(Every week, Santa Monica Next republishes an article from City Manager Oliver Chi’s newsletter)
This past week, our team in Community Development published fresh data to our Housing Progress Dashboard which provides the clearest current picture of housing production in Santa Monica. Here’s where the City currently stands as it relates to our 6th Cycle RHNA obligation:
The City has approved a total of 6,449 new units. Of those, 4,082 units have been completed. Another 2,311 units are in the pipeline moving towards construction and completion, broken down by affordability level as follows.
105 – Very Low
155 – Low
107 – Moderate
1,944 – Above Moderate
Of those housing units in the pipeline, there are 471 units under construction.
79 – Very Low
26 – Low
23 – Moderate
343 – Above Moderate
Those numbers illustrate Santa Monica’s housing story and it’s a tale that the City has told before. Our main challenge now is not the approval of housing projects, as evidenced by the 2,311 approved units currently moving through the pipeline. Rather, the challenge is the gap between approval and construction, as development costs, financing constraints, and building expenses have stalled market-rate projects across our region. Closing that gap was the genesis of the City’s Off-Site Affordable Housing Incentive Program adopted by the City Council last August, which allows approved projects to move forward by consolidating their affordable housing obligations into dedicated off-site affordable buildings, unlocking construction of both housing types.
Of note, regarding the City’s Off-Site Incentive Program, eleven projects have now opted into that program, and three are already
under construction. In an overall development environment where projects across the State are sitting on approvals indefinitely, moving projects into active construction in under a year is meaningful, and our City Planning team and the City Council deserve real credit for building a program the development community is actually using.
Additional details on every project in the off-site program are available in our published summary table, available here.
One note for those tracking the housing production our figures closely – the 6,449 approved-unit total excludes projects that have refiled for new entitlements under the Off-Site Incentive Program, so that count reflects the housing pipeline without double- counting projects now moving through the new pathway.
As always, the complete picture – including every multi-unit and mixed-use project from application through completion, including each project’s affordability mix – can be found on the City’s Housing Progress Dashboard, available online here!
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