ACTION Apartment Association

Could Newsom’s new mental health court be a fix for local homelessness?

03/14/2022 4:17 PM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

Governor Gavin Newsom has a bold new plan for a court system that he hopes will be a salve for the state’s twin homelessness and mental health crises. The details of his vision have yet to be fleshed out, but its principles are similar to a creative court program already in existence in Santa Monica.

SMa.r.t. Column: The Mythical Need for ‘Growth’

03/14/2022 4:12 PM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

Our City is currently in the struggle to change its zoning laws, primarily by height increases, to issue enough building permits to increase our population by about 20% (8,895 units) in the next 8 years as demanded by the delusional State of California. The scale, and impracticality, of this dictate can be understood by realizing that it represents 88% of all the housing units built in our city since 1960. In other words we are expected to produce, in an already built out City, in only 6 remaining years, what took almost 60 years to accomplish?

Naturally, this is not something most Santa Monicans favor, since the vast majority understand, from their own experience, this to be an unnecessary, dangerous and ultimately unattainable goal.

Charles Andrews - LET’S CALL BS

03/09/2022 2:58 PM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

As residents of the city of Santa Monica, with monstrously tall and wide (and ugly) buildings being approved, spawning fortune-making progeny for a few but draining the wealth and soul out for the many.

Am I going overboard?

Apartment Owners Challenge LA County Renewed Eviction Ban

03/08/2022 1:04 PM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles and the Apartment Owners Association of California brought the still unofficial legal action in Los Angeles Superior Court, asking that preliminary and permanent injunctions be issued preventing enforcement of the renewed eviction ban as unconstitutional.

Housing advocates seek funding to repeal California law

03/08/2022 9:05 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

California lawmakers are trying again to get rid of the nation’s only law that lets voters veto public housing projects, a provision added to the state constitution in 1950 to keep Black families out of white neighborhoods.

SMPD pulling detectives, traffic cops to aid in patrols

03/07/2022 8:47 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

His current plan is to move a portion of traffic officers and detectives to “rotate through patrol” for certain shifts every week, bulking up the number of officers available to respond to 9-1-1 calls.

SMa.r.t. Column: The Development at Ocean Park & Lincoln

03/07/2022 8:35 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

The Gelson’s site development, as a quasi government bonus project, is provided with bonus development rights that allow increasing the number of market rates units by 50% without providing any additional affordable units than would be required for the base development permitted by city zoning. A government gift to a private developer and their investors. Not a bad deal I guess for the developer’s return on investment. However wrong it did go, Pruitt-Igoe was built with the premise that it would help solve a shortage of affordable housing and provide a lower income level of society a leg up and a healthy, more open planned, environment.

Is it ironic that the un-founded cry that there is a “housing shortage” is used to justify a project such as is proposed at Gelson’s? There are, per California Dept. Of Finance, about 4500+ vacant units in Santa Monica, as well as a declining state population.

53-Unit Development With Retail Coming to Former Aahs! Space

03/07/2022 8:34 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

Cypress Equity Investments has begun construction on a new development in Santa Monica as reported by Urbanize Los Angeles. The project is yet another mixed use development that is being built at the northwest corner of Centinela Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard where a Aahs! store used to stand.

How long are Californians waiting for rent relief?

03/04/2022 10:24 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

Of more than 488,000 households who applied for assistance since the program launched in March 2021, about 180,000 were approved. Four percent were denied, and more than half of applicants are still awaiting a response, according to the study, produced by the National Equity Atlas, Housing Now and the Western Center on Law & Poverty using state data.

Planning Commissioner Ellis Raskin declares Council candidacy

03/04/2022 10:13 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

Ellis said he is not a hawker of development who is willing to be fast and loose with the environment regulations and development standards. However, at the same time he views himself as a progressive and said he is committed to ensuring that the City develops in an equitable manner and is able to meet its state mandated requirement to build almost 9,000 new units by 2029.