Recommendation to approve a first substantial amendment to the 2018-2022 Five-Year Consolidated Plan, Citizen Participation Plan, and Fiscal Year 2019-2020 Action Plan to incorporate emergency funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), Community Development Block Grant Coronavirus (CDBG-CV) and Emergency Solutions Grant Coronavirus (ESG-CV), and approve a substantial amendment to the Fiscal Year 2017 and Fiscal Year 2018 Action Plans to reallocate Home Investment Partnerships Program (HOME) funds for COVID-19 response; Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all necessary documents with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and other entities necessary to receive these funds, and execute agreements necessary to implement and comply with related federal regulations; and Increase appropriations in the Community Development Grant Fund Group in the Development Services Department by $5,465,696, offset by grant revenue. (Citywide)
Great hearing has concluded. We will begin. The first item of the evening is going to be item 11. This is the which again, we're checking all the covered items first. And so we'll get through those in this first part of the meeting. So I know that Madam Park read the item and then we have a staff presentation. For From Development Services recommendation to approve a first substantial amendment to the five year consolidated plan, Citizens Participation Plan and Fiscal Year Action Plan to incorporate emergency funds from the CARES Act. CDBG. CV and ESG CV. Authorize City Manager to execute all necessary documents with HUD and increase appropriations in the Community Development Grant Fund Group by 5,465,696 , offset by grant revenue citywide. America. Thank you. Remember Mayor and members of the city council. So this is a significant program. We want to spend some time to educate you on what it is that we're proposing. This started with the council item asking us to look into doing some assistance for rental properties and or people, tenants, I'm sorry, and funding it out of our cares funding. So the county has done a program. We've got some information on that. We are proposing a $5 million program as well. And I will turn it over to Linda Tatum and Patrick here to go through the program briefly. Good evening, Mayor. Members of the council, we have a slide presentation for you with this item and we will walk through that as briefly as we can. This item is a request for approval of the city's in an amendment to the city's consolidated plan to accept the federal COVID 19 CDBG and emergency shelter grant for COVID, the stimulus funds that were allocated to 34 of four COVID response. So back in March of 2020, the federal government passed the what they called it the Cares the Cares Act that included a an approximately $5 billion allocation to city funding as well as a to $2 billion in CDBG funds for. For shelter. Available to jurisdictions for their 2020 city BG allocations. So of this federal allocation, the city will receive $3.6 million in CDBG funds for COVID relief, as well as $1.8 million in emergency shelter grant funding specifically for COVID. I think I just want to point out that this is an immediate allocation. This funding that we're going to be talking about tonight is a is available immediately. It is only a portion of the approximately $9 billion that was allocated by the federal government. So we do we learned today that we will be receiving additional funding under both of these programs, both the emergency shelter grant, as well as the CDBG grants, specifically for COVID. So this is part one. Again, the proposal that I will be walking through tonight, talk specifically about the rental assistance, but with the subsequent funding, we are hoping to be more expansive in terms of the programs that we would be bringing back to this Council for consideration. Okay. What? Essentially, what the CARES Act does is it eliminates some of the provisions that cities would normally have to go through to expand their city by defunding. So I'll give you the broad categories under which the city can expend these COVID funds. They can spend it on building or public facilities. They can also use it for business and economic development, and they can also improve or enhance public services. And that's the category under which we are proposing staff implement the rental assistance program. The fourth category that it could be used for is for planning and technical assistance. And I think I would actually point out that there is an administrative component to these fees that's also included in this grant. So as I talk about this program, I didn't mention it, but it will be all of the staffing costs associated with the implementation would be covered under the grant funding. So again, in early April, staff, once we received word of this allocation, we began looking at potential program areas with the objective to focus on areas or areas that weren't currently being served either by other state or federal programs or by local programs that have been put in place by by this council. With that in April, about April 21st, the city council, as the city manager mentioned, we got direction from the council to take a look at the county's rental assistance program. And we did so. And we were also, through the mayor's action, pursuing additional funding from the county. This program, however, reflects the city's very specific allocation, specifically for use in the south, in the city of Long Beach, because the county's program and their funding was available specifically for unincorporated county residents. However, we did look closely and confer with the county staff in terms of looking at how they administered their program. And we realized that because we could not share their program and nor their funding, we had to develop our own program. But we wanted to make sure that we were at least looking at the components of their program, especially given that we were going to receive funding or we had anticipated getting some assistance from the county through Supervisor Hahn. Okay. As I mentioned earlier, there are three actions that the county's being that the city council is being asked to take. We are amending our current CDBG documents and these the amendment of these three documents, the citizen participation plan, our five year consolidated plan and our current fiscal year action plans. The city will amend these documents as a basis to receive and implement the and expand the CARES Act funds. So I talked earlier about this being a special allocation and and HUD has seen fit to waive some of these standard requirements. Those requirements that they waived are listed here. And I think it's been particularly helpful because the idea was so that we can get the money in hand and get it out to the to the community needs as quickly as possible. So these these waivers essentially enable us to develop a program quickly and to get I guess, to just get it underway as quickly as possible. So I'll talk really briefly about the program elements. I mentioned earlier that the the $9 billion Federal Cares Funding Act of the the amount that's available to us currently there are 3.6 in city B g funds specifically for community development related activities under the federal objectives. There is also 1.8 for the emergency shelter grant and those funds are being currently implemented by the the city's Health and Human Services Department in addition to the federal funds. Staff was asked to look to see if we could supplement this program funding with additional funds to to stretch it a little bit further. And we've been able to do so and are proposing an additional $2 million in CDBG funds to extend the the number of households that we can reach with this funding. So I'll walk you through really a highlight of the program proposals we are proposing to provide up to $1,000 in monthly rental assistance, up to $1,000 and up to three months. So a maximum of 3000 for any any one household. And this would be for households, low income households earning 80% or less of the area, median income. And the criteria are that they would have to have experienced homelessness I'm sorry, experienced income loss due to COVID 19 or and they also have to make sure that the payments are made directly to the landlord. And this was a part of the reason why staff thought that this was an appropriate spending mechanism, because there are currently no other programs that puts money directly into the hands of the landlord, specifically for rental payment and any of the other direct federal programs. And we thought that it would also be assisting landlords because they are in some cases small business owners at will as well. So we felt that this was hitting kind of hitting two areas of need in the community. As I mentioned, we modeled our program after the L.A. County program and adding the 2 million. In addition to the 3 million allocated by HUD, we will have a total of $5 million program. And if City Council adopts the program recommended by staff at 3000, a maximum of 3000, we could serve up to 1600 households. If Council determines that they'd like to see some other financial allocation of these dollars. There are some options available and I'll just throw out a couple. For example, if we allocated up to $800 per month, that would serve approximately 2083 households. And if you did something as as low as $500, that would allow us to serve even even more households up to just over 3300. But staff is recommending the $1,000. We do want to model it and be consistent with the county program because we are receiving an additional $300,000 in county funds from Supervisor Hahn. I would just note that I mentioned earlier that the emergency shelter grant funds are being administered by the Health Department. And I would like to just point out that all the funds have to be expended by December of 2020. I've included an income and a household size just for your reference, so you can get a sense of the eligibility for the program. And I just want to really briefly wrap it up by talking about how SAP would roll out the program. We think that it's important that we spend an adequate amount of time marketing the program in the community. Appropriate noticing. We're thinking of a program of approximately a minimum of two weeks to make sure that we get the noticing out to the community. We would work with stakeholders and others, including our economic development department, to get the word out to the communities as well as council offices. We will make sure that the application materials are available online, but we would provide direct staff assistance to mail the applications to anyone who would like to apply for the program. Lastly, we are recommending that we use a lottery system to receive the applications that we receive in the mail. We would ask for a minimum of 2000 lottery spots be given and then we would work through those to identify the qualifying households and again proceed to implement the program. We would do a very strong language access component just to make sure that the the applications as well as all of the program information are available in multiple languages in the community. We do have staffing to complete this task and we are ready and anxious to move forward with Council's recommendation of this program. And I again just highlighting that we did receive funding from Supervisor Hon and this funding of 300,000 will enable us to support an additional 100 households. So if we go with staff's recommendation, that would be approximately 1700 households. This concludes staff's presentation and I'm available to answer any questions. I will leave up on the board the next steps. And that's a rough schedule of how the program would be rolled out. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you to the team for that. That's a great, great update. I want to I do have a motion in a second already. I'll go to those in a minute. I just want to add how important it is for the city to give direct financial assistance to to renters and to tenants. Essentially, this is a program that's going to give tenants in Long Beach that are were affected by COVID 19 with direct rental assistance. And we're talking about $1,000 a month. We know that for many that is not enough. But that is going to be that is going to help a lot of working people and working families in our community that need that support. So I want to thank First Councilwoman Janice Hahn for adding to our our program. That's significant. We're still asking and seeking for more dollars so we can make this program even more robust. Also want to thank Councilman Austin, who is kind of leading this effort at the at the council here as well. And I know he's queued up to speak next. And so I want to thank him and his work. And I've heard from from from renters across the city, they need this additional support. And and I'm really proud that the city was able to put this program together. Let's get it done and let's get it and let's get folks the support that they need. So with that, I want to turn this over to Councilman Austin. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I want to thank staff for their quick response and quick work on this particular item. We brought this forward maybe three weeks ago. I'm going to I'm really amazed at how quickly our city can respond under crisis. We asked if this was feasible, if this was possible to be able to develop a rental assistance program. And you guys came through in a big way. $5.4 million is nothing to sneeze at. It will help a lot of working families. The mayor said it will also help a lot of housing providers, property owners who are behind on their mortgages as well. I believe this these funds will go directly to the landlords and I'm encouraged after our state led committee and know that our city, our lobbyists in Washington, D.C., are working very diligently to get more resources in the next round of Cares and Hero program. And so with that said, I'm thrilled to have been able to bring this forward. I'm even more elated that we are able to provide this assistance to many families in our city. Of course, not enough, but we'll work to continue to get the funding as it comes available in the next weeks and months to come. And so with that, I'd like to make the motion to support the staff recommendation. Of $1,000 a month of up to $1,000 a month. But before I do that, I do want to ask what the up to actually means because probably less. And yes, it means that because they will have to show the actual arrears of the rent as well as what their monthly rent payments are, they would get up to whatever their standard rent payment is, up to a maximum of 100. So it could actually, in theory, be less if their rent is less than 1000 per month. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. With that, I make the motion. Thank you. And ask for my colleagues to support as well. Thank you, Councilwoman Mongo. Thank you. Councilmember Austin. Excellent work. I love this program. I think that it's exactly what's needed at this time. I do appreciate the thoughtfulness that came from staff in setting this up. I would only say that if I were a tenant or a landlord and I was waiting for a lottery to determine my ability to. In my apartment or my housing. It just seems to me like a big risk. I guess my question for staff is if you were to take a guess at how many applicants we would receive, what would be your thoughts? We don't have a really good idea. I think in large part it depends upon how how exuberant we are with the advertising and we are going to try to do that is as widely as possible. I think it will be. I would just throw it a wild guess and say probably 3000. And I will tell you that the need in the community is far greater than that. I mean, if you look at the need based upon incomes in the community, the impact of COVID, if you look at overcrowding, if you look at overpayment of rent, all of those are factors that determine need. So we know that the need is great. It's it's just hard to to guesstimate. But if I had to throw out a number, I'd say upwards of 3000 applications. And then for. Your process? Will we be providing technical assistance to individuals who'd like to apply? You said they would mail in their application. What does that look like? Is it simple? We have a hotline established to provide technical assistance to applicants, and we will be providing assistance. We will mail applications out to those who don't have direct computer access to download the applications. So in short, we'll be doing everything we can to encourage a very robust outreach for this program, as well as a robust support system, as well for applicants who want to submit. So I'm not making a friendly amendment or anything. I'm just going to throw some ideas out there if the city staff think we'll be receiving up to 3000 applications. My thought would be that we would look for a way to be able to meet 100% of the need. Meaning that. Of course, we'd like to receive another $5.3 million, which would get us up to 3400 homes. That up to $1,000, but we don't have that today. And so my only thought would be that we do have today it's $5.3 million. And if we gave 50% rent to 3200 people and then a second payment came in for $5.3 million, we would already have everyone pre-qualified and ready to potentially get a second payment and then everyone theoretically who applies could get help. Now, I'm not the main guru of this idea, and I didn't write the program. I didn't do the research. I really would love to hear from my colleagues, not my motion. I appreciate the opportunity to secure it and be a part of it. And I want to make sure that the idea, though, that if I were one of the applicants, I would rather receive 50% of the money than a 5050 chance of getting zero. That would just be my initial gut reaction. Thank you. Thank you. Let me just keep going down. I have a few more speakers. Councilmember Pearce. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Austin and staff for all of your work on this. I have a couple of questions for Linda and then a couple questions for our city attorney. I really, really appreciate this. The need is great and we know that even the people that have received unemployment, it's not enough for them to pay all their bills and pay all their rent. So my first clarifying question is, is this money going to the tenants or the landlords? Because I thought last time it was directly to the landlords. The Court The criteria that are specified by HUD will require the payment be made directly to the landlord. So we work with the tenant to qualify the tenant, and once the tenant is qualified, the actual payment will go directly to the landlord. Great. That's what I thought. The second point, Stacie Councilmember Margo, I know you mentioned it's not. We don't have to get into a back and forth. But my concern with that would be that some people might get a job by, say, you know, September or October and then they wouldn't qualify for the second part of the payment . So I would just worry about people not being able to get the rent assistance that they need. You know, if it is one or two months instead of the full three months. So that is that point. And then I have questions for our city attorney. So we this council, we I'm really proud of all the work that we've done on this council around renter issues and tenant issues. And I think, you know, while some of us, more than others, would like to see programs in place around, you know, prohibiting rent increases in their fault evictions, but we're not going to do that for the entire city. We know that. And my question for the city attorney is here we are giving city funds or county funds and CDBG funds. Could we say that for those landlords that accept this funding, where their tenant qualifies for this funding, that they then would agree to a temporary prohibition on rent increases, say, until the end of when tenants are paying their rent. So like July 31st, is that something that could be done with these funds? I'm going to ask Rich Anthony to respond to that question. Thank you. Over. Okay. Hey, can people hear me? This is Rich Anthony. Yes, Rich. Thank you. Sorry about that, Billy. If what you're. I think the answer is maybe. Let me understand what you're asking a little better. I don't think. That the city can say if a tenant applies for. This assistance and qualifies that the landlord. Is. Or then to not raise rent or to not. Engage in a no fault eviction. I don't think we can do that. But I'm not sure that that's what you're saying. I think what you might be saying is. If we could give the landlord the choice, if the landlord wants to accept. These dollars on behalf of a tenant, then the landlord knows that the two strings that are attached is if if he or she is going to accept the dollars, then they are not can be able to raise rent through a certain time period. They will not be able to know. For eviction through a certain time period. Little bit. Though, that gives landlords effectively the. Right to deny a tenant or a tenant that otherwise has. Qualified. The landlord can refuse that and say, no. I'm not going to accept my rent. Okay. Then if we're giving taxpayer dollars, could we then say because we're in the middle of COVID, right. So people are going to be saving. Sorry, guys. Yes. Thank you. You mean just leave it at that. Sorry, guys. So we would be able to have tenants accept the money. I don't want to deny tenants the right to the money, but it makes sense to me that it would protect them from eviction or everything else. Thank you. This is Rich Anthony again. I don't think we can do that. I don't think we can make it so that a tenant that qualifies then cannot have. His or her rent raised or cannot be evicted for a no fault eviction, which would otherwise be legal under applicable law. I think that would probably raise some legal issues with landlords. You know, certain landlords that happen to have tenants that qualify for this COVID related relief and. Rental assistance payments would suddenly be. Operating under different rules than. Similarly situated. Landlords who didn't have tenants that qualified. And that seems. Arbitrary to me at first pass. Admittedly, I have. Not done a deep dove on. Research on this, but I think that would. Be problematic. And the way. To address that problem, like I said, would give the landlords the ability to to not. To not accept the rent. That might. Be a problem. For the very constituency of tenants that we're trying to help. Yeah. I personally don't want to give landlords the ability to say no to money and then I am not a tenant, not be able to pay their rent. So that that is my my concern. I mean, I guess if there's more funding coming in and we've all been distracted this past week, I think it would be great if more funding comes in, if you could present some more legal background on this. Just because I feel like it's the only chance that we would have to protect people that have been impacted by COVID. Unless other people on the council would want to get to that place. So I'm my other questions. I'll move on from that issue and just ask that you've been able to do a little bit of research when you come back, if there's more funding provided. Second is, I know that there were some questions that community members and other people that I've talked to around the CBD funds, those funds are able to be spent throughout the city. Correct? That is correct. The benefit is seen as being to the income qualified applicants. So yes, there is not a limitation to CDBG eligible areas as there are in other CDBG programs. Okay. And then second. With that, with that funding, it seems like that's close to 4 million. Correct out of the hole fund. The the CDBG allocation is 3.6 million six. And I guess it's the same question is even though it's allowed to be spent throughout the city, I want to make sure that undocumented immigrants do not get left out of this process. And so for each of the funds, would people that are undocumented be able to qualify? You know, there are no there are no. Just to be clear also yet and this is available for everybody, including undocumented folks, and that's really important. So, yes. Okay. Okay. I am going to take a minute. I'd like to hear from my colleagues on the questions I asked the city attorney just in regards of I guess the bottom line would be, do we want landlords? That would be good landlords to be able to qualify to get this funding if we were to add strings to it, like no rent increases during the COVID period and no eviction, no no fault eviction during this period up to July 31st. So I'd love to hear what what people think because maybe I'm off on not wanting to go that route, but like to hear my colleagues. Thank you. I think you councilman's in Sunday house. Their first love. Thank you very much to the staff for this very, very comprehensive item. Thank you, Council Member Austin, for your motion on this item. As you all know. And many. And this is not exclusive in my district, but it's overwhelmingly in my district that what my my residents are asking for is help with rent. Long Beach was very proactive in enacting the eviction moratorium when the COVID 19/1 first time. And I want to thank my colleagues for all the amazing work that you did in bringing forth the moratorium and supporting policies like this, especially during our emergency. So I'm really excited about that. I'm also very thankful to know that the payment will go directly to the landlord. I think that that's a great way to to really help honor our tenants that are struggling with rent, to be able to to be able to help them in that way, especially for those that may be undocumented and prefer something going directly to their landlord. And not only that, but it also kind of helps out our property owners, which, you know, have been very, very much affected by this. And that's something we don't talk about much. But, you know, our property owners are landlords, you know, have been. They're suffering a lot through this as well. So this is going to be really good to be able to give them a little bit of of money that they've been owed and so on, and also bring some kind of relief to them going back to council . Council. Woman Pearce's questions in regards to the landlords, I think, and please correct me if I'm wrong. Council Member But I do think that what you might be trying to do is kind of like. Bring some. Use this as an incentive for those good landlords that are out there that are willing to come forward and accept funding like this. But like, I'm not sure what the legalities are as well. So I look forward to hearing the report from the city attorney's office. If we do get additional funding that maybe we can take a look at it then. Also wanted to see how the the city needs. Funds would be distributed, how much it would be. And I know that's part of this. So I'm looking forward to this program very much because I know that, especially in my district, this is going to help so many, so many families. And as Councilmember Mungo said, it kind of makes me nervous the lottery way that we're doing it. But it also seems like the most fair way I would like to see all of the families that apply, know, get, get help. And hopefully, you know, we don't know how it's going to work. We don't know if there's going to be a whole abundance of families that are going to want to apply right away or we don't know if we'll be able there won't be that many applications and maybe we can help everyone. So I can't wait to see this program move forward. And you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Andrews. Yes. Thank you very much, Mayor. You know, I don't doubt that we need this. I think, you know, let's get the website. You know, as we speak. Let's get all the website, you know, with this system that is, you know, equitable and provided, you know, payment on behalf of those working families that have been laid off, I has reduced hours. I think that to me, it makes a lot a lot of sense. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilmember Turanga. Thank you, Mayor. When it comes right down to it. We don't normally we legislation like this because we want to make sure that we do it right and get it right. And when it comes down to it is that there's a lot of good players out there and there's a lot of bad players. So sometimes we would come up with these types of options. It's to make sure that the good players get rewarded and the bad players get to go somewhere else. So, I mean, I support Janine's idea because I think it's a good one and we need to keep landlords honest that they're going to take the money and that they're going to do right by their tenants. And hopefully that when we come to the end of it, to the end of the day, is that everybody gets everybody's happy. Landlords get their money. Tenants get to stay where they're at and and be able to survive this public crisis until it's over and until they get back on their feet. So that's all my comments for now. Thank you. I think I'm got some more super out. Thank you. I just wanted to thank Austin for. I think that's the best thing. And I. Thank you, Councilmember Pearce. Catherine Pierce second time. I did queue up a second time. I was really looking forward to hearing if Councilmember Austin had any thoughts on. On the mainly the two items, the prohibition on rent increases and the prohibition on no fault evictions. Since the city attorney did say that they were they were legal, it would just it would just mean that landlords would have a choice in the matter. Councilor Pearce. Anything else? I would like to know nothing else. I. It counts. I think that's the customers queue up again. She asked me to talk. About some present day has. I do. Oh. I was just. Yes, I'm good. Okay. I have no one else cued up to talk, so we'll go ahead and call a vote on the motion. No one else has a comment. I understand. I don't have any other cues. I'm just making sure I'm following the colors. You're so. Madam Clerk, please go ahead and call the roll. District one. I. District two. I. District three. I. District four. I. District five. I. District six. District seven. By District eight. Or. District nine. I know. She Kerry's. Okay. Let's do item 19, 20 and 21, which are just as I think, I think additional readings of items we've already passed. Item 19, please.