachers, firemen, nurses.
Just imagine if the approximately 9,000 units that are serving as secondary apartments for those who own property elsewhere were freed up to be available to local workers.
This would also save Santa Monica’s tax payers from having to build new public housing and it would reduce traffic congestion due to new development and local workers commuting in to SM.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 30, 2008. Read the original PDF.