While Santa Monica’s YouTube presence is often dominated by the Everclear song of the same name and travel vlogs, a recent video by popular real estate influencer Graham Stephen exploring “What Happened to Santa Monica” has garnered a lot of attention on the platform, racking up nearly three million views.
The lewd title encapsulates the confusion Stephen feels as he tries to reconcile his teenage memories of the City with his present-day reality.
“What was once a thriving, vibrant culture and economy is now a barren wasteland of vacant buildings and crime,” he says at the start of the video.
Stephen focuses on the Promenade, discussing the area’s vacancy rates, growing homelessness, and perceptions of crime. He doesn’t offer specific solutions to the problems, but highlights landlords charging high rents to justify property values, pandemic-related retail losses, and broader retail trends. The bulk of the video, however, focuses on the damage to the city’s reputation, featuring multiple clips from local news channels covering crime and anecdotes about businesses that feel plagued by homelessness, mental health issues, drug use, and theft.
“Personally, as someone who grew up here, the defining moment was the riots of 2020, with so many businesses being broken into and it seems like they’ve had a really hard time recovering from that ever since,” he said.
The YouTube video is one of several that have been released over the past few months highlighting issues of homelessness, crime, and store closures in New York City. While YouTubers have recently been paying more attention to the city, videos criticizing the city date back decades, including a scene in which South Park’s Eric Cartman leaps over three homeless people on his skateboard in Palisades Park as part of the 2007 episode “Night of the Living Homeless” (Season 11, Episode 07).
Officials say the situation is not as bad as it looks in YouTube videos and is in fact improving, but a number of recent economic indicators point to real problems.
This year, Santa Monica saw its third consecutive year of increased crime, driven mostly by property and petty theft.
Car theft is on the rise everywhere, with Hyundais being the most stolen vehicles over the past five years, followed by Toyotas, but Kia thefts have skyrocketed in the past two years. While the number of fraud crimes was relatively low (241 incidents), this category saw the largest increase at 16.6%. Simple assaults resulting in minor or no injury totaled 859 incidents, up 15% from last year.
Arrests increased by 12% (2,723 total), still lower than 2019 (3,840), but have risen steadily since 2020.
Following a trend in recent years, roughly two-thirds of arrests in the city are homeless people. The number of homeless arrests rose to 1,839, accounting for 67.6% of the total number of arrests of 2,723 (an 11% increase from last year). The total number of arrests in 2022 was 2,438, of which 66.9% were homeless, for a total of 1,632.
The city’s tourism market is significantly reduced: total visitor numbers are down 12.8% from 2022, tourism-related sales tax revenues are down 7.9%, total visitor spending is down 2.5%, tourism-related employment in the city is down about 10.8%, and total international visitors are down 7%. Average hotel room rates in 2023 are down 11%, and hotel occupancy rates are still below pre-pandemic levels (77% in 2023 vs. 82% in 2019). Pedestrian traffic on the promenade is still significantly reduced, with only 452,678 visitors in July this year compared to 759,563 in July 2019.
Sales taxes have also declined in recent years. Actual sales in the first quarter of 2024 were 4.8% lower than last year (down 2.2% from 2022). Tax revenues in the first quarter were down at the county and state levels, but Santa Monica’s decline was much larger than other areas, with county sales down 0.8% and state sales down 0.2%.
City Councillor Caroline Trosis said in a recent email to supporters that the local economy is “thriving” and told the Daily that economic growth is on the horizon.
“Downtown Santa Monica is in the midst of an exciting revitalization with new businesses opening and more than $1 billion in investment in commercial and residential projects. This is in large part due to the strategic changes the City has implemented to allow a greater variety of shopping, dining and entertainment downtown and make it easier to start a business in Santa Monica. Additionally, we continue to invest in programs and initiatives to keep our public spaces clean and enhance public safety,” she said.
He said the YouTube video points out the role private property owners play in the situation and that the city is working with landlords to improve the situation.
City spokeswoman Lauren Howland said the YouTube video paints an inaccurate impression of the downtown area by highlighting vacant properties but not providing any information about upcoming vacancies that will fill them.
According to him, Google will combine two locations in the landmark Keller Building to open a new store, and the former HSBC building has been leased to a well-known video production company that the company is considering opening or subleasing. The former Hollister store will be a world-renowned shoe retailer, and the former Forever 21 store (which is moving to the mall) is in lease negotiations. MINISO recently opened in the former Cotton On store, and the existing restaurant business is in negotiations to build a new entertainment venue where T-Mobile used to be. The corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Third Street has been leased to a national restaurant chain, and the company will use the existing food location and two additional retail spaces along Santa Monica Boulevard. 1360 Third Street will be HQ Gastropub, construction is underway, and the former food court site will be Holey Moley (mini golf and restaurant use).
“The City is optimistic about the future of Downtown and Third Street Promenade, with many exciting openings planned in the coming weeks alone. While change is always difficult and can take time, it’s clear that the City’s strategic efforts to make it easier to start a business in Santa Monica are paying off,” she said.
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