Santa Monica's draft Housing Element and Technical Appendix is a stack of paper three inches thick. The complexities of this issue may obscure the simple responsibility our elected Council should feel to defend the housing security of the residents who voted for them.

We said with 1990's Proposition R that we want affordable housing for families, for seniors, and for our Section 8 people scattered throughout economically diverse neighborhoods.

If we're to move away from the inclusionary on-site model originally intended, using in-lieu fees, they must be high enough to build truly significant amounts of affordable housing. At the same time, let's not forget we have such low- and middle-income housing already, in our present neighborhoods.

We can create new affordable housing without risking the redevelopment of existing, occupied housing. Suggested fee and zoning incentives to encourage new mixed-use housing in commercial areas are thus doubly wise.

Neighborhoods can be preserved, and mixed-use environments create housing with immediate access for residents to shops, services, and mass transit... exactly the kind of housing most hospitable to seniors.

The production of affordable housing and the security of existing residents both hinge on the dollar level at which the proposed in-lieu fees are set. According to the staff report presented at Tuesday's Council meeting, "That fee could range from four to eight dollars per square foot for condominiums."

Excuse me? Let's do the math. On a typical Santa Monica lot, a developer evicts current residents to build five luxury condos, each 1200 square feet. Fees are due on 6000 square feet. At even eight dollars per, that's only $48,000.

Where's protection for our neighborhoods, or meaningful funding for affordable housing? $48,000 is about a quarter of what it costs to put up ONE affordable unit!

I suspect the developer will chortle as he writes the $48,000 check, tallies his potential profits, and takes his attorney to lunch so they don't have to watch the displaced residents schlep out their furniture.

Current in-lieu fee proposals are based on a developer's investment return rate of 40 to 50%. Do we really want to make the tearing down of existing housing an irresistibly high-yield speculative investment for outside money?

The morning of the Council meeting, as chair of the Wilshire/Montana Neighborhood Coalition, I received a heart-wrenching voice mail. One of our members, Anita, called to say she couldn't make it to City Hall because she has cancer.

She asked us to represent her interests, because senior citizens like her rely on the whole community's protecting their housing security. How many Anitas are there in Santa Monica, and what assurances do we owe them of being able to live out their lives in their homes?

The forces threatening our residents are perfidious distortions of two decades of enlightened Santa Monica housing policy. We've created a community in which non-owners enjoy the stability to become stake-holders, contributing their energies to a vibrant city. Now the fruits of these past policies have attracted traveling money looking to buy with fat checkbooks the hometown we have built with our hearts.

We're Santa Monicans. The existing housing in our neighborhoods, much of it far more affordable than new low- and middle-income guidelines would provide, is where we live. We ask the Council's protection.

Let's save the Anitas of our community.

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