How to fix Santa Monica's broken housing policy.

The current housing policy of Santa Monica can be summed up by the following: Keep them in fear. Keep them trapped. Keep them renting. Keep them poor. Keep them voting for more rent control…

There is a way to fix this mess:

Back in 1984, threatened by a ballot measure, city hall reluctantly enacted TORCA (Tenant Ownership Right Charter Amendment). TORCA allowed tenants to negotiate with their landlords to buy the apartments they were renting. If a sufficient number of tenants in a building wanted to buy their apartment at the offered prices then the building would convert to condos. Those that bought their apartments were on their way to financial independence, building equity, and real housing security. Those that didn’t buy, but continued to rent in a building that converted to condos, were allowed to continue renting as long as they liked, still under rent control. From that point on the building was protected against redevelopment, and the renters were protected forever from no fault eviction. 

TORCA was one of the greatest things to ever happen in Santa Monica. Many who bought their apartments have made serious capital gains – money the landlords would have made if they had still owned the building. The transference of ownership from landlord to renter is a truly wonderful thing. Home ownership is the key to wealth and security. City hall doesn’t want you to own your apartment. They quietly killed TORCA when too many apartments were converting – which threatened their voting base. The only way to make TORCA better would have been to enact it statewide, not just in Santa Monica. Then all renters everywhere could have potentially become homeowners.

TORCA really did allow thousands of former tenants to own their own homes in Santa Monica. (A seemingly impossible dream, but in reality surprisingly easy to achieve.) If the city doesn’t bring back TORCA then a ballot measure would be sure to pass. And it wouldn’t take much legal work, since it has been done before.

TORCA could also be given a boost with a companion ballot measure forcing the city to provide all possible financial and other assistance to tenants who wish to buy.

Without TORCA, over time, more and more of the city will become low-income housing for the poor or new-build condos for the rich. TORCA converted apartments will never be desired by the rich, but are cherished by the working and middle classes who will otherwise have to buy in other cities or be doomed to rent forever. Also, when a building converts via TORCA it will be permanently saved from demolition, helping to preserve the city’s historic architecture.

The authors of TORCA should have monuments built in their honor outside city hall by all those renters who bought their apartments – their debt to those authors is incalculable.

There is no rational argument against TORCA, the only opposition being political – it will weaken the voting base of the pro rent control politicians in city hall. And it will reduce the rent control fees flowing to the rent control board, threatening their underemployed staff’s wages and jobs (of course their massive pensions will go on forever.) The argument that it will lessen the rental base of the city is nonsense – new apartments are, at last, being built in numbers in the city. And it has already been shown, over and over again, that vacancy control is a disaster.

Vacancy control is a dangerous mirage that just distracts from the need to bring back TORCA conversions. AB1506 would have changed nothing, apart from wreck the city, cause more demolitions, hardship and loss of housing supply. And it kept the wealth generation in the hands of the landlords, forever keeping the tenants trapped and at the command of city halls rent control fanatics.

Alongside TORCA a dramatic increase in the new construction of market rate apartments would keep a lid on rental costs for new residents. This can be achieved by:

•               Re-zoning commercial districts to multi-family housing.

•               Increasing density throughout the city by allowing small-lot developments and other modern housing formats. 

•               Easing parking requirements for new construction.

•               Dramatically lowering permit fees.

Currently it is not uncommon for single family homes to be built on multi-family lots to avoid the huge fees and difficulties of building multi-family units. These changes will make it easier to house more families on those lots. AB1506 would have done nothing except makes things worse, much worse.