S A N TA M O N I C A
REFLECTING THE CONCERNS OF THE COMMUNITY smmirror.com
December 24 – December 30, 2021 Volume CXIX, Issue 124
InsIDe
nYC DeVeLOPeR BUYs eIGHT DOWnTOWn sAnTA MOnICA PROPeRTIes
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santa Monica statue Honoring the Homeless Vandalized, Artist Vows to Reinstall It Ed Massey’s “In the Image” damaged on the corner of Wilshire and 26th By DoloreS Quintana The statue of a homeless man, entitled “In the Image”, that has stood for two years in Santa Monica has been vandalized. The statue, located on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and 26th Street in Santa Monica, was pushed off its pedestal last week which caused significant damage to the statue itself. Ed Massey, the artist who created the work, has never seen one of his creations attacked in such a manner. Even though Massey’s work is well known for being shown in public, the statue of the unhoused man was kept at his home until the crisis of homelessness reached its current peak. Massey created the statue twenty years ago after meeting an unhoused man on the street while on the way to drop some blueprints off at a FedEx store. He
was struck by the man’s tranquil bearing despite his large size and how different he seemed from the stereotypical and fearful beliefs about the unhoused. When he saw how the amount of unhoused people on the streets had increased and how serious the plight was, he was determined to show the statue in public as a confrontation to people who turn away from the issue. Massey noticed an empty pedestal at the building near the corner of 26th Street and Wilshire Boulevard and asked the owner of the building for permission to display it there. The original set time that the statue
Homeless, see page 8
stagnant Rent Growth Forecasted for Westside Cities and neighborhoods Lusk Center for Real Estate at USC releases annual study By DoloreS Quintana
The Lusk Center for Real Estate at USC has revealed its annual Casden Real Estate Forecast for multifamily rental properties in the state of California for the first time since 2019. In the Westside area, from Beverly Hills to the coasts, the forecast is that rents will remain slightly in decline for 2022. The drop is slight at 1 percent, but as the report states, “The farther one gets away from the City of Los Angeles, the greater
seems to be the potential for rent growth.” The trends seen in 2020 and 2021 were renters moving to the suburbs, since the pandemic got underway, resulting in large projected growth in rental prices outside of Los Angeles and lower rates of availability for rental properties in suburbia. The central and coastal areas of Orange County, Ventura County and San Diego County are all projected to have strong rental price gains. The north county of San Diego, Simi Valley and the south eastern area of Orange County near Irvine are projected to have some of the largest gains closer to Los Angeles. However, of all of the suburban areas, the farthest from the center of Metropolitan Los Angeles namely in the Palm Springs and Indio, western Riverside County, and finally the Rancho Cucamonga and San Bernardino areas have the highest projections for rental rate gains
Rent Growth, see page 8