Santa Monica Lookout Letters and Opinions |
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SB10 is Bad for Santa MonicaBy Marc L. Verville I am responding to Kevin McKeown’s October 25, 2024 letter “What Is the Scary SB10 Flyer Really About?”. Before we get into the misdirection, misinformation and obfuscation included in Mr. McKeown’s letter, a bit of background. The issue of California Senate Bill 10 (SB 10) (a) concerns state legislation that was passed in 2021. As the bill states, it authorizes a local government to “…adopt an ordinance to zone any parcel for up to 10 units of residential density per parcel.” Due to the intricacies of state land use law, accessory dwelling units (ADUs) can also be included in the developments, increasing the number of units on a parcel to 14. It expires on January 1, 2029. If adopted, the law cannot be undone. As of this writing, it appears that no city in California has adopted this urban densification measure. The key driver of this legislation, along with all the other State housing legislation is the creation of high profit investor opportunities. As such, there is no requirement for SB 10 projects to include affordability of any kind. This is partially (or even entirely) due to the acknowledgement that land costs in single family areas are too high for inclusion of any affordable units to “pencil out.” So only luxury units would be developed, catering to high income renters. With that as background, let’s look at the points in Mr. McKeown’s letter:
Once enacted, this legislation prohibits the enacting locality from ever undoing it. One city council can therefore bind all future city councils to completely gratuitous densification of neighborhoods in perpetuity. There is no local control in that.
According to SB 10 itself, it is OPTIONAL. Therefore, not implementing SB 10 would leave Santa Monica (and every other jurisdiction in the state) is in full compliance with state law.
As noted in the legislation itself, it is optional. There is no requirement for any jurisdiction to adopt it. Mr. McKeown acknowledges this fact when he notes that “A vote to ignore SB10 is a vote to perpetuate housing inequity.” Who is voting? Santa Monica residents.
Since SB 10 is legally optional, a “no answer” of declining to implement the law is a completely legal outcome. Mr. McKeown even acknowledges that if implementation proceeded, it would not necessarily even result in considering AFFH. More than these technical points is the fact that there is absolutely no affordability requirement whatsoever in SB 10. Therefore, virtually all of the AFFH goals would be inapplicable to these high-end luxury units. As high-end market rate luxury units, income would drive SB 10 unit access. All that said, in Santa Monica, even affordable housing projects are not meeting some of the basic AFFH goals.
This is false because the City already has 1990’s Proposition R that required 33% of all new developments to be affordable. But, the City notes (b) that Prop R implementation is not on a project- by-project basis. Therefore, none of the SB 10 projects would likely comply on financial grounds, if for no other reason. In addition, State affordability requirements cut off at projects of 10 units or less.
The second issue is that State determination of the “compliance status” of Santa Monica’s draft Housing Element (HE) is discretionary and time-based. This exposes the City to delays in the State’s own capricious review process of the City’s application and State- requested adjustments. The State delayed review of Santa Monica’s submissions without adjusting the related penalty deadlines. That could happen in every cycle.
Complete misdirection. The SB 10 open space exemption is narrowly worded to apply only to SB 10 itself. It makes no mention of any other State land use legislation. What’s more, the SB 7 (c) legislation recognizes only existing Federal and State land use restrictions in the determination and allocation of housing units. It explicitly eliminates consideration of local ballot initiatives (such as Measure LC), local resource, and local financial constraints in the determination and allocation of housing units. SB 7 (c) does not reference any exceptions for SB 10. Mr. McKeown strongly infers that without SB 10 the residents cannot get the airport park project. Making such an extraordinary and defective assertion reveals his complete disdain for the residents. He’s happy to pit the residents against each other, using the promise of an airport park as the cleaver to get the destruction of the single-family areas that he and his aligned groups desire.
SB10 up-zoning law does allow for up to 14 dwelling units (10 standard dwelling units, plus up to two accessory dwelling units and two junior accessory dwelling units).(i) While it would be up to the Council to approve allowing the ADUs, the development proclivity of Santa Monica’s pro-development groups, exemplified by Mr. McKeown’s 2019 Council and the his currently aligned candidates and organizations, is meager assurance that this would not happen. Concluding ThoughtsTo make the tortured case in his letter, Mr. McKeown has reached new levels of misdirection, misinformation, and obfuscation. It’s true that SB 10 is state law, already applies to Santa Monica, and can’t be changed. But, it’s also true that the law is explicitly optional and legally allows non-implementation. What Mr. McKeown’s letter is really about is defending the Establishment slate in their poor choice of supporting SB 10. The slate of Brock, de la Torre, Putnam and Roknian are unanimous in their rejection of SB 10. The social equity points Mr. McKeown raises to justify SB 10 are immediately rendered irrelevant since they require an outcome that includes affordability, of which there is no requirement in SB 10. Underlying Mr. McKeown and his aligned Council candidates’ position is their desire to eliminate the city’s single-family neighborhoods based on nothing more than perceived virtue signaling which supports underlying investor profiteering. They are essentially running on a platform that is anti-resident and destructive to municipal finances. As I outlined on September 30 in these pages (d), Mr. McKeown and his 2019 Council could not be bothered to demand any analysis on the impacts to the city - financial, economic, or otherwise - of these disastrous development decisions. This was despite acknowledging at the time that the number could really lead to over 30,000 overwhelmingly market rate units, which is where we are now. The market rate economics are why Abundant Housing LA (AHLA) targeted built-up areas like Santa Monica and why the State has refused to expand affordable housing subsidies, fueling market rate construction. (e) So, in all this, it appears that the biggest facilitators of development in the city are Mr. McKeown and his aligned candidates and organizations. These market rate outcomes are a central feature, not a bug, of the State’s housing mandates under the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) policy. Consider: production under RHNA would immediately stop if it actually started to lower residential housing values. That’s what relying on the market entails. SB 10 feeds off the same dynamics. Santa Monica’s highly profitable new market rate housing economics have already resulted in the absurd, lobby-driven, State housing mandates to the city. The negligence of Mr. McKeown’s 2019 Council was on full display despite, or because of, the lobbying orchestrated by AHLA. That lobbying increased Santa Monica’s allocation by 88% in a three-week(!) period in October of 2019, from 4,829 to 9,058 units. Then, to ensure the 9,058-unit allocation went unopposed by the Council, Leonora Camner (of AHLA) essentially threatened (in the 12-10-2019 Council meeting) to lobby SCAG with an even higher made-up number of 14,155 units. (f) This new higher number happened to be product of yet another “model” her group sponsored. Ms. Camner and AHLA would not have resorted to such hardball tactics had the City not had the ability to reject the arbitrary draft allocations. It is inexcusable that neither Mr. McKeown nor any other member of his council did not demand an immediate audit of the entire determination and allocation process when they were confronted with the fact that anyone could create models churning out any desired number of housing units. This arbitrary process was confirmed to HCD in a 2021 report by a group of its chief consultants in the 2021 statewide RHNA audit. (g) In that report, the consultants declared that that the RHNA process was “…(1) ad-hoc, rather than model-based; (2) reliant on simple rules of thumb; and (3) moderate in the exercise of administrative discretion.” The chief benefit of the RHNA process was cited as being “…transparent and easy to implement.” This unchecked discretion is the source of the serious abuse the City has be subjected to at the hands of the State, and it has provided the leverage that AHLA has exploited. It is no coincidence that AHLA has fully endorsed the candidates in this election aligned with Mr. McKeown. Finally, while Mr. McKeown hypocritically repeats the “local control” mantra in his letter, he and his 2019 Council had no problem with a diligence-free binding of future councils to absurd and arbitrary RHNA allocations. His current letter places on full display his nonchalance at binding future councils with more irrevocable, permanent, and absurd zoning densification requirements with SB 10. Santa Monicans do deserve the truth. Unfortunately, I struggle to find how Mr. McKeown’s letter qualifies, in any regard. Editor's note: Marc L. Verville is a Sunset Park resident who is Chair of the City's Audit Subcommittee. The ideas expressed in this Opinion piece are his own. References
See also: Opinion: SoCal’s new housing plan is going to make traffic and air pollution worse for everyone – LA Times 10-25-2019 Click here
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