Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending Sections 21.15.966, 21.15.2290, 21.15.2795, 21.15.2810, 21.15.2985, 21.15.3095, Table 31-1, Table 32-1, Table 33-2, and Table 34-1; by adding Sections 21.15.1475, 21.15.2382, 21.15.2793, 21.45.153, 21.45.163, 21.51.278, 21.52.238, and 21.52.269.1; and by repealing Section 21.15.2475, all relating to interim housing, read and adopted as read.  (Citywide)
Okay. So our last item of. Let's go to item number 26. Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by relating to interim housing red and adopted as red citywide. And I get a motion to. See. The second. Sun house. They moved in second it. Is there anybody want to comment on this? There are none any public comment. Yes, we have. And control your time starts now. It. And Control again. And I question whether the title for this agenda item. Is in. Conformance with the Brown Act. Nevertheless, to make clear this is a change in zoning to allow homeless shelters to be built in residential neighborhoods where they're currently not allowed. Also to allow homeless to live in their cars, in sites not previously allowed. This will. Also. Increase the low barrier emergency shelter. Beds. And increase accessibility for populations that currently have limited shelter options, which includes couples, parents with children and people with pets so they can remain together. I have no problems. With these additions I do have problems with. The next group of. People, which are those with multiple diagnoses, especially those with mental illness. And substance abuse. I do not believe that these. Homeless individuals that have this kind of problems. Should be. In the same shelter with families. Also the safe parking sites. Require. Staffing. Safety measures. Health care, restrooms, clean up lighting, utilities, water, trash disposal. I'm wondering who is going to be paying? For all of these services. I have the feeling that. This will bring. People from outside of Long Beach and to our city. And so if you do. Pass this. Safe parking site. Part of the resolution. I hope that it'll be limited to Long Beach residents only. Lastly, I'm asking that you. I give more public outreach. Before you vote. So I would ask you to leave this over until the other. The public has had a chance to be informed. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have carelessly. Your time starts now. I call this district. I urge you to vote no on this. Not because I oppose interim housing, but because the way this proposal is structured, it throws out the work done on the land use plan. And the public deserves to be. Included and. Understand that they also should have outreach on the Everyone Home project, which is the foundation these days for the policy on the. I am most concerned with the changing definitions of commercial and institutional. I couldn't decide what to call this. This is either a Trojan horse or Pandora's Box. This allows the developer to take parcels with a commercial designation on the land use plan and turn it into multi-story affordable housing. A.B. 1763 The rezoning of the homeless provides large parcels, parcels of land under the designation of commercial. These changes override the land use plan as it was approved. If you pass this item without public knowledge, you are violating the public trust. All that work done on the Hill, you might as well be thrown away. The proposal to put low barrier meaning they are not required to be in a program or mentally ill and not on meds into a community where children play and everyday citizens are being exposed to them does not promote safe and healthy living for the general population. If you want to build something as zoning is an issue. You can do. What you've always. Been able to do, which is. A conditional use permit. Thank you. Thank you. Our last speaker for this item is Jordan. When your time starts now. Hi there. This is Jordan Winn from the second district. I signed up to this item very specifically to counteract the last two statements that you heard. Letters went out. And I just want to speak a little bit more frankly than I usually get to on items like this. It was kind of funny the way you heard the past to comment on this item as they lay out one vision versus another vision as to what is going to be the case with, you know , creating, you know, housing and shelter for people who are experiencing homelessness right now. One says that there's going to be temporary shelters that result. The other is saying that there's going to be affordable housing that result. And somehow that's the net negative overall versus the alternative, which is having people who are experiencing homelessness on your street unsafe and potentially vectors for a current coronavirus that is within our city. I think it's silly to be opposing plans that lay out and provide additional opportunities for us to aid people experiencing homelessness. I think that it is a scapegoat that people are using when they bring up the land use element on items like this. I think it makes a lot of sense and last week it was a unanimous vote by the council. I hope that you stick by your vote last week to approve this item. I think we need more now, more than ever, especially given the crisis that we have to look at our options as to how we can take care of people experiencing homelessness on the street today, and to open our hearts with kindness instead of trying to obstruct the ways in which we can actually get people to receive care. And off the street. There's a lot of stigmas around what people are experiencing on the street today. But I do want to impart three specific facts. Namely, number one, the majority of people who are experiencing homelessness on the street today are not experiencing what's called chronic homelessness with debilitating condition. They're experiencing temporary or episodic homelessness. These are families, students and kids who are on our streets that make up the majority of our population of people experiencing homelessness. Number two, 78% of people experiencing homelessness right now in the city of Long Beach are unsheltered. And number three, black homelessness has gone up by 30% in the past three years. We need to be taking a stand and continuing to build out our infrastructure of affordable housing, interim housing, bridge housing and other appropriate service resources to help aid people experiencing homelessness. I thank you for bringing this item forward and I hope you will approve it like you did last week. Thank you very much. Thank you. And that concludes public comment for this item. Okay. Thank you. Is there any other comment or any comment from the council? Councilmember Alston, I cued. Okay. Go for it. Thank you. I just want to reiterate that I've been combating false narratives and fake news in my district now for a week. So I just want to be clear and ask development services. Does an approval of this plan today allow a property owner to build low income housing in commercial zones? No council member. This item does not have to do with that. Thank you. I've literally had to say that 100 times in the last week. Additionally, at meetings, I think that there are individuals that even stated now that they want a conditional use permit and a lot of the properties identified, at least the ones that I've specifically worked on with specific people, have had specific questions. They all require conditional use permit to get to the next round of consideration. And furthermore, a lot of the facilities identified as potential allowable have been. Discussed and the possibility of them there in in our lifetime is is is limited because of the current uses and other barriers. And so that one of the things that continues to come up is why did we identify so many places. If we don't need as many as are identified on the map and I think that you've clearly stated before, that's because as a part of this plan, we are required to come up with options and that the market is really going to drive the results. Is that. Accurate? That's exactly accurate council members. So you have some very high land values and higher rents in your district, making it relatively less likely that these types of uses would populate in your district. But we do need to provide a wide range of available options. One, because we're required to do that by state law. But two, because the chance of any individual site developing for these types of uses is so low that we need to provide many, many options out there so that hopefully the market and the funding sources are able to deliver one or two of these types of uses across the entire city. So when you look at those maps, they do show broad areas. That's not to say that there's going to be anywhere near that amount of these types of uses. This is really just about the opportunity and this is just about changes to the zoning code as to what is allowed. And there is no project whatsoever contemplated at this time. And the last question that I received and addressed yesterday. Was related to. And thank you, Miss Tatum, because sometimes I go to these meetings and people are. Yelling information at me over and over again, and I start to doubt myself. And the briefings that you guys have provided and the questions that I've asked over time and I know this has been a two year project, but I think the main question was related to if there were any portion of a map that was colored. So let's say on a map that has a bunch of red coloring and a neighbor says, I want this one red coloring removed, that that's impossible to do because this is not a change of zoning. The zoning remains in place. It is the change to the definition of available uses for that particular zone and that we would not be able to exclude any one particular property. Thank you for the question. Councilmember Mongeau, this is Alexis, our appraiser. Yes, you are correct. We would not be able to change one particular parcel zone as that's considered spot zoning and is prohibited by state law. And we wouldn't even be able to remove a a, a, a section that has multiple parcels on it. If it's currently zoned a particular way, you couldn't exclude one or the other, all of them within that zone. Correct. I'm sorry. Wonderful. Thank you. I don't think there were any other questions that came up at the community discussions I've had over the last week or so. But I want to just thank Oscar, RC and Chris and the whole team and all the work that you guys have done. I actually do know one other question you guys answered. There was a question related to the amount of community input. On this process. Could you give a little bit of background on that? Certainly there were several meetings held, the first of which was beginning in October of 2019 and was actually a focus group with. External stakeholder holders consisting of a range of participants. From Long Beach City College, Cal State, Long Beach, Linc Housing a number of other nonprofits. And then we went and did our homework and research. And then eventually in early or late January of this year, we held two community open house meetings, one at the Long Beach Multi-Service Center. And the second one. At the Mark Twain Neighborhood Library. For both of the events, messages were sent out via link, LRB and other social media format. The noticing is about 1500 people total from those two, from those methods of notification. And we had about 20 to 25 participants from both of the meetings. And we also have posted the material on the Internet since January of this year, allowing people to who are unable to attend to review the information by that method as well. Wonderful. Thank you for all of your work on this. I have no further questions. Harry. Nothing else from the council. So we. Let's go to a vote. District one. I. District to district three. I. District four. I. District five. II. District seven. I. District eight. District nine. All right. Motion carries.