What’s In A Name? SMRR Members Ask

Tricia Crane

Special to the Mirror

   Taking the Renters out of Santa Monicans for Renters Rights (SMRR) was a proposal that inspired high emotion at the powerful local organization’s August meeting Sunday, August 14, at Olympic High.
   At issue is the possibility of replacing Renters with Residents as a means of enlarging SMRR’s base of community support by demonstrating, in the words of longtime member Dennis Zane, “that SMRR isn’t just about rent control.”
   Despite the fact that SMRR members currently hold solid majorities on both the City Council and the School Board, members of the organization became concerned when in the last election season SMRR candidate Richard Bloom had to run in both the general and special elections to win a seat on the Council. 
   “This desire to rename SMRR is forward looking,” said member Jay Johnson, a former member of the Rent Control board. Johnson reported at the meeting that since January Santa Monica has lost 1700 rental units and can expect that by the end of the year that number will swell to 2400.
   Said Johnson, “We need a strong, super-majority on the Council. The homeowners have NOMA (North of Montana Association) and Sunset Park, which have the highest voter turnouts and we lose heavily in these areas. We will have money put against us because that is the strongest area of our adversaries and because we neglect them.”
   In the membership discussion of those who are for and against the name change, it appeared that many of the senior SMRR members opposed the change most passionately. Said Millie Rosenstein, “A rose by any other name stinks. For 75 years I have been a renter. I am a strong believer in coalition politics. I see no reason why we have to change the name.”
   City Council member Kevin McKeown seemed to suggest there might be a third R added to the acronym when he stated, “I’m asking that the SMRR tent have two doors. I want to keep SMRR, but I want to add residents. Non-renters look at what we have done and share our concerns. People north of Montana share our concerns about over-building. We have every reason to work together. It’s all of us against speculative developers. We can now expand.”
   McKeown said he had tried in the past to bring non-renters into the organization but found that they felt excluded by the name.
   SMRR was born in 1978 as a band of 500 renters joined together to place rent control on the ballot. In 1979, SMRR won passage of the strongest rent control law in the country. It became a powerful coalition of organizations that included the Santa Monica Democratic Club, Santa Monica Fair Housing, and the Campaign for Economic Democracy. In 1984, SMRR became a membership organization.
   According to Dennis Zane, SMRR has long ceased to concern itself solely with issues revolving around the protection of this city’s renters. A supporter of the effort to broaden SMRR’s reach, During the recent election fundraisers for SMRR candidates, Zane did some informal polling to determine the potential interest in a SMRR subgroup he called “Homeowners for Renters’ Rights.”
   Also in support of the name change was City Council member Ken Genser who said to members, “We have to have a way to reach out to everybody. We need to make it clear we hold many issues in common. Our tent is big enough to include everyone in it.”
   In the end all but a few of those some 200 present voted to put the name change proposal to a vote of the full membership at SMRR’s November meeting.
   But Bruce Cameron was unmoved. “There are emotional values inherent in a name,” he said. “Renter is a word with a history and a meaning. The word landlord has such negative connotations that Bob Holbrook even suggested once that we drop the term ‘landlord’ and replace it with ‘housing provider.’
   “I’m proud to be a renter. I’ve been a renter for 30 years and God willing I will be for another thirty. And I don’t believe that defining ourselves out of existence is the solution to securing those 80 votes Richard Bloom lost by last year.”