The following testimony was read into the record on behalf of the LWVSM at the June 15th City Council Special Meeting on Item 8A regarding the Housing Element Draft. You can watch a replay of the full meeting here: https://youtu.be/buO4ejJyBp0:
Good Evening Mayor Himmelrich, Mayor Pro Tem McCowan, City Councilmembers, and staff.
My name is Natalya Zernitskaya, I am the President of the League of Women Voters of Santa Monica and I will be speaking on behalf of the League this evening.
We appreciate the efforts of the Planning staff, volunteer working groups, planning commission, and everyone else who has been tirelessly working on the housing element for Santa Monica.
The League believes that all people have a right to safe, decent, and adequate housing.
We encourage the Council to use this opportunity to shape our City into a more inclusive and equitable community by planning for sufficient new homes at all income levels. We support zoning practices and procedures that will counteract racial and economic isolation.
In your discussion tonight, we urge you to take into account a quote on page 19 of the staff report: “in order to incentivize production of units, cities must take further steps to evaluate development standards that disincentivize housing production such as parking requirements and lot coverage.” Page 10 of the draft housing element confirms that the “adoption of the Housing Element will require amendments to the LUCE and the City’s Zoning Ordinance, Bergamot Area Plan, and Downtown Community Plan to ensure internal consistency.”
We must keep a focus on funding and further streamlining the creation of new deed-restricted affordable homes, and the City should also enable and incentivize the building of a wider variety of homes that would serve to create more housing availability for current and future Santa Monica community members, which would also improve social and economic mobility among members of communities that have been systematically denied access to well-resourced areas such as ours.
Santa Monica has been a leader in renter protections and creation of deed-restricted affordable housing. We understand that the housing crisis is not just a Santa Monica problem, and that municipalities like ours are also struggling with similar challenges and questions, but that just means that we must lead by example and do our fair share in enabling the creation of new homes in our community.
Thank you.
