Jenny Pirie, Peter Kastner and Jeff Mudrick A Short History of Ocean Park, Ocean Park Community Organization, 1982, (With a 1983 update.) 15 pp., 1983, 1982, 1976, 1973, 1970, 1970s, 1967, 1960s
"Real estate development leveled off somewhat in the nineteen sixties, but grew into a speculative boom by the eary nineteen seventies, usually with little consideration for the people who lived in Ocean Park (88% of whom were renters by 1970). The number of new apartment buildings multiplied; rents increased; and the population of the community itself began to change from a blue-collar "tenant community" of people who lived and worked in Ocean Park to a rental suburb, increasingly populated by young professionals who commuted to work outside the area. The completion in 1967 of the Santa Monica Freeway, giving easy access into and out of Ocean Park, was probably the single most important factor influencing this transition. But the net result of real estate development during those years was to create a serious threat to Ocean Park as a source of low-cost housing.
"In the early seventies, Ocean Park residents began organizing to resist the pressures of real estate development and to preserve Ocean Park as a seaside community affordable to low and moderate income people. Beginning in 1973, The Church in Ocean Park, on Hill Street, became a center of this activism and community spirit.
"There were some successes in these early organizing days: in 1973 the battle to save the Santa Monica Pier from demolition was won; but there were also setbacks: in 1976, residents failed to stop the Santa Monica Redevelopment Agency from subsidizing the development of what has become Santa Monica Place without adequate consideration for the impact on the surrounding community. And the "revitalization" of Main Street surged ahead in the late seventies with little or no input from local residents affected by the change. Main Street had fallen into considerable decay, but its transformation into a boulevard of luxury businesses and expensive restaurants had nothing to do with the needs of the people living in the area, and only increased the already serious problems of crime and traffic."