“We could create a housing trust fund for the city, and still participate in a regional housing trust fund,” Culver City’s Assistant City Manager Michael Bruckner offered as part of a presentation at the April 28, 2025 City Council meeting.
The council discussed the creation of a Local Housing Trust Fund (LHTF) for the production and preservation of affordable housing in Culver City. LHTF funds can be used for new construction of affordable rental and homeownership units, preservation or rehabilitation of rental and homeownership units, acquisition of vacant land or dilapidated properties, and emergency repairs on homeownership properties that have code violations.
Other cities that have housing trust funds, including Berkeley, Pasadena, Santa Monica and Ventura, generally use them to build new rental properties.
Council member Yasmine Imani McMorrin noted “We are going to have to figure out how we are going to be investing in these things.”
While the city currently carries a multi-million dollar obligation to fund services for the homeless, the conversation touched on the idea that creating more housing would be the long term answer.
The California Department of Housing and Community Development administers the Local Housing Trust Fund program, which provides matching funds to local and regional housing trust funds dedicated to the creation, rehabilitation, or preservation of affordable housing, transitional housing, and emergency shelters.
To be eligible for the state’s program, a Local or Regional Housing Trust Fund is required to be a public, joint public and private, or charitable nonprofit organization, or a public-private partnership organized to receive specific public, or public and private, revenue to address local housing needs. The key characteristic of an LHTF is that it receives ongoing revenues from dedicated sources of funding sufficient to permit the LHTF to comply with the requirements of the Program.
“While we usually work really well together [with the Westside Council of Governments] there have been a disputes, time and again, about funding an allocation,” Mayor Dan O’Brien offered “so I think it’s good not to depend on them completely towards funding a trust.”
The City Council motioned to direct staff to begin the creation of an affordable housing trust fund, having council provide oversight and designated the Housing and Human Services Director as fund administrator. The 2021 affordable housing linkage fee will be the trust’s primary source of funding.
City Manager John Nachbar pointed out that “Any monies from the General Fund could be directed towards this by the council.”
The City Council asked staff to return with an analysis of dedicating some portion or all of the City’s transient occupancy tax revenues to the fund.
The fund’s primary goal is the production and preservation of affordable housing in Culver City. The establishment of the trust fund will return to City Council for formal adoption this summer.
Mayor Dan O’Brien, Vice Mayor Puza, and Council Members Bubba Fish and McMorrin voted in favor. Council Member Albert Vera, Jr. abstained.
Judith Martin-Straw
Additional text from City of Culver City
