A transportation center that sells Big Blue Bus (BBB) passes and parking permits opened downtown Monday.

The GoSaMo Center replaced the former Transit Store on the ground level of Parking Structure 5 at 1444 4th St. It will offer services and information for drivers who park in Santa Monica and BBB riders, as well as a public restroom. Visitors will be able to buy TAP cards, bus passes and apply for reduced fares, as well as obtain parking permits, validations and register for monthly parking.

Read More: https://www.smdp.com/city-reopens-storefront-for-transit-and-parking-passes/174318

This tech hub is booming as never before. Expedia is building a $900-million campus. Google, Facebook and Salesforce are expanding. And Amazon, closing in on Boeing as the area’s largest private employer, is currently advertising 10,000 jobs.

In seven years, Seattle saw its population swell from 609,000 to 725,000, making it the fastest-growing metropolis in the country.

Seattle could not in good conscience ignore its blue-collar roots and simply let gentrification happen. So last month, after years of political negotiations and legal wrangling, the City Council unanimously adopted a measure to build affordable housing.

Read More: https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-seattle-housing-gentrification-tech-boom-20190416-story.html

A 2016 law authored by Santa Monica Assemblymember Richard Bloom that makes accessory dwelling units (ADU), or "granny flats," easier to build is headed for some updates.

On Wednesday, AB 881, which clarifies key provisions of the existing law, passed out of the Assembly Local Government Committee and is headed to the Appropriations Committee.

"AB 881 will help ADU statute to function as intended,” said Bloom, a former Santa Monica mayor.

The bill will likely have little impact in Santa Monica, which modified its granny-flat regulations last year.

The bill clarifies the definition of public transit and an ADU’s distance from it, as well as the types of existing structures that can be converted, according to Bloom's staff.

It also removes provisions that "have given cities unreasonably broad discretion for denying ADU permits."

In addition, it removes the owner occupancy requirement in the existing statute that "unfairly subjects ADUs to a requirement not in existence for any other kind of housing," Bloom's staff said.

Read More: http://surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/news/News-2019/April-2019/04_12_2019_Santa_Monica_Lawmakers_Granny_Flat_Law_Getting_Update.html

AND: https://www.smdp.com/bill-aimed-at-boosting-small-housing-units-advances/174271

This bill would require the Department of Housing and Community Development to create a rental registry online portal, which would be designed to receive specified information from landlords regarding their residential tenancies and to disseminate this information to the general public. The bill would require the department to complete the rental registry online portal, the form necessary to support it, by January 1, 2021, and would require landlords who own or operate property that includes more than 15 dwelling units to register within 90 days and annually thereafter. The bill would require landlords to provide a variety of information regarding the location of rental property, its ownership, and its occupancy, among other things.

Read More:  http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB724

A new study, released recently by the Southern California Association of Governments, reports positive effects of implementing a $4 congestion fee to enter or travel through a specified area of the Westside of Los Angeles. The report, the first of its kind for the area, says LA commuters lose over 100 hours a year while sitting in traffic and that this fee can help reduce that time by up to 24 percent.

Read More: https://smmirror.com/2019/04/congestion-fee/

Beginning May 1, 2019, Santa Monica businesses will begin receiving 100 percent green power.

The City of Santa Monica through the Clean Power Alliance introduced Santa Monica residents to green power in February 2019.

Through the change, electricity delivery and billing will remain with Southern California Edison (SCE), but business customers will have a choice of three Clean Power Alliance energy plans derived from 100 percent carbon-free energy sources.

The plans can be adjusted freely without restriction. Energy plans range from 100 percent, 50 percent and 36 percent renewable power. Santa Monica selected the “100 percent green power” plan as the default for all businesses. This means that businesses will automatically be enrolled in 100 percent renewable unless they select a different plan.

Read More: https://smmirror.com/2019/04/sm-businesses-transition-to-green-power/

AND: https://patch.com/california/santamonica/santa-monica-businesses-transition-100-green-power

The site of a public parking structure Downtown will be used to provide affordable housing for Santa Monica's homeless and live-work spaces for artists.

The City Council on Tuesday voted to issue a request for proposals (RFP) to develop affordable housing on City-owned property at 1318 Fourth Street but left the tenant mix in flux.

The 100 percent affordable housing project would replace the aging structure behind the Third Street Promenade with between 100 and 150 units that could potentially also house seniors and low-wage workers.

Read More: http://surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/news/News-2019/April-2019/04_10_2019_Santa_Monica_to_Replace_Downtown_Parking_Structure_with_Affordable_Housing.html

AND: https://www.smdp.com/city-approves-plans-to-replace-parking-structure-with-housing/174205

Scroll to the bottom of listings for apartments in Los Angeles, and you'll often find a list of things landlords won't accept: No pets. No smoking. And no Section 8.

Section 8 is a federally funded program that provides housing assistance vouchers to low-income renters. But most landlords in the city are turning away people who use those vouchers.

It's not a new problem. But it has been getting worse in Los Angeles. Today, nearly half of the people who get a Section 8 voucher in L.A. will end up losing it because they can't find anyone who will rent to them. Now, local officials want to prohibit landlords from rejecting those vouchers.

Read More: https://laist.com/2019/04/10/la_wants_to_stop_landlords_from_rejecting_low-income_housing_vouchers.php

On April 5th 2019, Diana Hayek, a persistent and flagrant violator of the City’s Home-Sharing laws, was convicted of five separate criminal misdemeanors consisting of: one count of operating an unlawful business in the City, two counts of violating the City’s Home-Sharing Ordinance, and two counts of failing to comply with City administrative citations. These convictions were a result of a multi-year investigation undertaken by the City’s Vacation Rental Enforcement Task Force, a unit of the City’s Code Enforcement Division trained to target illegal vacation rental businesses operating in Santa Monica.

Read More: https://www.smdp.com/santa-monica-city-prosecutors-obtain-conviction-against-flagrant-and-persistent-violator-of-the-citys-home/174163

The City of Santa Monica launched a website Tuesday that provides data on crime, income levels, college readiness and more than 40 other metrics grouped under seven priorities.

The City organizes its work around seven outcomes: community, learning, place and planet, safety, economic opportunity, health and governance. The website connects the outcomes to metrics that show the successes or failures of different programs.

Read More: https://www.smdp.com/new-website-groups-city-data-into-budget-priorities/174170