Homeless Housing In Santa Monica Hits $1 Million-Per-Unit Milestone

Hot on the heels of an audit exposing California's struggle to track the $24 billion allocated to tackle the state's growing homeless crisis, Santa Monica city officials have approved an apartment project for the homeless that will cost about $1 million per unit to build.

The $123 million project will include 122 studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, ground-floor retail and residential and commercial parking spaces. The project was approved days after an audit revealed that the state spent about $24 billion from 2018 to 2023 to combat homelessness but did not track whether spending the public money improved the crisis.

"Moving forward in bringing affordable and permanent supportive housing to city-owned land is a key step in our strategy to fulfill our Housing Element requirements," Mayor Phil Brock said. "I look forward to the next steps and ultimately seeing new families move into these new homes and thrive."

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Santa Monica's Housing Element program streamlines the approval for housing projects through an administrative approval process and more efficient timelines, commits city-owned property for the development of affordable housing and updates zoning development standards to support housing production across the city.  

Santa Monica ranks as the second-worst city in the country for new homebuyers, according to a WalletHub study last year. The city ranked last for affordability and came in at 281 out of 300 for its real estate market and quality of life.

Nationwide, there a shortage of between 4 million and 7 million homes, and people who can find them are spending a greater percentage of their paychecks to rent or purchase them in recent years.

Strict zoning and land-use regulations are partly to blame for the lack of homes — especially lower-cost apartments and townhouses that could help meet the nation's housing demand, according to the Pew Housing Policy Initiative.

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Obsolete financial regulations have hindered millions of creditworthy homebuyers — particularly people from Black, Hispanic and Indigenous backgrounds and those residing in rural areas — from securing a mortgage for affordable housing. Consequently, many borrowers have been compelled to pursue riskier and more expensive financing options, according to Pew.

Many metro areas have seen homelessness increase along with rapidly rising rents, while locations with slow rent growth saw declines in the unhoused population, according to Pew.

Perhaps that's how Santa Monica justifies the costly price-per-unit for its latest development. The city, like many places, "is experiencing a housing and homelessness crisis, and all the cities across the state are required to adopt a Housing Element that includes affordable housing," a city spokesperson said.

"Santa Monica has dedicated several city-owned sites for affordable projects, a key strategy to lower costs to develop this needed housing and meet the mandates in the council-approved Housing Element," the spokesperson said.

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