News about rents, zoning changes, and other issues related to the cost of housing.
Welcome back! We hope that everyone enjoyed their holidays. At Santa Monica Next, we were able to get some much-needed downtime. Now we’re rested and ready to get back to work. What are you most looking forward to in 2015, Santa…
Editor’s Note: Happy holidays from the Santa Monica Next team. We will return in the new year with regular coverage. The City of Santa Monica is calling for volunteers to help in the fight homelessness in the bayside city this January. Join City staff…
Increasingly it seems that people who live comfortable, established lives in Santa Monica are just not interested in making room for new people to have the same opportunities they did when they first moved to the bayside city. At a…
If you have been to a public meeting in Santa Monica recently, you know that they sometimes get downright ugly. But, even by normal Santa Monica standards, the Planning Commission’s Town Hall meeting on November 19 was bad. The Planning…
Welcome back from the holiday, Santa Monica. You may have noticed that we’re finally getting some much needed rain, but that doesn’t mean we can stop conserving water, so don’t forget to turn off your sprinklers. If you haven’t already,…
Did you know that in the last 13 years, the number of people biking in Santa Monica increased 356 percent? Or that in the last three years, 45 miles of bike lanes, share rows, and other facilities have been installed throughout…
With three meetings left in 2014, the City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a small, 32-unit housing complex along Pico Boulevard, the first — and likely last — housing project to get discretionary approval this year. The project comes…
(Note: This article was originally published at Los Angeles Streetsblog. The issues, however, are regional and remain vitally important to the future of smart urban planning in Santa Monica and other cities in the county.) It is no secret that Southern…
One of the major issues facing Santa Monica voters on November 4 will be whether to approve ballot measures H and HH. The companion measures, if approved by voters, would create a new local funding source for the production and…
Sometimes, up is down in Westside politics and when it comes to environmental policy, that seems to be all too true this year. While the Sierra Club has a general policy position in support of urban infill development as a…
Santa Monica, like its neighboring cities, is currently in the midst of an unprecedented housing affordability crisis. Rising rents and stagnant wages are putting unsustainable financial strain on working families. Santa Monica, in an effort to help create more permanent affordable homes in…
It has become a common scene in Santa Monica. A standing-room only crowd packs into a conference room at the library. Anti-development activists jeer their neighbors who speak out in favor of plans for one project or another while the…
The Santa Monica Museum of Art will head east to talk about the L.A. River, Rem Koolhaas’ Plaza at Santa Monica project will get another round of public discussion, and OK Go will play the Pier. Smmoa At the Frogspot Join…
Downtown Santa Monica, Inc., the nonprofit that oversees the bayside city’s bustling “living room,” celebrated another year of well-rounded success Thursday morning at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel. And with the number of jobs and homes on the rise, a burgeoning…
Two companion ballot initiatives proposed by Santa Monica City Hall that would raise as much as $10 million a year to fund low-cost housing production became the target of a lawsuit Monday. The lawsuit, filed by a group calling itself “No…
