At the May meeting, we talked extensively about the housing bills introduced in this legislative session. If passed, without siginificant ammendments, it will be even harder for rental property owners to do business not only in Santa Monica but in all of California as well. Attorney Rosario Perry updated us on legal cases and talked about the settlement conference on the Interest on Security Deposit case we won, which is slated for hearing on May 22. We will keep you posted.

I hope you enjoyed hearing John Deasy speak as much as I did at the April meeting. Mr. Deasy (who is not in the political arena) addressed the increasing difficulty of obtaining funding for our Santa Monica School District. The majority of the funding, apparently, comes from the State of California, which has severely cut the allocation to the school districts. The City of Santa Monica can support its own school system if it chooses to do so and apparently did not contribute all that much in the past. It is interesting that the City Council, dominated by SMRR, and the Board of Education, also with a plethora of Renters Rights representatives on the Board, does not take some of the money which it votes for flowers, pretty street lights, center meridians, fancy brick work, etc. to educate the students in school. If I were to guess at how many children are in school that live in single family dwellings, compared to how many children are in school that live in apartments, I would think that with the overwhelming number of apartments in the Santa Monica, that the corresponding number of children would come from apartments. Do the Renters Rights forces care about education of the children enough to fund the shortage of state allocation? Of course, there is the upcoming Parcel Tax Initiative which seeks to fund the Santa Monica schools, but again, since the majority of children come from apartments, and apartment dwellers do not pay the property tax, why should the property owner be taxed for the school system? It is my opinion that most of the Santa Monica apartments are owned by older people, mom and pop operators, who do not have children in the school system. Even if the Parcel Tax is passed, there is no guarantee that the Santa Monica Rent Control Board will allow a pass-through to the tenants, and there is no guarantee that tenants, 35% of which are paying fair market value, will want to pay anything more. The solution does not lie with property owners paying more to bail out the school system. Again, the property owners are under monetary attack by the City of Santa Monica.

Did you know that the Action Apartment Association was founded in 1979, the same year that Rent Control passed? Did you know that of the original founding members of ACTION, only one remains with us: Wesley Wellman. Mr. Wellman is on the Board of Directors and a very active participant. Others have passed on. Do you remember John Jurenka, Wilho Miller, John Rodriguez, K. B. Huff, and Jim Baker?

The function of the Action Apartment Association since 1979 has been to protect property owners’ rights and to educate property owners in the City of Santa Monica. Every month, the Westside Apartment Monlthly magazine is published, which refers to items of interest in the local area, statewide, and even on the Federal level. There are special reports from local attorneys, legislative updates, and overviews, highlights of recent legislation, proposed legislation, new rules and new regulations, etc.

The new Action Rental Agreement shall be available by the time you read this article and, of course, please do not forget that ACTION has low cost credit and eviction reports with an immediate response pursuant to your request. We also have over 40 different legal forms available and, of course, special forms for rent controlled cities.

Some people think that the major information-generating device is the owner education meetings, which usually occur on the first Monday of every month, presently at Roosevelt Elementary School Auditorium at Lincoln Blvd. and Montana Ave. Personally, I think it is the magazine, but given everything that ACTION does on behalf of the Santa Monica property owner, it really is the only game in town. We exist because of your interest and your support and look forward to hearing your questions on the owners’ hotline when you call the office (828-7628). If the staff member answering the telephone does not know the answer to your question, we will put you in touch with someone who does. We look forward to seeing you at the next meeting.