City Hall is creating new regulations that aim to prevent landlords from converting rent-controlled units to vacation rentals.
Hundreds of rent-controlled apartments are rented by the day or month on websites such as zeusliving.com, according to local officials. City Council members believe this key supply of affordable housing needs to be preserved for long-term renters and is planning to require that landlords lease their rent-controlled units to individuals, not companies, for a minimum of one year.
The council held a study session Tuesday on how to preserve Santa Monica’s existing housing and the potential role of new housing models, such as co-living or micro-apartments.
Councilmembers directed city staff to develop new lease terms for rent-controlled apartments and prohibit new housing models — including medium-term rentals, micro-apartments and co-living — in residential zones.
Santa Monica has 27,445 rent-controlled units, a little more than half of its 51,000 total units. In a city the median rent for a one-bedroom unit was $2,395 in 2018, according to the Rent Control Board, those units allow low- and middle-income households to stay in Santa Monica.
But landlords have recently started using them to capitalize on the demand for medium-term rentals — which overwhelmingly comes from vacationers, said Rent Control Board general counsel Stephen Lewis.
“When people have brought this up as a problem, a common rejoinder has been that we shouldn’t do anything to stop it because there are visiting faculty at Santa Monica College or people visiting their sick relatives,” Lewis said. “It’s true that there are those people and they have needs that need to be met in some way, but whenever we have complaints about medium-term rentals from neighbors, it’s always that there are loud people throwing parties or different people coming in and out every day.”
The council discussed where medium-term rentals should be permitted in the city, with some councilmembers saying they believe it should be restricted to commercial areas.
Councilmember Ted Winterer said that critical sectors of Santa Monica’s economy — Silicon Beach, Santa Monica College and the city’s hospitals — will always generate some demand for medium-term rentals.
“The issue I have with medium-term rentals overall it that it appalls me that it’s displacing the potential for long-term residents,” he said. “However, (we need to) keep our economy humming. We need to allow (medium-term rentals) on some terms.”
Similarly, several councilmembers said they believe that micro-apartments and co-living buildings should be allowed in commercial areas like downtown or near Bergamot Station because they would help house millennials who are currently priced out of Santa Monica.
“New housing models are the only way kids can afford to live in expensive places and have jobs in those places unless their parents are rich,” said Councilmember Sue Himmelrich. “There is a terrible price crunch on housing in virtually every urban area in the country. We need these models so young people can live here.”
In March, the council voted to temporarily halt construction on all micro-apartments when developer WS Communities filed plans to construct six buildings comprised of units smaller than 375 square feet.
The city and WS Communities have since reached a legal settlement that will allow the developer to move forward with the buildings.
The city has not yet reviewed any plans for co-living developments, which typically offer private bedrooms and shared kitchens, living rooms and bathrooms to tenants on separate leases.
Of the several new co-living buildings that have popped up in the Los Angeles area over the past year, most offer additional services like social events for tenants and weekly cleaning.
Mayor Gleam Davis said she supports micro-apartments and co-living buildings that offer community amenities and wants developers to build them near jobs and transit.
“The world has changed for a lot of people — maybe not us up here on the dais, but people who just graduated from college,” Davis said.
madeleine@smdp.com
