Thank fucking Christ. We don’t need private development, the profit motive isn’t required for housing.
If we want to keep Prop 13, let’s enable local governments to buy, develop, and maintain affordable public housing. I’d rather a Kirkland Signature approach. Let Santa Monica profit and use those funds to supplement taxes not paid by increased property value.
The concept of public housing works, it fails when elected officials sabotage projects but diverting funds or purposely neglecting housing in the hopes they fail so private entities can swoop in and profit….look at Venezuela as a prime example.
This isn’t public housing - it’s not owned by the city, but by a nonprofit developer, EAH. The city maintains ownership of the land and also gets the funding for the transit amenities. The building will be owned & operated by EAH & an investor partner, deed-restricted for 55 years (and longer because of the city’s ground lease) to certain income levels (usually less than 60% of area median income).
True but it is housing that is subsidized by taxpayers on public land: that it isn't built or run by city employees is a bit besides the point, although it does counter OPs comment that the profit motive is irrelevant: the affordable housing developers are building this project for profit, it's just their profit comes directly from the taxpayers who don't live there instead of the future residents!
I'm really glad this is going foward with EAH instead of CCSM.
Why?
CCSM's buildings have had a lot of issues with shoddy materials, very poor maintenance and management, floods in brand new buildings, fixtures falling off the walls, etc. Almost everyone I know who is in a CCSM building is trying very hard to get out. You can drive by the Arroyo right now and see rusting ledges and hanging, unrepaired lights out front.
There's also the point that having one organization do all the affordable housing development and management is never a good idea. CCSM has close to a monopoly right now.
That’s really great insights, I appreciate you sharing. It’s important to inform the public and not let bad developers ruin the prospects for affordable housing.
I understand the spirit, as a former Chicagoan you might want to look at the history of past attempts at this approach, particularly Chicago's.
TL;DR: It didn't work well. It ended up concentrating poverty & exacerbating segregation in the city. Alternative approaches proved to work a bit better.
Tbf chicago had one of the worst implementations of public housing ever. It was so awful that the French investigated it in 80/90s during their public housing crisis and thought “at least we’re not them”
It depends on what the affordability requirements are. If these units are just aimed at 60%-140% of the area median income, it wont concentrate poverty. Or if it mixes these affordability levels across units
It's when these are only allocated for those making extremely low income that it segregates and concentrates poverty
Totally hear your concern, but Santa Monica is not at risk of having concentrated poverty, even if this one building is wholly at 30-60% AMI. Research shows outcomes are good for children in low-income families when they are able to grow up in high opportunity areas like Santa Monica. Also, the $50M in state funding referenced here doesn’t finance apartments above 60% AMI. There may be some up to 80% in this building, but the average affordability will be 50% or less per that state funding source.
I also don’t think we can compare ourselves to what happened in Chicago based on the size and density of Santa Monica alone
This is always my trepidation with full public housing owned and managed by the city. If one looks at how it's ended up in practice in places like NYC and Chicago, it's very often poorly maintained and not a good place to be overall.
Who is to say that CCSM (as noted in a previous post) didn’t sabotage an affordable housing project knowing it could sway public opinion towards private ownership and development.
Chicago is the best example of crony capitalism, abject racism, and piss poor governance. Stop electing horrid politicians.
LA City Council and Board of Supervisors is a recent example of corrupt politicians enriching themselves to let developers run roughshod.
Wait until you've lived in LA a bit longer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Huizar#Bribery_allegations,_indictment
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/los-angeles-city-hall-corruption-investigation-political-fundreaiser-guilty-plea/2332036/
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/26/1131817688/the-los-angeles-city-council-censures-members-involved-in-racist-conversation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Los_Angeles_City_Council_scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palisades_Fire
we need private funded housing.
How do you think all these units will get built? Im sure you can move to a small town if you hate developers.
Hit you in the profit motive, did I?
its necessary
Very nice! I can't help but wonder how those folks that voted down the affordable housing, that was then turned into a Waymo depot feel
Public housing is fine but we need private development too. The profit motive is what has led to an abundance of every other good and service in the modern world: food, clothing, heat, consumer goods, etc. It works for housing too if the government just gets out of the way.
A few lucky people will win a lottery and get a tax payer subsidized housing unit here. But it isn't a scalable solution.
Is prop 13 scalable? Your government is in the way of progress because it enriches themselves. When you legislate to meet the needs of the few, you get a housing crisis. Private developers purposely leave available units vacant to jack up rates. This is evident in both commercial and residential properties.
A vacancy tax would compels them to rent all available units.
A city would ensure maximum occupancy and the capitalism part is where the profits go to shareholders (residents).
Prop 13 is horrible policy and should be eliminated immediately. A vacancy tax has very, very limited impact on the housing market, but I'm not totally against it. Public housing does not turn a profit: the argument in favor of it is that rents can be lower because there is no profit motive. If the government builds and operates housing and charges market rate to maximize profits what's the point?
I would pay less sales tax, schools wouldn’t look like depression era storage, SM could pay the victims of molestation.
It’s unfair to assume for profit companies can be successful and we’d benefit from their profits but government cannot. Sounds like corporate propaganda.
“Market rate” in our “housing market” is currently rigged to high hell by Prop 13 and price fixing.
I don’t believe people mind paying taxes if they know it’s benefiting their communities.
Yes and no: the profit motive alloyed with public investment (roads, courts, basic research, regulatory oversight, common goods like parks, schools, etc) is the actual foundation of our prosperity. Governent spending was smaller i earlier era but both the early US and the collonies had mixed economies. The first thing the pilgrims did in Plimoth (sic) was mark out a common grazing area.
And the Pilgrims almost starved when they worked like a commune: they only thrived when they divided the land up into private parcels.
The idea that the decision between public and private investment and ownership is binary and that it is one or the other rather than both is reductionist and ahistorical.
The common is still there.
Profit motive and industrialization are not the same thing. E.g. Russia industrialized without a profit motive.
How'd that work out?
They bought the US presidency.
OP, there is private investment and development and there’s no reason to believe the city will turn a profit. It’s still a good project but let’s not overlook the obvious.
There is little chance a municipally operated affordable housing project generates a profit for the city. The project may prevent other costs from arising, and may possibly result in a net tax benefit – possibly.
Elect people who CAN oversee affordable housing projects and generate a profit. Why are taxes the only way to fund a budget? You are the government/city/municipality.
In LA, when you see trash on the ground, it’s not because a city doesn’t know how to pick up trash, they’re actually great at it and workers can make a decent living. It’s they choose not to.
I don't think any non-NIMBY wants to keep Prop 13. It needs to be repealed.
Prop 13 needs to be destroyed. There’s no world where it’s okay. We already have forced intergeneration wealth transfer with social security and pensions young people have to pay into and won’t benefit from. How can prop 13 be justified?
A lot of boomers would need to pass for prop 13 to be augmented. It requires 2/3 of the legislature and benefits boomer’s residential and commercial properties.
When the possibility of implementing fairness in rental pricing, 2024 Prop 33 (Expanding rent control) lost 9M to 6M.
That’s 3M people profiting from housing shortages, not a reasonable expectation to flip that number.
If the revenue isn’t coming from property taxes, cities need to make money elsewhere or else they issue bonds or increase our sales tax.
Prop 13 caused a housing crisis, this is an ambitious way to raise revenue and housing supply.
For the hundredth time, it’s not a human right to get to live anywhere you want. Oh well, the shittification of SM continues…
For the hundredth time, NIMBYs don't get to decide when a city is "full".
There’s at least 100 units available right this second. It’s nowhere near “full”
100 units in a city of 90,000 is not a lot and bolsters the point that there is a serious housing shortage in Santa Monica
This location makes so much more sense than a lot of the nonsensical places recently. Also important to note OP its $35M and $15M for transportation, which is very important. Also correct me if I’m wrong here but this is private development is it not?
It’s private development by a nonprofit developer with public subsidies (city land, state & possibly local funding, maybe project-based vouchers from the SM Housing authority). Land remains in city’s ownership, but the building is owned & operated by the nonprofit developer (and their for-profit tax credit investor).
Does anybody know where I can find the live council meetings for Santa Monica, etc. on this? I'd love to see the exact discussion they had
"Affordable"
Vienna Austria is a perfect example of what a city with social housing could become.
Davis’s trip to Vienna was opposed by Negrete and her council coalition, our leading no growth advocates and the local press. The response to her trip was so vile that other councilmembers and city staffers were bullied into not going. It was a shameful moment in our history.
https://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/news/News-2024/March-2024/03_11_2024_Two_Top_City_Officials_Cancel_Vienna_Trip.html
https://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/news/News-2024/May-2024/05_14_2024_Councilmember_Reports_on_Trip_to_Vienna.html
Vienna is not replicable in Santa Monica. The city government there bought most of the residential properties in between world wars for literally zero dollars. The City can't do the same here.
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I don't think the solution to building more housing is using everyone's tax dollars to build housing to be randomly distributed to lottery winners. There is no evidence governments can run a construction project AND operate multifamily housing cheaper than private companies. We simply don't have the expertise and without a profit motive there is no motivation for efficiency.
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The government can't violate its own zoning code so the rezoning has to happen no matter what.
Most of the land in SM is too valuable for the current buildings that occupy them.
The city is failing in its outreach to mom and pop property owners - they need to practice better transparency and messaging by pro actively letting them know our zoning codes have changed and more gross profit dollars can be easily obtained.
Is it curious that the city has a double standard when it comes to transparency and outreach: appease people who live next door to (fill in your beef here) but ignore those who pay property taxes.
6 story single stair with off site affordable housing options and building to SB1123 standards would increase our tax base allowing for better schools and a return of many cancelled city services. It would also help make Santa Monica more affordable.
We have a housing trust fund that can target specific properties. The city is already looking at affordable housing on the land it owns and can make any choice it wants. We don’t have an abundance of cheap land that could lead to a property mix ratio like exists in Vienna but do have ways to see the same social outcome for some people.
This was all known by Negrete which is why she vehemently opposed city staff going to Vienna to learn more about it.
The housing "trust fund" didn't come from nowhere. It is tax dollars. These dollars could be spent on other things that improve the city more and welcome more private investment. The city government of Santa Monica is not an efficient project manager for building housing or managing it: its wheelhouse is municipal services.
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Government is good running things that are natural monopolies; the inefficiencies of government are outweighed by avoiding a for profit monopoly. Things that are part of a competitive market are better left to the market.
This is some zohran level nonsense. OP points to Venezuela but ignores our faithful leaders have bankrupted us through poor management covering up a child molester. But sure, the city can run affordable housing and generate profit.
You mean the police department bankrupted this city. And they keep bitching for more money. The real issue is, and always will be, police
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The post was removed due to a violation of rule #2: respect other redditors.
Elections have consequences
OP we need way more private housing and lower barriers to build private housing in Santa Monica, not the opposite!
That sure does help people with money. How will you guarantee rent stays affordable?
Supply/demand. Building housing at all price points, even luxury, makes more affordable housing available. source