The latest in housing rights for all of Santa Monica’s residents was on the mind of locals on Wednesday, as a group of citizens expanded their knowledge on the city’s fair housing laws at a symposium hosted at the Santa Monica Main Library.

The symposium covered a wide range of topics, starting with new tenant protections which went into effect in March. Created by Ordinance No. 2776, the city’s Housing Anti-Discrimination Code was amended to prohibit discrimination on the basis of a tenant’s housing status, becoming the first jurisdiction in the state of California to include “housing status” as a protected class. The “housing status” protection means that a landlord cannot discriminate against a tenant who may be experiencing homelessness, living in transitional or temporary housing, or lacking a residential rental housing history.

Santa Monica’s recently-passed law is even broader in scope than the District of Columbia’s, which became the nation’s first jurisdiction to enact housing status protections in 2022. Compared to the Santa Monica law, the DC law prohibits discrimination against an individual only based on “homeless status,” with the Santa Monica law expanding to include transitional housing, temporary housing and the lack of a rental history.

This advancement adds on to the city’s robust housing anti-discrimination ordinance, which also covers source of income (SOI) discrimination. Deputy City Attorney in the city’s Public Rights Division, Jonathan Erwin-Frank, walked the audience through SOI discrimination, which also includes prohibiting discrimination against those using the Section 8 voucher program.

On May 12, 2015, Santa Monica City Council unanimously passed an ordinance prohibiting landlords from rejecting an application for tenancy solely based the source of a tenant’s income, which covers all forms of income (including non-employment sources of income like disability benefits, veterans benefits and child support), as well as all forms of rental assistance in both governmental and non-governmental programs.

Frank expanded on the discussion by touching on the California Fair Employment & Housing Act, and the definition of source of income discrimination being expanded within that law. Covered by the expanded definition is a prohibition of discrimination against any applicant because the applicant is using a federal, state or local housing subsidy to assist paying with rent, including Section 8 vouchers and security deposit assistance programs.

Another speaker at the symposium was Rene Buchanan, a former unhoused person who used a Section 8 voucher to find an apartment two decades ago. Buchanan, a former member of the Santa Monica Housing Commission, said that housing status and income source discrimination are “the two most common affordable fair housing barriers,” lauding the city’s approach on the subjects.

She told the audience that those using vouchers “don’t have to settle” and should work on finding a place that meets their needs, as well as reminding attendees what unhoused people struggle with every day.

“Even the most unpleasant living situations become familiar after a while, familiarity then begets settling, settling begets resignation, and resignation kills dreams, leaving us to believe that we deserve no better than living out of the trash bag,” Buchanan said. “But we do deserve better, we deserve the same opportunities that everyone who decides to live in Santa Monica has, we deserve a chance to benefit from all that one of California’s most forward-thinking cities has to offer. We in turn strengthen the fabric of our city … this is why affordable housing availability is so important.”

Availability of affordable housing remains a true crisis in Santa Monica and the Los Angeles area, as Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA) Senior Attorney Shayla Myers said it was “more accurate” to talk about the homelessness crisis as “an affordable housing crisis.” Myers, who represents LAFLA’s Unhoused Persons Justice Project, came to the symposium to break down the “myths and misunderstandings” about the unhoused, including “the big lie” of “shelter resistance,” or that unhoused persons are in that situation “because they want to be.”

“I think [we] accept that when people are unhoused on the streets, they are there because they want to be, because it’s much easier to blame a person who was unhoused than to actually address the structural inequalities that have led us there in the first place,” Myers said. “It’s much easier to say that a person who is unsheltered on the streets wants to be there than it is to say that we need to make huge structural changes that would be necessary to address our affordable housing crisis.”

Myers broke down other easily-repeatable phrases, such as that unhoused typically face substance abuse or mental illness crises, saying that cities with higher rates of substance abuse don’t face the same rate of homelessness as Los Angeles because they have enough affordable housing. She also went into detail about the journey the unhoused take to find a home when their day-to-day goal is “simply to remain alive.”

“When we don’t put ourselves in the shoes of someone who was unhoused, then we forget all of the practical things that we rely on day to day that make it possible for us to survive,” Myers said. “We forget that unhoused don’t have those things available to them.”