Wed, 2 Jun 1999

Dear Editor,

So now we have an affordable ("low income" is the correct term) housing crisis because housing providers are allowed to charge market rents. Even though 68% of the city is made up of renters, and almost all of them are in rent controlled apartments, we have a housing crisis. What a macabre joke.

We all know that the only housing crisis in Santa Monica is due to 20 years of rent control and it’s ever-present parasitic politics - not because it is going away. Instead of funding to improve sidewalks, parks, parking structures, and streetscapes - the normal functions of a normal city, we have a city whose priority is for all housing to be publicly owned.

The city wants to be the evil developer and the evil landlord, under a façade of city financed development companies such as Community Corp. - and as a result becomes the enemy it now crucifies.

Councilmember Michael Feinstein states in one of his many Green Party articles that "profits from private housing should go to the public sector", and it seems that most of the city leaders are helping to make his distorted dream become reality.

It does not matter how many times public housing projects have failed - there are almost no successful public housing projects, socially nor financially, even the Federal government is doing everything it can to get out of the business.

It does not matter that the city public housing projects thus far have cost up to three times the amount of privately developed housing, (even with the layers upon layers of bureaucratic red tape it subject’s private owners to).

It does not matter that the city is committing all present and future residents to finance their doomed housing policies for decades, and the only way out is to sell them - at a loss.

It does not matter that the city slaughters it’s own restrictive zoning ordinances by granting itself and public housing developers extreme variances, i.e. (putting 18 units of public housing on a lot that is zoned for 5, built right up to the property line) thus ignoring the entire density diatribe it likes to use against private owners.

Santa Monica is a beautiful city, mostly due to its location and sovereignty from
big 'ol LA. It is also in a unique situation, since it makes its money from tourism and does not depend on community businesses like a normal city. Made up of a disproportionate amount of tenants, who elect politicians based only on whether they support rent control, they can punish the small mom & pop businesses with impunity, and do.

Housing providers, gardeners, merchants, auto repair stores, and even the teachers union (snicker), nobody is safe from their wrath. We can postulate all we want about why Santa Monica has no local printed newspaper, but the truth is that the local-customer-based businesses in this city cannot support one. It makes no sense to advertise in a city whose resident population does not support its local businesses.

Tourists do not come to a city, pick up a local paper, and plan their day. Of the tenants that work and spend money, most work outside the area and prefer to avoid the tourist crowds that line their streets, fight for parking, and fill their shopping areas with traffic.

If the city were controlled by people of virtue, people who understand that the struggle to be financially independent, with it’s pitfalls and rewards, is a path of great internal growth, it would quit practicing socialistic experiments with money it absconds from it’s income producing residents and visitors.

Instead of self-perpetuating policies that increase programs, agencies and bureaucracies, it would trim its phenomenal budget by lessening taxes and fees and spend the money it does have on normal city functions that enhance the community as a whole; promoting personal growth, self-sufficiency and small business. Like a good community should.

Thu, 03 Jun

Dear Editor,

I discovered the while listening to the last city council meeting during an exchange between Councilmember Rosenstein and your editor. We need this paper. Keep it up.

Patrick Regan, Santa Monica

Sun, 06 Jun

Dear Editor,

In Santa Monica no good deed goes unpunished. This rang true 2 weeks ago when
the SMRR aparatchicks on the Rec. and Parks Commission purged Matt Millen from the Virginia Ave. Park Advisory Board. Over the past 3 years Matt donated
approximately $1,000.00 worth of soccer uniforms and equipment for the annual
girls and young womens sports day at Virginia Ave.Park .. In consideration of
his philanthropy, he along with 5 others were purged from the Advisory Board.
Now that SMRR controls every elected body in the City, SMRR's tyranny will
probably be unleased on others in the City who dare to express an opinion that
differs from the SMRR steering committee party line.

Mike Rosenfeld, Santa Monica

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