Recommendation to request City Council to support SB679 (Kamlager), which would create a new independent countywide agency to raise public and private funds for renter protections and support programs, affordable housing preservation, and affordable housing production-with a guaranteed seat for the City of Long Beach on the governing board and guaranteed annual funding for the City of Long Beach; and request City Manager to communicate the City’s support to the bill’s author and our state legislative delegation.
Motion carries. Thank you. Next up is item 21. Communication from Vice Mayor Richardson, Councilwoman Allen, Councilmember Your Honor. Councilman Austin recommendation to support SB 679, which would create a new independent countywide agency to raise public and private funds for renter protections and support programs, and request the city manager to communicate the city's support to the bill's author and our state legislative delegation. There's a motion on a second baseman, Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, it's not it's not often that the state legislature gives us legislation around housing that we actually get excited about. There's, you know, since the last redevelopment, there's been very few opportunities to actually put some points on the board. And I personally believe SB six, seven nine is one of those bills that will create some opportunities for here in Long Beach. Here's the context. We all know that we have to do more. We have to continue to do more around affordable housing here in Long Beach and across L.A. County, as our housing element makes it clear . Now is the time for action. We have 17,000 people who are precariously housed in our city living in overcrowded or unsafe housing conditions. 43% of all Long Beach households are housed, housing cost burdened. And within that, 80% of very low income renters, the house burden, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs. Eight out of ten low income people are getting crushed by housing costs. And across L.A. County as a whole, we know that we need at least 500,000 units that are affordable for working families and low income families. We've done our work here in Long Beach. We've done the research, we've done our planning. And we know that we need resources. We know that we don't have the funding locally to do what we need to do. And we've debated this quite a bit over the last few years. We've never returned to the level of funding for affordable housing that we had pre redevelopment era. And so we also know there are strict smart strategies out there deploying a number of them to bring together public private funding to reduce cost and increase speeds with which we support low income renters and create new housing. And we've been we haven't. And these are things that we we've we've supported. The New York Housing Development Corporation was created in the early 1970s and lasted 20 years. It's financed 186,000 affordable units across New York City and public and private sources. Now, we we we've come nowhere close to that here. The Bay Area created the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority, which is similar to the New York model, and also seeks to balance both regional and local approach. SB 679 The bill that we are we are considering support today would create the L.A. County Affordable Housing Solutions Authority. So it's a regional approach to help support and support our efforts here in the city. It's our opportunity to reject the status quo, the status quo and chart a new course on affordable housing, housing affordability here in Long Beach, across L.A. County. Now, here's what's good about this. I pay attention to the regional table. You know, at the SCAD, we don't have a dedicated, dedicated seat on AQAP or a metro. And I wanted my colleagues to know that that lobbies has been at the table helping to craft as be six, seven, nine. We made sure Long Beach has a dedicated seat on the governing board, which we do not have on Metro, which we do not have on AQAP. We made sure that Long Beach has a guaranteed baseline of funding. The bill sponsor estimates that Long Beach will be entitled to nearly $15 million annually from this agency without having to apply for it every year. That's what's possible with this agency in the context of a moderate, moderate revenue proposal. This is nearly five times what we're receiving from Measure H. This is this certainly deserves consideration. Represents a good balance of a regional and local approach. We don't infringe on our local land use powers. We still have the ability to have local control. And the last point is SB 679 creates a regional agency for L.A. County. It doesn't guarantee funding for the agency that that would be a future step. This helps establish the agency to be able to be able to do this work and think regionally. So let's not miss our chance to push this right. There's a lot of things in Sacramento that we we've either opposed or we've been silent on. This is something that is an opportunity to get to put something out that we can support and so we can make sure Long Beach gets its fair share. We can partner with the community. We can make sure our communities have a chance to ratify this ambitious solution and chart a new path forward for Long Beach and beyond . So I want to make sure we make this motion to support this important bill. Thank you. Thank you. There's three public comments. It's good to hear the public comment. The first speakers. Andy Kerr and then. Nadia Tushnet and then Tommy Newman. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, and honorable members of the Council. My name is Andy Kerr. It's good to be in your physical presence this evening for the first time in a long time. In addition to being a resident of District eight, I also serve on the L.A. County Measure H Citizen Advisory Oversight Board and have worked on issues of homelessness and affordable housing for going on 20 plus years. In addition to that, I was proud to serve on the everyone at home Long Beach Task Force. And I think it's really great timing to be here talking about this item today after last week's great report from the Health Department and from city staff on the update to what's been done the last couple of years on the Everyone Home Long Beach efforts and our efforts to fight homelessness and restore housing security. When I was first asked to serve on the Homeless Services Advisory Commission by Councilman Austin several years ago, our budget for the city's Health Department Homeless Services Bureau was under $10 million. And then to see it grow to over $90 million here in recent years is was is really incredible that we is I think it's a testament to our city's commitment to this issue and growing those resources. But it's also a little disheartening to see how the challenges are even more acute than they were all those years ago today. And. I'm really convinced the data and the reports that I read on a daily basis, it's really clear that this affordable housing crisis is the driver of the homelessness crisis. And that's why I am here before you today to talk about SB 679. I think Vice Mayor Richardson did a did a great job laying out all the the positives to this solution. SB 6679 would advance the critical work that we identified on the everyone at home task that everyone at home Long Beach Task Force. We lost the critical dollars in redevelopment that. Vice Mayor Richardson spoke about in 2012. And Lacasse would help restore that work to our community. Since 2012, housing cost burdens have only gone up. Overcrowding has increased, and we've dealt with that in this pandemic. That was the worst situation we could go into. Going into a global health crisis that we've been going through the last couple of years is to have the overcrowding this that we have in L.A. County. And housing affordability is driving that. Problem. Just as critical as the direct support to Long Beach that Vice Mayor Richardson spoke about. La Castle would be a regional solution. And I think that's really important because this really is a regional crisis. Every city, all 88 cities in the county need to do more on this issue. And we have very limited resources. We don't have anybody to turn to like La Crosse are right now. So that's why I support SB 679 and hope you will, too. Thank you very much. Hi. It is good to be here again in person. I'm a Long Beach resident and I support SB 679. For a whole lot of. Reasons. We need much needed resources to build housing for people who. Are low income and very low income. I think it's also important to note that SB. 679 preserves existing. Affordable housing, and it builds housing that working families and individuals can actually afford. And it protects hundreds and thousands of renters from unjust evictions, rent increases and landlord harassment. I agree with Council member Richardson that the crisis is a regional crisis. It's actually a national crisis, but we can only deal with our region. And so I urge you to vote yes to support. SB. 679. Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council members. My name is Tommy Newman and I work at the United Way. We're proud to be the bill's sponsor on this bill, but I'm really proud to stand with one heck of a coalition helping to drive this bill forward across L.A. County, labor, community based organizations, business organizations, philanthropic organizations, 60 plus organizations supporting this bill. Only one city in Los Angeles County is opposing this bill would be Santa Clarita. I can draw your own conclusions there. And so we hope that Long Beach is able to take this big step forward tonight, help us drive this bill forward. It's absolutely still alive in the legislature. It's caught up in some conversations between some of our labor partners around exactly what the right balance is on labor requirements. We're confident. Had a good meeting with the speaker two weeks ago. We're confident that they can find a solution. And we think that Long Beach coming in support this evening will help us find that solution. As Councilmember Vice Mayor Richardson said, this is a good deal. We think this strikes the right balance for Long Beach and other cities across this county. That's why United Way is working so hard with so many. And deeply appreciate your support this evening. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Thank you. I'm happy to sign on. And second, this motion for many of the reasons already stated, and I think the vice mayor made a great points as well as public comment, I think we do have a responsibility as the second largest city in L.A. County, to be a leader in this regional approach. And I think this bill actually accomplishes that. I do have a couple of questions for staff, or at least a question. I'd like to get a staff report on this bill. I think we've heard a lot about it, but I'd like to know where the bill is currently. And you know what what what are the dynamics in Sacramento related to this bill? Absolutely. So as Mr. Newman from United Way mentioned, the bill did pass the Senate 29 to 7, but it is has been held up in the Assembly. It hasn't been referred to a policy committee at this point, given some broader negotiations around labor and other housing and other legislation as well. So not necessarily directly tied to this bill. It does require at this point a rule waiver in order to move forward. However, the legislature is still in session until September ten, so they still have about 3 to 4 weeks in order for this bill to move forward in the assembly. And in terms of just an overview of the bill, of course, the vice mayor and the public comment mentioned some of the high level points. But I would just emphasize, you know, the the bill is really about creating a new countywide agency separate from L.A. County and other city related agencies. So this really is a region wide approach. And part of the approach is really to make sure that there is buy in from cities and communities across the county, including having a seat for Long Beach on the governing board. And then there is in the legislation an overview of what the funding priorities would be depending on the revenue sources. So there would be investments in affordable housing creation and development, as well as renter support and assistance, very similar to what we've seen with our rental assistance program during the pandemic. And then there are also just outlines of what the priorities are for funding jurisdictions, including the city of Long Beach, being a direct funding jurisdiction within the bill. Great. And, you know, every year we go through a process to create a state ledger, gender, state legislative agenda through the state levels committee as well as the city council. Where does this this bill fall within our state lands agenda, or have we already kind of taken a position in terms of the. In a broader scope. Well, we have not taken a position on this bill specifically. We had assumed that at some point we would have a council conversation on the bill specifically, especially, you know, there has been some negotiations over the past several months with a working group to fine tune some of the details about how the agency would be structured. And there was negotiations with some of the smaller cities, as well as City of L.A. and County of L.A. just different dynamics and negotiations about how the agency should be structured. And for us, I do think at this point, the bill has been fine tuned in a way that is beneficial, of course, to Long Beach in terms of having a seat on the board as well as having direct funding opportunities. However, there is a question at this point from my perspective around it's a policy question really, which is, you know, around the funding revenue source for affordable housing across our state, LEGENDA supports additional resources for affordable housing. It would be beneficial. As I mentioned in the Council item, to have an additional local stream funding stream for affordable housing to leverage additional grant opportunities. But this would be created potentially through a ballot measure next year from this agency having the authority to put a measure on the ballot. Well, I'm certainly encouraged to know that the Long Beach has been involved in discussions from the beginning and that should a ballot initiative pass and the agency is created, that we will have a solid seat at the table because that is not the case, as I mentioned, in many other regional boards. Those are my comments. Thank you. I look forward to supporting this item. Thank you, Councilwoman Longo. Thank you. I want to talk a little bit about the feedback I've received from the community. I appreciate some of the speakers today have already had one on ones with and I appreciate your input and the great dialogs that we've had and the negotiation around the structure isn't the only thing. I think the negotiation around the revenue is a big part of that and I'm very supportive of a ballot measure because people should have the right to determine their own taxation. I think the other part of this that's pretty supportive of what I hear from residents of the fifth District is that there are always cities across the region doing their part to support the production of housing. And while this bill does not build any housing, it definitely provides the incentive option and not just the stick. The stick is currently what we hear all the time that we need to increase our arena numbers. We need to do this and we need to do that. But there are lots of cities who are choosing not to participate and that the penalties that they face aren't aren't dramatic enough for them to want to transition their plan and put in the effort. There are also a lot of cities who don't have the resources or expertize that a city the size of Long Beach has, and this agency could provide those templates for cities of those size. So I really like the buy in and regional approach and the incentives. And I think that this would release a lot of the pressure on the cities like ourselves who are doing our part in the whole system. So that is the reason I'm supporting tonight. Thank you. Councilman Allen. Thank you. I'm proud to sign on to this item. Thank you. Vice Mayor Richardson are leading on this. And also I want to say thank you to Nadia and Tommy Newman and all your coalition for your comments. And I also have to give a special thank you to Andy Kur for your comments and your service on this county commission. I know how dedicated you are to these issues. You are one of my go to people when I was running for office to get up to speed and I know how dedicated you are, so thank you for being here tonight to speak on this. We need more housing production and we need more streamlined funding to get it done. And this bill will provide representation on the new agency board for Long Beach, and it would also provide direct funding for the housing in Long Beach. And this is important because we need more renter protections and support. It makes Long Beach a more affordable place to live for our long time residents and provides homes for our children. And hopefully one day it gives them an opportunity to own a home of their own. So thank you very much and I'll be supporting this. Thank you. Conference in the house. I want to echo my colleagues and Councilmember Allen's comments and thank Vice Mayor Richardson for bringing this item forward and also city staff for elaborating more where this bill is right now. I think that this is really, really, really an exciting plan to bring to our city, because it is so, so very true that when everyone is in, everyone wins. And I think that this is ideal timing. Our city is in dire need of multilingual and workforce development programs that can support and empower our most in need communities to help ensure that every person has the tools available to thrive. And that is exactly what this bill is going to provide. So I'm very, very happy to support this. Thank you all for all the wonderful work that you've done on this. Thank you. Councilman Sarno. Thanks, Mayor. I want to add to the thanking my colleagues, vice mayor of Richardson leading as well as Councilman Urunga, Austin and Allen for bringing this forward. You know, I know that we have been spending we've been spending a lot of money to address our homelessness issue. And I think that it's time that we do have a dedicated funding source to be able to address really what people need in the end of the days to be housed. And obviously, we cannot build housing if we don't have the funds. So I want to also thank all the advocates and organizer who have worked hard in ensuring that this bill moves forward and I wholly support this item. Thank you so much. Thank you. There's a motion on the second, I believe there is public comment on this. We did have a comment on this item. So, members, please cast your vote.