Key Housing Program Repealed : Santa Monica: The city faced legal threats. Landlords who tore down apartments had been required to build replacement units on the site or pay steep fees.

Facing a conservative state high court and legal threats, the Santa Monica City Council repealed a controversial housing program designed to discourage condominium conversions.

City Atty. Robert M. Myers said the program, which requires landlords who tear down apartments to build replacement housing on the site or pay fees to the city ranging as high as $63,000 per unit, may be vulnerable to legal challenge in light of a California Supreme Court that has gone from liberal to conservative in the last decade.

“This new court could take away housing rights . . . that’s why I campaigned for Rose Bird,” Myers said, referring to the former Supreme Court chief justice who was ousted by voters in 1986.

Although approved in principle by the council in 1989, few of the fees have actually been collected. Critics of the program, particularly among the city’s vociferous landlord contingent, contend that the city has held back from implementing the fee system because Myers knew that legal challenges would result. City officials say it was a matter of administrative details that needed to be worked out.

The replacement housing program, known as Program 10, was, along with rent control and a requirement that at least 30% of the units in new apartment and condominium complexes be set aside as affordable housing for low-income residents, a cornerstone of the city’s liberal housing policies. Rent-control advocates regarded Program 10 as an important deterrent to condominium conversions.

Myers said he expected the repeal of Program 10 to be temporary, and that the city staff was looking for other ways to maintain affordable housing in the city. “We continue to believe that some form of housing replacement is . . . essential,” he said.

“The city has a variety of other programs that mitigate the problems raised,” added Councilman Dennis Zane.

Attorney Christopher Harding, on behalf of a number of Santa Monica landlords, challenged the program in a letter to the council. Harding said the program was an unconstitutional taking of property and that it ran contrary to the 1986 state Ellis Act, which sets forth the conditions under which landlords may legally evict tenants and get out of the rental business.

“The only reason they’re suspending Program 10 is because we’re threatening litigation,” Harding said.

Despite Myers’ assertion that the program would be reinstated, Harding said he doubted that the council would be able to devise anything much resembling Program 10 in light of its legal vulnerability. “They are, in effect, abandoning that approach,” he said.

The replacement-housing program was developed in 1983. The fees were added in 1989, as a response to the Ellis Act. The fees started at $27,000 for each bachelor apartment or condominium destroyed and went up to $63,000 for a four-bedroom unit.