Conceptually, the idea for this trickle-down housing scheme is that in exchange for including a small percentage of deed-restricted, reduced-rent units designated for moderate, low, and extremely low-income renters, developers can mostly ignore all local development restrictions, zoning ordinances and approval processes to build dense, over-sized, generic, low-concept projects that are out of scale with the neighborhood, the city and its infrastructure, as well as its cultural aesthetic and natural resource limitations. Some may feel that this is a worthwhile trade-off. For the moment, we’ll put aside the concept that building tens of thousands of luxury, market-rate apartments, with a small percentage of “affordable housing” thrown in, will reduce homelessness in Santa Monica. It won’t, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Read More: https://smmirror.com/2024/01/s-m-a-r-t-column-serf-city/