y Jorge Casuso

March 2, 2026 -- The rift in Santa Monica's pro-housing bloc is widening over a potential ballot measure that would allow housing to be built on Airport land.

Last week, Santa Monica Forward joined the local Democratic Club in opposing the proposed measure, which was submitted to the City Clerk by Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights (SMRR) and the hotel workers union.

The split comes two years after the four liberal establishment groups were united in their backing of a slate of staunch housing advocates that swept the race for four City Council seats.

In a press release announcing its opposition to the ballot measure, Forward touted the group's "bedrock principle" championing "more housing at all income levels to address the city’s acute housing shortage.

"However," the group wrote, "we believe the Airport Housing Initiative ballot measure is the wrong approach at the wrong time. It risks jeopardizing the conclusion of a decades-long fight to close Santa Monica Airport, and could delay community serving uses on the site."

Forward also questioned "the economic feasibility of the proposed measure," which reserves a quarter of the airport’s 192 acres set aside by voters for a "Great Park" to build as many as 3,000 deed-restricted affordable units.

"There is no room for market rate housing or other revenue generating uses in this proposal," Forward said. "Below market housing of this kind universally requires deep public subsidies to build and operate, funds that the city does not have nor does the measure identify."

Forward noted that "even for-profit market rate housing projects in Santa Monica are struggling to break ground in the current economic climate."

The standstill in construction prompted the City Council to adopt a program that offers developer incentives "to keep approved projects moving forward," the group noted.

To be placed on the November 3 General Election ballot, the proposed Airport housing initiative would require the signatures of 10 percent of Santa Monica registered voters.

It would then require a simple majority at the polls to amend the City's Land Use and Circulation Element (LUCE), paving the way to build housing at the airport under Measure LC, which was approved by 60 percent of voters in 2014 and reserves the land for a "Great Park" after the Airport closes at the end of 2028.

Last July, the pro-housing City Council voted 6 to 1 to move ahead with a plan to convert the Airport land into a "Great Park" that excludes, and does not immediately study, housing ("Council Approves Airport Park Without Housing," July 10, 2025).

The vote came after intensive lobbying by SMRR and UNITE HERE Local 11, which had used their political clout to help elect the Council's 6 to 1 pro-housing majority.

The Council vote came after more than 1,000 members of the public weighed in both in person and in letters to the Council and was preceded by a rally by pro-park advocates outside City Hall.

Forward last week joined the Santa Monica Democratic Club, whose members overwhelmingly voted in June to create a Great Park "that would not trigger a ballot measure before airport closure" and "with no sale or other privatization of the land” ("Dem Club Rejects Housing on Airport Land," June 27, 2025).

In opposing the proposed ballot measure, Forward echoed the concerns shared by the Santa Monica Great Park Coalition and Airport2Park, the two major groups behind the Airport conversion efforts.

"Introducing a divisive ballot measure to amend Measure LC, before the airport actually closes and before comprehensive environmental studies have finished, risks splintering the broad coalition that has made closure possible," Forward wrote.

"We refuse to give opponents that opening: the closure must remain the singular, unified priority."