Media

While Santa Monica is very good at being a place people want to move to, we need to get better at being a place where people can stay.

We absolutely must continue to protect our most vulnerable neighbors, help renters at risk of eviction stay housed, and support people struggling to make ends meet or get the help they need.

But our affordability challenge reaches further.

It's the family paying 70 percent of their income on rent and childcare. The middle-wage worker who earns too much for subsidized housing but can't afford an apartment here. And it's the kid who grows up here, graduates from Samohi, and realizes there's nowhere in their hometown they could ever afford to come back to.

And we don't have to look back generations to see how much that's changed. When my wife graduated from college in the mid-2000s, she was able to move back to Santa Monica and spend her twenties in the community where she grew up.

If we want that to be possible for the next generation, we have to make room for them.

That starts with being honest that supply matters. We can't say we want young families and the next generation of Santa Monicans to live here while making it difficult to add homes. We should build more housing Downtown, along our commercial corridors and near E Line stations; make adaptive reuse easier; allow smaller-scale infill throughout the city; and focus on what's especially difficult to find here: family-sized and middle-income housing.

But building more homes isn't enough if we're also losing the people who already call Santa Monica home.

For the nearly 70 percent of Santa Monicans who rent, making room for new neighbors must go hand-in-hand with protecting those already here. That means protecting rent control, enforcing laws against tenant harassment and illegal evictions, and helping people through temporary financial setbacks before they become evicted. Santa Monica's new $6 million renter assistance program is exactly the kind of prevention worth investing in.

Protecting today's renters without creating homes for tomorrow's renters isn't enough. And building tomorrow's housing while allowing today's residents to be displaced isn't enough either. We have to do both.

But housing isn't the only thing making it harder for families to stay in Santa Monica.

For families with young children, childcare can effectively become a second rent payment. Right now, 88 families are waiting for assistance through Connections for Children. We should help clear that backlog and expand programs like “Preserving Our Diversity” to help families struggling to pay rent and childcare every month.

The other side of the household budget is what people earn. The people teaching our children, serving our hotels and restaurants, and keeping Santa Monica running shouldn't be priced out of the community they serve. Strong labor standards and good-paying union jobs are part of affordability too.

This is how we should think about affordability: through the monthly budget of someone actually trying to make a life here.

None of this happens just by saying we want Santa Monica to be more affordable. It takes knowing how government works, how to build coalitions and how to turn good ideas into programs that actually reach people. I've spent my career doing that work in government and public service, bringing people together, navigating complex systems and delivering results.

It's easy to make a list of everything City Hall gets wrong. It's harder to put forward serious solutions and know how to get them done.

I don't want a city with only two ways to afford living here: be wealthy, or qualify for subsidies. It's becoming increasingly difficult for the people in between, working families, young adults and middle-income residents, to make the math work.

We can protect the people who are here, make room for the next generation, and tackle the everyday costs that quietly push people out.

That's what affordability should mean: not simply being able to arrive in Santa Monica, but having a realistic chance to stay.