Readers React: Don’t tell traffic-choked Santa Monica what to do on ‘slow growth’

To the editor: You have some nerve telling residents in Santa Monica how to regulate our city’s growth by encouraging us to reject the Land Use and Voter Empowerment (LUVE) initiative. (“Housing for the homeless is a crisis. The anti-density movement could create one for the rest of us,” editorial, May 17)

After 3 p.m., it is almost impossible for those of us who live here to go east. With a resident population of 92,000, our daytime population swells to 250,000, packed liked sardines in an eight-square-mile city.

We have long given up on our sleepy-town paradise; we just want to navigate our hopelessly congested streets. Leave us alone and get back to us when you have your own issues resolved.

Jill Chapin, Santa Monica

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To the editor: The no-growth LUVE initiative plays to residents’ justified frustration over traffic without offering a real solution. The problem will only worsen if housing production for Santa Monica workers is stopped.

LUVE supporters want to protect the “small beach community scale” of Santa Monica. This is a delusion. Santa Monica is not Morro Bay or Encinitas. It is not even Santa Barbara. It abuts the second-largest city in the nation and is part of a region with the worst affordable housing crisis in the country. LUVE supporters refuse to acknowledge this crisis.

LUVE supporters say the measure exempts 100% affordable housing projects with fewer than 50 apartments. This is disingenuous since there is no local housing money to build such projects. But Santa Monica requires developers of market-rate housing to provide affordable units. LUVE will effectively shut this down.

We all share a responsibility for helping to alleviate the regional housing crisis. Even Santa Monica.

Leslie Lambert, Santa Monica

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To the editor: You note that Santa Monica “has up-to-date and fairly restrictive land-use plans that were drafted with community input.” But you fail to mention that the largest and most environmentally damaging projects are being built through increasingly popular “development agreements.”

These regularly throw community planning guidelines out the window in exchange for negotiated “benefits” as dubious as slightly wider sidewalks, community “meeting rooms” and even direct cash payments to groups favored by Santa Monica’s City Council.

As a reaction, the LUVE initiative is intended to be far less slow-growth than illuminating, shining a light of scrutiny on developments that would otherwise sacrifice long-term future livability of a city for short-term, highly questionable “benefits.”

Don Gray, Santa Monica

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