From school teachers to TV writers to hospitality workers, a Summer of Labor Solidarity is heating up in LA, and the message across the picket lines is the same: We can’t afford to live where we work.
Housing costs have risen far faster than wages, forcing essential workers to commute inhumane distances from Apple Valley, Palmdale, or California City to the Westside of LA, losing sleep and time with their families and worsening our congested roads and unhealthy air.
Indeed, most of the people who cook our food, clean our homes, and care for our loved ones – or, in the timeless words of George Bailey, the folks who “do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community” – make salaries that fall far below what’s needed to afford median rent of $2,900 in Los Angeles, let alone $3,800 in Santa Monica, where I serve on the city council.
To solve this we need higher wages, which is why our unions are more than justified in dropping their tools and picking up signs. We also need a lot more homes.
Overall, California ranks 49th out of 50 states in the number of homes available per capita. There simply isn’t enough housing to meet the needs of a huge share of our state’s lower- and middle-income workers.
It doesn’t have to be this way. With the right reforms, we can make it faster and less costly to build affordable housing across LA County and the entire state.
One such law, SB 35, has been doing just that by allowing homebuilders to pursue a streamlined approval process in cities that have fallen behind on their state-mandated affordable housing production targets.
Since its passage in 2017, 20,000 homes across our state have been approved and streamlined under the bill’s provisions; more than 650 of these homes are in Hollywood and West LA – with almost 500 of them affordable to lower-income renters.
But here’s the problem: SB 35 has an expiration date – and we’re fast approaching it.
Unless we act, cities that are not producing their fair share of affordable housing will be free to deny desperately needed new projects – exacerbating our regional housing crisis and placing an even greater burden on good actors like Santa Monica.
That’s why I’m calling on my fellow Santa Monicans to join me in asking the state legislature to approve the passage of Senator Scott Wiener’s SB 423, a state law that will extend SB 35.
SB 423 builds on the success of SB 35 by expanding its reach to ensure more affordable housing is built in coastal communities, enabling more lower- and middle-income Californians to have access to our walkable neighborhoods, good schools, and clean air.
SB 423 will also streamline affordable housing developments on surplus public land – thousands of acres of underutilized property owned by state and local governments, which often include parking lots, vacant parcels, and unused or abandoned commercial properties.
Too many of California’s cities and counties are failing to meet the housing needs of their lower- and middle-income residents; in 2021, our state produced less than 17 percent of the affordable units we need to meet our goals.
While it’s not a silver bullet, SB 423 can get us back on track by doubling down on SB 35 – a law that’s already proven its power to improve housing affordability for thousands of California families.
Santa Monica has a proud legacy of supporting workers and building affordable housing. It’s time for every city across California to do the same. It’s time to pass SB 423.
Jesse Zwick is a member of the Santa Monica City Council.
