ACTION Apartment Association

Council asked to hire new position to focus on homelessness

09/12/2017 7:35 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

City Manager Rick Cole is requesting a new, fulltime staff member dedicated to working on the city’s growing homeless problem.

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, manager Cole will ask the council to approve more than $320,000 to fund the position through the 2018-19 fiscal year. According to the staff report, the new hire will oversee the City’s comprehensive homeless efforts and work with neighboring communities to implement regional solutions.

City to Reveal If 'Wellbeing' of Santa Monica’s Populace Has Improved

09/12/2017 7:32 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

September 12, 2017 -- Is Santa Monica a happier, or at least more contented, community than it was two years ago?

The City is scheduled to address the issue tonight, and in more detail Wednesday, in an update of a 2015 ground-breaking project that sought to gauge the level of wellbeing among its nearly 94,000 residents as a way of improving services.

Meet YIMBY: Pro-development groups join the battle in California housing wars

09/11/2017 3:30 PM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

It’s an ageless fight waged in board rooms, council chambers and auditoriums across the state.

Now, there’s a new player in this well-worn battleground: YIMBYs.

These are pro-housing, mostly young urban dwellers willing to say “yes in my backyard” to residential development of all types, including subsidized housing for the poor and for-profit housing for the well-to-do.

OEM gives preparedness tips during National Preparedness Month

09/11/2017 2:46 PM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

Natural disasters are occurring more frequently from the multiple hurricanes to the La Tuna fire in Los Angeles and the City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) wants the public to recognize September is the official National Preparedness Month.

“We strongly recommend that residents and businesses prepare for an emergency by following four steps: 1) Get a Kit 2) Have a Plan 3) Stay informed and share,” said Barker. “We highly recommend that residents have seven days of disaster supplies in an emergency kit.”

California could be hit by an 8.2 mega-earthquake ...

09/10/2017 9:28 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

The magnitude 8.2 earthquake that ravaged southern Mexico on Thursday was the largest to shake the country in nearly a century.

Like California, Mexico is a seismically active region that has seen smaller quakes that have caused death and destruction. But Thursday’s temblor is a reminder that even larger quakes — while rare — do occur.

Scientists say it’s possible for Southern California to be hit by a magnitude 8.2 earthquake. Such a quake would be far more destructive to the Los Angeles area because the San Andreas fault runs very close to and underneath densely populated areas.

Daily Press launching new series on homelessness

09/08/2017 9:15 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

The Daily Press will publish a series of stories, editorials and columns in the coming weeks focused on homelessness. These stories will include news, features, editorials and columns about the subject and while the focus will be on Santa Monica’s response to the problem, the content will acknowledge this is more than just a local or even regional issue. This is a cultural problem with a multitude of causes and far reaching implications.

We’re starting this week with the factual motivation for the series: the number of people living on local streets is increasing regionally, Santa Monica itself has seen a significant increase this year and residents countywide are making homelessness a priority.

Santa Monica’s Downtown Merchants to Meet with Police on Rising Homelessness Problem

09/06/2017 3:48 PM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

September 6, 2017 -- Merchants in Santa Monica’s downtown will meet with police and others this month as the community tries to respond to the largest increase in homeless people in a decade, much of the population concentrated downtown and along the beach.

The session between Downtown Santa Monica, Inc. and local police and the City’s Human Services Division on September 19 will detail the ways in which Santa Monica is coping with the 26 percent increase in homeless people this year living on the streets, the beach, in parks and encampments.

Former Obama Staffer Who Worked for Garcetti, Hired as Deputy City Manager and Director of Policy

09/06/2017 7:45 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

Anuj Gupta's primary qualification seems to be that he worked for Democrat such as Gil Garcetti and Barack Obama. And as they usually do, the City of Santa Monica has awarded him with a quarter million dollars a year. Way to go, guys!

City Manager Rick Cole has selected Anuj Gupta as Deputy City Manager and Director of Policy. Gupta, a Santa Monica resident, currently serves as Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti's General Counsel in the Office of Immigrant Affairs. He previously worked for the Obama White House and with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Gupta will be paid $266,000 a year to start, about three times the average salary of a Santa Monica resident.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING: NEEDED, BUT IN WHAT FORM?

09/05/2017 1:00 PM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

One response has been a state mandate for ever-increasing numbers of affordable units in most cities and many unincorporated areas. It’s common in many places for new apartment and condominium structures to contain as up to 35 percent affordable units, available to families who qualify under various income standards based on whatever the federal poverty standard is at the moment.

One problem is that having to build so many affordable units into their new projects forces developers to raise the price of market-rate housing. Another is that affordable units sometimes lack commonplace amenities like air conditioning. And when those units are built near light rail lines like the expanding Metro system in and around Los Angeles, required numbers of parking spaces are sometimes cut. The presumption – often false – is that residents of those buildings will not need to drive as much as others because public transit is readily available.

Homelessness on the minds of City leaders

09/05/2017 8:08 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

City Hall wants to tackle the city’s homeless problem and while a specific plan has yet to be unveiled, the recent Downtown Santa Monica Inc. meeting provided an opportunity for civic leaders to preview their thinking.

Mayor Ted Winterer and City Manager Rick Cole both spoke at the annual meeting and both issued strong statements regarding the state of homelessness in Santa Monica.

After briefly addressing topics like transportation, tenant protections, climate change, immigration and fiscal responsibility, Winterer issued a call to action on homelessness.