Santa Monica Beach Commons
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Why SaMoBeach Commons?
The intent of Santa Monica Beach Commons is to re-imagine and regenerate community-based lifeways for the city. We intend to: 1) establish an intentional community, and 2) demonstrate best practices in stabilizing households and rebuilding the community for all residents.
Our approach will conjoin existing housing preservation with multi-generational and diverse community building to create permanently affordable tenant-controlled housing and commercial properties. This development model includes community-owned nonprofit land trusts and resident-owned, limited-equity community cooperatives.
We plan to model, adaptively evaluate, and expand the capacity of community-based initiatives, initially focusing on older multifamily or commercial properties, possibly aligning with community historic preservation and landmark goals.
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What We're Trying to Do
A demographic divide has developed within Santa Monica. During the gentrification period, an estimated 30% of long-time renters have been trapped in rental situations, a disproportionate number of them senior women and people of color. Rising rents over decades accompanied by wage stagflation have eroded the purchasing power of their households, many of whom have been renting for decades.
As long-term renters, they have not built-up equity to purchase a home. They have also suffered the uncertainty of possibly being evicted under the Ellis Act, particularly if living in older buildings which have lower rents. When evicted, many are forced to leave their social network and neighborhood community to try to find affordable housing elsewhere. As long-term renters, their experience has required them
(1) to endure uncertain stability in their home, social networks and community, due to the ever present possibility of their home being removed from the rental market;
(2) to tolerate reduced freedom for self-determination than homeowners; and
(3) to suffer reduced financial security compared with those who own their own homes, as home ownership is the primary asset of working- and middleclass households.
The most vulnerable renters are families and seniors, most of whom have lived in Santa Monica for decades, if not their entire lives.
Santa Monica Beach Commons hopes to offer improved alternatives to people in these circumstances.
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The Democracy Collaborative is a research and development lab for the democratic economy.
The mission of The Democracy Collaborative is to help catalyze a moral and political transformation of the US political economy into a next system that is inclusive, just, and ecologically sustainable—in contrast to today’s amoral economy of financial extraction. Transforming ownership and redesigning institutions lies at the heart of this work. Critical to catalyzing such a systemic transformation is overcoming the isolation and despair that prevents us from recognizing ourselves as agents of fundamental historical change. Our goal is an American community in which wealth is democratized, ecological resilience is regenerated, and the marginalized become the core of concern, as the nation reknits the economic fabric of interdependence without which our democracy becomes an empty abstraction.
The Democracy Collaborative turns ideas of systemic design and community wealth building into visions and models that demonstrate new principles of a democratic economy operating within planetary boundaries, while also helping to lay the pathways for systemic transformation. We seek points of maximum leverage that unlock action and inspire on-the-ground change in economic culture, practice, and policy. At the same time, we work to stimulate new thinking about how longer term democratic, systemwide change can be achieved. In these ways, we help communities and our nation lay the foundation for a democratic economy built upon liberty, community, and prosperity for all.
Learn more about our history.