News about rents, zoning changes, and other issues related to the cost of housing.
The final series of public hearings on the Downtown Santa Monica Community Plan kicked off this week with back-to-back City Council meetings. On Monday night, more than 150 people showed up for a marathon session of public testimony on the…
This post originally appeared on The Healthy City Local. After, in words taken from the staff report, “nearly six years in development” (not too much longer than it takes to get approval to build an apartment building!), Santa Monica’s Downtown Community…
Via city of Santa Monica’s website. As part of its continued commitment to preserve and increase housing in Santa Monica, the City Council voted at its June 27, 2017 meeting to ban the use of newly constructed accessory dwelling units…
The numbers from L.A. County’s recent homelessness count released Wednesday revealed a bleak picture, with the number of people sleeping on the streets, in shelters, or in their cars jumping 23 percent to 57,794. The numbers also revealed that Santa Monica’s…
The purpose of plans is to help communities confront and prepare for their future. On preparing for a future with climate change, the downtown plan is an utter failure. Instead of focusing on the most salient environmental threat humanity has…
The question I ended my post with on Saturday was why would Santa Monica enact a Downtown Community Plan (DCP) that makes it easier to build commercial development than housing? Keep in mind that this is taking place during a…
This article originally appeared on Healthy City Local. I’m sure readers are trembling with anticipation after I ended my last post with this cliffhanger: aside from drastically reducing the advantage that residential development in downtown Santa Monica had over commercial development…
This piece originally ran on Healthy City Local. There are good ideas in the Downtown Community Plan (DCP): ideas about the role of Santa Monica’s downtown, about nurturing community in “our town” with more and better housing and local-serving retail, about…
A new report by the California Housing Partnership Corporation released Monday revealed that L.A. County was short more than half a million affordable rental homes to meet the needs of the region’s low-income residents. Home to roughly one percent of…
This post originally appeared on The Healthy City Local. Let me begin my further ruminations and fulminations on the Downtown Community Plan (DCP) with a quibble, namely the failure to include in the DCP’s historical background section mention of Arcadia Bandini…
The Westside’s first Whole Foods 365 has got an opening date now. According to Whole Foods 365 reps, the the high-end grocer’s more affordable chain will open its Santa Monica location at the northeast corner of Pico and Cloverfield on August…
The following post originally appeared on Healthy City Local. It’s back! The latest (and promised final!) version of Santa Monica’s Downtown Community Plan (DCP), is being dragged through the Planning Commission, with an ultimate destination of the Promised Land, namely approval by…
Santa Monica released the results of this year’s annual city-wide homelessness count Tuesday, showing a major uptick in the number of people struggling with homelessness in the city, underscoring the growing regional housing affordability crisis. Officials released the results Tuesday…
Photo by Brian Addison. Data and charts courtesy of UCI. This article originally ran on our sister site, Longbeachize. When it comes to contemporary development, “mixed-use” and, especially if the structure is in an urban center, “transit-oriented” is the key to almost…
Community Corporation of Santa Monica, the city’s lead nonprofit affordable housing provider, held a ceremony Tuesday to celebrate the organization’s newest project, The Arroyo. The new building at 1626 Lincoln Blvd., which Community Corporation of Santa Monica’s Executive Director Tara Barauskas…
