Jorge Casuso

What is a hotel? That question is at the center of the latest battlefront over Santa Monica’s dwindling affordable housing stock: the conversion of apartments to top-dollar short-term rentals. Beachfront rent-controlled units that once fetched between $350 and $700 a month -- which were so affordable that tenants often hung......

Santa Monica‘s pioneering living-wage proposal, which has provoked a misleading counterattack and competing measure from the business community, would have little economic effect on its primary target -- the city’s luxury beachfront hotels -- according to a new report. Massachusetts economist Robert Pollin examined what would happen if the 72......

At first glance, the cluster of four worn-out wooden buildings covered with bougainvillea and vine failed to attract Michael Tarbet’s attention. The tenant activist had walked past the World War I--era structures a block from the beach in Santa Monica for years before stepping through the chainlink fence and into......

Santa Monica‘s living-wage war -- the hardest-fought political battle since voters approved rent control more than two decades ago -- is already the most expensive in recent memory, with a handful of luxury hotels contributing nearly $400,000 to put an initiative on the November ballot. Sponsors of the business-backed measure......

When the rent on June Phelps’ studio in Santa Monica‘s Drescherville artist community tripled, the painter packed up her brushes and canvases and looked for another space. ”Drescherville was dwindling fast, and people were looking for a place to live and paint,“ said Phelps. Phelps tried the Drawing Room, a......

In the 10 years Edith Garcia has worked as a housekeeper at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, she never met any of the top bosses. They always ignored her when she walked by, Garcia said, and any requests for a meeting fell on deaf ears. But last week, a......

Six months ago, Santa Monica seemed headed toward passing a living-wage ordinance that would be the most progressive in the nation. All hotels, restaurants and businesses along the coast with at least 50 workers would pay an hourly wage of $10.69. Unlike stingier measures elsewhere, Santa Monica’s wouldn‘t be limited......

Being a member of the Santa Monica City Council doesn’t ensure you entry to the exclusive Jonathan Club. Just ask Santa Monica Councilmen Kevin McKeown, Paul Rosenstein and Michael Feinstein, who were turned away when they showed up at the beach club unannounced last Wednesday in an effort to win......

Photo by David H. Wells/Corbis One week after 30 dishwashers and housekeepers of the exclusive Jonathan Club on Santa Monica Beach lost their jobs, the city’s living-wage war literally went postal. While the low-wage workers — who are among the most vocal backers of a groundbreaking living-wage proposal being studied......

Jonathan Club dumps workers involved in living-wage fight When more than two dozen housekeepers, dishwashers and locker-room attendants left the exclusive Jonathan Club on Santa Monica Beach on Sunday, their replacements already were walking in the door. A few hours earlier, the workers -- who make between $6 and $7.50......