Hollywood Community Housing Corporation (HCHC) held a second in-person community meeting on Monday at St. Anne’s Catholic Church (2011 Colorado Ave, Santa Monica) regarding three potential affordable housing developments in mid-city Santa Monica. Several parties involved with the development and potential management of the properties — including HCHC, The People’s Concern, and Kevin Daly Architects — made a presentation to a tense audience, many of whom had strong feelings against these developments. 

The housing projects were approved in late March, but the planning can be traced back to December 2019 when Santa Monica officially kicked off its development around the statewide 6th Cycle Housing Element. If approved as presented, they will bring 130 units of housing of low-income housing at 1217 Euclid St., 1211-1217 14th St., and 1146 16th St. on what is now city-owned parking lots. 

At 14th Street, the largest of the three projects at 65 units, 40 of which will be supportive housing. Supportive housing offers units to homeless residents and integrates social services into their living conditions to attempt to keep them off the streets permanently. These services will be provided by The People’s Concern while HCHC will ensure tenants remain compliant with their lease agreements.

“Strict enforcement of the house rules in the lease is a strategy we have for ensuring the safety and security of everybody,” said Sarah Letts, Executive Director of HCHC.

Originally planned at the Euclid Street location, the 65-unit project with supportive housing was moved to the 14th Street site Monday after listening to the public. 

“This revision to the original proposal reflects feedback HCHC received from the community about the intended programming at both sites,” an email from the development team said.

This project — particularly the supportive housing element at 14th Street —  has drawn significant backlash from members of the public, many of them citing the close proximity of these projects to several schools as a deal breaker. The 14th Street site is about two and a half blocks away from Lincoln Middle School, one mile from Roosevelt Elementary, and one and a half miles from Franklin Elementary School.

These properties themselves were officially chosen in December 2022 and not approved until March 2023, but a perceived lack of communication was one of several complaints that was brought by a disgruntled public. Shouts of “Why weren’t we informed back then?” flooded the small auditorium as the development timeline was presented to the crowd.

A representative from the Santa Monica Housing Department said that the Planning Department had sent out fliers to every household in the city to inform people of the approval, which was met with incredulity from many in the crowd. For this meeting, Letts said there was a diligent information process including emails, fliers, and visits to businesses on Wilshire Boulevard near the three sites.

While this was the third meeting and second in-person, it was far more contentious than the previous one according to several people who attended both in-person meetings, including Letts who lead the presentation. Interruptions and people in the crowd attempting to ask questions throughout the presentation — whether by shouting them out or raising their hands — were either entirely ignored to remain organized and respectful of everyone’s time, or were told to wait to ask the questions, to the chagrin of those in protest.

“I know it’s complicated and I know it’s a substantial transition for the neighborhood you live in,” architect Kevin Daly said, “But let’s be respectful of other people here.”

Organizers of the meeting originally planned for the audience to branch out into groups to ask individual questions following the presentation. Tables were set up pertaining to individual topics that garnered questions previously like construction timelines and leasing requirements for tenants, but many in the crowd felt the development team was not acting in good faith with this gesture despite the changes that have been made in direct response to community feedback from previous meetings — such as improving fencing and adding on-site employees in response to security concerns.  

The crowd — already having tried to insert their own protests or questions into the presentation — did not want to split and wait to ask questions, protesting to a level that one attendee later described as a “near riot.” With the crowd not backing down, organizers agreed to hold a 15-minute panel where the audience asked questions before breaking into the originally planned groups.

One of the speakers during this panel, who identified at the meeting as Dima, expressed the fear that many in attendance shared: that this area — home to families, children, elderly residents, local businesses, and Lincoln Middle School — is an area where people with current physical, behavioral, and substance abuse issues should not be centered. He argued that public safety in this area is already in a deep crisis with insufficient police staff to address it, and any new development must not worsen it.

Dima and other concerned members of the crowd said they share support for the overall development of affordable housing but are against placing supportive housing services at this location. They showed appreciation with thanks and light applause for steps the developer has taken since the prior meeting to mitigate security risks but demonstrated a clear belief that further work is needed to ensure the neighborhood’s safety.

Others were more impassioned and charged, with a paramedic living near one of the sites bringing up crimes from transients; locally and in nearby jurisdictions, and asking Letts directly why she thought it was acceptable to bring those types of people to the area.

Letts explained during the presentation that there were standards that the tenants would be held to upon signing the lease, saying that HCHC is hands-on in ensuring that the tenants in their developments follow “house rules” to ensure they do not return to the street, but the crowd remained unconvinced despite The People’s Concern’s 93 percent success rate with tenants in permanent and supportive housing.

While safety was the concern most commonly expressed, other issues like the height of six stories that two of the projects are planning and the removal of the public parking sites the properties will be built on were also brought forward by the crowd, unsatisfied with the on-site parking built with the project.

But not everyone in attendance was there to express their misgivings. One speaker was a woman who works in Homeless Services who supported the developments. She explained her experience showed that supportive housing projects and bringing transients into housing actually helps improve safety by removing the need to commit crimes.

Most of those in attendance supporting the development were quiet, overshadowed by the anger of the opposition. One advocate for the project who attended the last in-person meeting said that there was a larger crowd of supporters at the last meeting who also did not speak up, citing their fear as a potential deterrent.

Following the panel, people spread to individual tables and mingled without incident for more than an hour. There is another Zoom meeting on Wednesday night (July 10) on the development that you can RSVP for here, and the team hopes to get City Council approval for the projects by the end of 2024.

Photo by the author.