INSIDE SCOOP
COMMENTARY
SPORTS
THE LATE INTERNET RADIO PAGE 3 RED LIGHTING ‘BIG BROTHER’ PAGE 4 UCLA, USC GET MADNESS PAGE 17
MONDAY, MARCH 12, 2007
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Volume 6 Issue 102
Santa Monica Daily Press MORROW’S SNOW JOB SEE PAGE 19
Since 2001: A news odyssey
THE GREAT WEATHER ISSUE
Rents just keep on rising in this town
COMMUNITYPROFILES FRANK GEHRY
Households earning more than $85,000 a year are still priced out of Santa Monica BY KEVIN HERRERA Daily Press Staff Writer
“Starchitect” envisioned when he designed the project.
CITYWIDE Even families who earn more than $85,000 a year are having trouble living in this town without becoming financially burdened by rapidly escalating rents, according to a report released this week by the Santa Monica Rent Control Board. Since a state law was passed in 1999 allowing landlords to raise rents to market rate when a tenant vacates a rentcontrolled apartment, the price of affordable units has jumped by at least 55 percent for a bachelor’s pad, and 92 percent for a unit with three bedrooms or more; the average rent today being $1,031 and $2,354, respectively, according to the report. Based on the increases, a family of four would have to earn at least $86,783 a year to be able to afford a three-bedroom apartment before becoming “rent burdened” — defined as spending more than 30 percent of a family’s income on housing. The report also found that more than half (51 percent) of the controlled rental housing stock has been rented at market rate, while 49 percent remains rented to long-term tenants. As a result, “a dramatic shift,” has occurred in the affordability of the 14,013 units that received vacancy increases. Before the increases, 81 percent of the units had rent levels affordable to low-income households, or $55,450 a year for a family of four. After the increases, just 16 percent remain affordable at the low-income level, according to the report. The good news, rent control officials said, is that there are still 13,400 units that have not received vacancy increases and continue to provide housing at affordable rents. Also, the rate at which units are being rented at market rate has
SEE CP PAGE 15
SEE RENT PAGE 12
Christine Chang news@smdp.com
NOT A FAVORITE: Santa Monica Place signaled a major change in the criteria with which Frank Gehry selects his projects.
Not a fan of his own work BY KEVIN HERRERA Daily Press Staff Writer
As a world-renowned architect with a reputation for incorporating free-flowing, artistic expression with the unforgiving rules of physics, Frank Gehry has been the target of both immense praise and even more intense criticism. His buildings, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and a private residence in Santa Monica, have been characterized as stunning works of art and outrageous spectacles that do more for the architect’s ego than they do for the communities in which they reside, with fellow architects questioning the form and function. While the nay sayers have been harsh, no one is a more intense critic of his work than Gehry himself, at least when it comes to one of his earliest works, Santa Monica Place mall, which shows signs of his artistic flare, but is for the most part, a boxy relic of
Photo courtesy Frank Gehry
GOOD WITH HIS HANDS: Frank Gehry is always working on something.
Reagan-era capitalism. The building is almost imperialistic and imposing, more of a fortress than a welcoming shopping center – not something the
Gary Limjap (310) 586-0339
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