Dear Editor,
I’m a 30+ year resident of Culver City and the proud owner of a single family home near downtown for 27 of those years. During that time I have heard all the excellent reasons for not allowing new housing to be built around town. Today, Culver City housing is a complete disaster. We have three kids who are starting out in their professional lives and the housing situation is so awful that rents are more than two or three times as expensive as when my wife and I were starting out (and that’s adjusting for inflation). How many young people do you know who make $100,000/year? That’s how much you need to have a rent-to-income ratio that’ll let you live in Culver City. Buying a house? Forget it unless you’ve got $700,000 laying around (and that’s just the down payment).
People around here often talk about the value of their homes. Ours has doubled in value 3 or 4 times since we bought it, but what’s the point of owning $2 million worth of Culver City if your kids can’t afford to live anywhere near you? Setting aside the kids, what about all of the families who don’t have $5000 a month for rent? I am thinking about teachers, public safety workers, office workers, service industry folks… in short, the middle class that once upon a time made up Culver City.
Enough of the supply strangulation: we need to build more housing in ALL of the neighborhoods of Culver City. We are a vital creative hub in the middle of one of the greatest cities in the world: let’s start acting like it. It’s well past time for Culver City to grow up.
Sincerely,
John J. Flynn
Thank you for sharing your perspective on the big picture of housing in CC. It’s nice to see someone who is the owner of a single-family home in a residential neighborhood who understands that creating housing that our own children can afford is something that we can all support and be a part of.
Yes John, but what is that “number”? How many homes, multi story apartments / condos, ADU’s, etc. can we along with the actual “bodies” can we, or better yet SHOULD WE squeeze into a finite space? And I don’t really care if they are low, mid, or high income homes. For me that is not the point. The point is when do we reach that point of enough bodes vs. space? If you don’t care about that, why not just build 25 – 50 story buildings like there are downtown LA right here in CC?