December 29, 2025

Dear Editor,

(Spoiler alert!) I saw “It’s a Wonderful Life”, recently. It offers a powerful and still relevant contrast of self-sacrifice and greed. I was deeply moved at the end of the film.

The hero of the movie sacrifices his dreams to work for a loan company that helps immigrants buy their own homes.

The villainous Mr. Potter is upset because he is losing tenants from his expensive slum rentals.

In an alternate future in the movie, Mr. Potter has renamed the town “Pottersville” and filled it with drunks and sleaze.

Mr. Potter would love Santa Monica. We appear to be flooding our city with expensive rentals that could trap residents into poverty, rather than encouraging the building of condos to allow renters to instead buy their own homes and thus gain housing stability and grow generational wealth. Do they really expect renters to stay in these expensive rentals forever? If not, then where will they go to buy their homes and accumulate wealth? Not here it seems.

Even worse, new rental buildings are exempt from city rent control. But if they were subject to city rent-control then I doubt developers would have built any apartments at all – they would have built condos instead. But then I predict the city would fight to stop such condos because, as described below, our city recently acted to block potential affordable homeownership opportunities.

One recent action captures this perfectly: In a bonus to new-construction landlords (leading to a massive surge in apartment construction), the city now allows off-site inclusionary affordable units (instead of only on-site as before), but now also insists that such units must only be rentals, not affordable-for-sale units - A slap in the face to both affordable homeownership AND mixed-income housing. AND a shockingly missed opportunity to ask for more community benefits from developers. (Perhaps some affordable homeownership benefits?)

Maybe those of our leaders who own their own homes can explain why they voted against giving others the chance of owning? If renting is so wonderful, perhaps our leaders should sell their homes and become renters themselves?

Any claims our leaders might make that they support homeownership seem as laughable as claims that they are on the side of tenants in new buildings. It seems that our leaders only appear interested in boosting the fortunes of new-construction landlords, even if it impoverishes renters in the long term. Mr Potter would be applauding.

Our city leaders may say their hands are tied by state law, but they appear to be actively encouraging wealth-destroying, high-priced rentals, that are exempt from city rent control, rather than making any effort at all to lobby at the state level for home ownership.

Say goodbye to hopes of homeownership. Say hello to “Pottersville-by-the-Bay”!

Peter Borresen,
Santa Monica