Before Final Downtown Plan Vote, City Manager Warns Against Too Much Housing
The Santa Monica City Council will vote tonight on the final Downtown Community Plan amid concerns that last minute changes to the plan's affordable housing requirements will suppress much-needed housing growth.
However, City Manager Rick...
Last-Minute Changes to Downtown Community Plan Affordability Requirements Could Hurt Housing Goals
With the final decision about the Downtown Community Plan, which will govern changes to the downtown through 2030, scheduled for next Tuesday, housing advocates are concerned that some last-minute changes to the plan’s affordable...
Six Years of Process, and Then… Boom!
This post originally appeared on The Healthy City Local.
At the City Council meeting last Tuesday night on Santa Monica’s Downtown Community Plan (DCP) the ironies abounded. As planning staff has told us many times, the...
CA Legislature Passes Cap & Trade Bill; Questions Remain
This post originally appeared on Streetsblog California.
In case you hadn’t heard, last night the California legislature passed a legislative package to extend the state’s cap-and-trade system until 2030. It’s a landmark victory for proponents and...
Santa Monica’s Downtown Community Plan Wends Its Way to Final Approval
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...
The Downtown Community Plan On Its Final Stage
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...
City Hall: Clarifying Santa Monica’s AirBnB Rules
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...
L.A. County Homelessness Crisis Continues to Grow Amid Housing Shortage
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...
An Inconvenient Truth: Climate Change Takes A Backseat to Slow Growth in 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...
The Downtown Community Plan and the Lingering Impacts of the Great Recession
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...
How To Bust A Housing Boom and A Housing Boon
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...
Downtown Santa Monica Ain’t Broke
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...
It Would Take More than 60 Years for Santa Monica to Build Its Share...
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...
What Would Arcadia Do?
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...
Update: Whole Foods 365 Set to Open August 9 in Santa Monica
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...
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