Please don’t support the Airport Housing Initiative. Here’s why.

April 2, 2026 Housing Commission Meeting – Items 3.b. and 13. – Airport Housing Ballot Measure

Regarding Agenda Items 3.b. and 13.

Dear Chair Gordon, Vice Chair Borresen, and Commissioners,

As a follow-up to the presentation to you last month by Great Park Coalition Board Members Zina Josephs and Patti Braun, we write to underscore information that may help inform your discussions tomorrow night. With respect to Item 13, we encourage you to join the Field Sports Advisory Committee, the Arts Commission, and the Airport Commission in passing a motion of NO SUPPORT for the airport housing initiative.

We ask that you take this action for the following reasons:

(1) Affordable housing is being and will continue to be built in many other areas of the City

We imagine that this Commission is far more familiar than the GPC is with the City’s initiatives to nurture affordable housing in Santa Monica, as well as with the City’s 6th Cycle Housing Element (2021-2029), which sets many of them forth.

General data on the City’s rent-controlled and publicly assisted housing is as follows:

• Out of 52,269 housing units in Santa Monica, 3,902 (7-8%) are publicly assisted affordable (income-restricted) housing units as of 2020, comprising about 7.4% of the total number of housing units in the City. (Source: 6th Cycle Housing Element).
• The percentage of affordable housing in Santa Monica is higher than the Los Angeles County average of ~6%. In comparison to the county, according to the 2023 U.S. census, about 2.7% of Los Angeles County residents live in publicly assisted affordable housing, making Santa Monica’s percentage of 7.4% considerably higher.
• Over half the housing stock in Santa Monica is rent-controlled: 27,429 rent-controlled units out of 52,000 housing units. (Source: 6th Cycle Housing Element).

In its 6th Cycle Housing Element (2021-2029), the City committed to issue an RFP for at least 10 acres of significant public lands (“publicly controlled sites”) for affordable housing. These include:

• 4th/5th and Arizona (RFP asks for 362 affordable units)
• Bergamot Arts Center (RFP asks for 707 affordable units – right on the Expo Line, fulfilling the LUCE goal that new housing of all types be sited along transit corridors)
• Euclid lots, including lot 12 (public parking lots to be converted into affordable rental housing, at least one with partner Hollywood Community Housing Corporation) – 48 units at 1217 Euclid Street
• Parking Structure 3 Downtown – 100-150 affordable units in development with EAH; as of last reporting the plan is for 122 units at an estimated construction cost of $123 million
• Main Street parking lots (not yet RFP’d – required by 2027)
• City of Santa Monica – SLA NOA to Affordable Housing Developers (PDF)
• Santa Monica puts three city-owned sites up for lease as part of affordable housing push
• Santa Monica puts prime public land in play for affordable housing

Page 111 of the 6th Cycle Housing Element states:

3. City-Owned Sites – Achieving the number of affordable housing units for the 6th Cycle RHNA will be challenging, especially given limited public funding and high land costs in the City. The City recognizes that City-owned land can play an important role in producing significant housing, particularly affordable housing, and therefore, has made a commitment to prioritizing such land for 100% affordable housing within this Housing Element. Program 2.E. commits City-owned sites for the development of affordable housing through a public process that would maximize the amount of affordable housing that could be feasibly developed. The City-owned sites in the SSI [Suitable Sites Inventory] are: Public Parking lots 7, 8, and 12, Parking Structure 3, 4th/5th & Arizona, Bergamot Arts Center, and Main Street parking lots. With consideration to existing constraints (such as lease terms, financial resources, etc.), City-owned sites have the potential for accommodating 1,880 units. Program 2.E. commits the City to plan for a minimum of 1,880 affordable housing units across available City-owned sites, which may include but shall not be limited to rezoning actions.

(2) The SMO site is unsuitable for all housing due to climate change response and sustainability imperatives, plus lack of infrastructure and nearby transit, inconsistency with the LUCE and other key City initiatives, etc.

Not all city-owned land is appropriate for building affordable housing.  At this time of our climate crisis on the planet, Santa Monica has recognized where housing projects should best be built– along transit corridors as laid out in the LUCE and reinforced in the City’s 2019 Climate Action & Adaptation Plan.  Developing housing on the public land at the airport would increase the kind of sprawl that would generate traffic congestion and require massive new infrastructure that would undermine our climate goals.

Just last week, the World Meteorological Organization announced its stunning finding: “The Earth’s climate is more out of balance than at any time in observed history, as greenhouse gas concentrations drive continued warming of the atmosphere and ocean and melting of ice. These rapid and large-scale changes have occurred within a few decades but will have harmful repercussions for hundreds – and potentially thousands – of years.”

As the Global Tipping Points Report 2025 declares, “The world has entered a new reality.  Global warming will soon exceed 1.5°C. This puts humanity in the danger zone where multiple climate tipping points pose catastrophic risks to billions of people.”

Santa Monica’s climate goals are serious obligations requiring an overarching alignment that our City has sought diligently to heed.  Building affordable housing on the public land at the airport site would threaten our climate resiliency and our public health and habitat health.  See also, the Great Park Coalition’s Regenerative Sustainability Working Group white paper on why the SMO site is unsuitable for housing and the City’s landmark Sustainability Rights Ordinance which gives humans, nature, and ecosystems legal rights to a healthy environment. 

(3) The critical need for signficant new urban green open and recreation space in Santa Monica and on the Westside as a complement to adding new housing and additional population elsewhere in the City –

• The site where SMO is originally was a large park.  The land was purchased by the City of Santa Monica in 1926 with a parks bond.  Residents enjoyed the park until the Federal government commandeered all of the land for defense and aircraft manufacture at the start of World War II.  The park was bulldozed and the site became and has been an airport now for 85 years.
• The commonly accepted minimum parks and open space planning standard for physical / mental health and well-being is 5 acres per 1,000 residents.
• Santa Monica unfortunately offers only 1.5 acres per 1,000; adjacent Mar Vista offers .5 acres per 1,000, and Venice offers .9 acres per 1,000. 
• Over 75% of Santa Monica residents live in multi-family housing with little or no private outdoor or recreation space. As more multi-family housing developments are built in our City, an expansive 192-acre Great Park will become the vital complement to that new growth and added population. 
• In response to the City’s parks and open space deficit and the reality of life in multi-family housing, the City’s 2025 Parks and Recreation Vision Plan (PRVP), unanimously approved by Council in January, affirmatively set 5 acres per 1,000 residents as the parks and recreation acreage target over the 25-30 year life of the PRVP. 
• Turning all 192 acres of SMO into park, open, and recreation space will result in a parks to residents ratio of only 3.6 acres per 1,000 population, still nowhere close to the accepted minimum planning 5 acres per 1,000 population standard at current population. 
• Santa Monica is a park-poor city within a park-poor County and region. 

• The Trust for Public Land ranked Los Angeles 90th out of 100 major U.S. cities in its 2025 ParkScore index, which rates sufficiency of parks networks – a significant decline from 49th place five years ago.  

• Growth in our City in the years, decades, and centuries to come will place significant demands on our existing park space. It therefore is critical to add significantly more acreage in anticipation of a City that is taller, denser, and more richly populated in the future.  
• Compared to well-known parks in other cities, the future Great Park will be small.  Every acre counts!

(4) Broad-based community and Council support for an LC-compliant ALL PARK Great Park

• April 2013 (updated in 2019) – Council adopts a groundbreaking Sustainability Rights Ordinance, establishing fundamental rights to a healthy environment for residents and recognizing the legal rights of natural communities and ecosystems to exist and flourish. It empowers residents to sue on behalf of nature, such as aquifers, trees, and air, and mandates prioritizing long-term environmental health over short-term economic interests.
• November 2014 – Over 60% of voters pass Measure LC, amending the City Charter to allow only new open and recreational space and continuation of existing arts and education functions if SMO is closed, absent another ballot measure. A majority of community members believed they simply had voted for a green urban park post-closure with NO NEW DEVELOPMENT – an “LC-compliant Great Park.”
• May 2019 – Council approves the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan. Affordable housing that leads to sprawl imperils our climate goals.
• December 7, 2024 – The SMAC Project Planning and Community Engagement event in the Memorial Park Gym attracts over 800 community participants, the largest Santa Monica community engagement event in recent memory, possibly ever.
• May 2024 – June 2025 – Phases 1-3A of the SMAC Project community engagement and surveying reconfirm the Measure LC City Charter Amendment – a clear majority in the community wants an LC-compliant Great Park.
• September 2024 – June 2025 – The following organizations and entities all voted to support an LC-compliant Great Park:
  • Airport Commission
  • Arts Commission
  • Recreation and Parks Commission
  • Sustainability Commission
  • Urban Forest Task Force
  • Community Gardens Advisory Committee
  • Santa Monica Democratic Club
  • Santa Monica-Malibu Council of PTAs
• July 8, 2025 – City Council votes 6-1 to direct the conceptual design of an LC-compliant Great Park.
• February 2026 – City staff and the Sasaki consultants unveil the “Framework Diagram,” the big-picture vision for an LC-compliant all-park Great Park.

CONCLUSION: The airport housing initiative disregards:

1. The City’s commitment to build and fund affordable housing elsewhere in the city and its record of success in building housing at all affordability levels throughout Santa Monica;
2. The SMO site’s unsuitability for housing due to climate change realities, lack of infrastructure and nearby transit, inconsistency with the LUCE, inconsistency with the Sustainability Rights Ordinance, and inconsistency with the City’s sustainability and climate response goals set forth in the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan;
3. The critical need to add and preserve a large urban green space as the essential complement to the existing and new multi-family housing and population that Santa Monica will continue to welcome; and
4. The well-documented preference of a majority in the community, among representative bodies, and the 6-1 Council majority for an LC-compliant Great Park.

Accordingly, we ask that the Housing Commission affirmatively express NO SUPPORT for this initiative on April 2, 2026.

Sincerely,
Santa Monica Great Park Coalition
Board of Directors

John Fairweather
Zina Josephs
Frank Gruber
Cris Gutierrez
Joe Pertel
Ann Bowman
Patti Braun

For additional information on the progress to park, see the GPC’s recent Report to the Community.