Recommendation to receive and file a report by City staff on a strategy to create additional affordable housing and improve prevention and response to homelessness in Long Beach, including current efforts, potential new funding sources, and enhanced approaches to reduce homelessness and improve housing opportunities.  (Citywide)
Thank you. Then last. Thank you. The last. The last item that was asked to be moved up is 1121. And then after 21, we'll go to the regular agenda from starting with public comment down to all the regular items. 21 item 21 is a report from City Manager Recommendation to receive and file report on a strategic strategy to critically to create additional affordable housing and improve prevention and response to homelessness in Long Beach citywide. Thank you. Councilmember Richardson, did you have staff first? Yes. Yeah, I know this is a report the council asked for as well. And I know that I know you guys were hard of this report as well, so. Mr.. MODICA Thank you, Mayor, and members of the Council. We have a presentation to give mindful of the hour. We'll try to cover this topic in some detail, but also be mindful of the time and move through it. So what we were asked to do is really talk a little bit about affordable housing and homeless prevention and come back with a strategy. And on the 24th, you were asked to come back specifically on five different areas. So before I jump into those, I do want to just mention that this is a conversation we've had before many times. We've talked a lot about homelessness at the council. We've talked a lot about revenue tools and incentives. So you'll see we had several presentations and staff have been following up with you with memos and at your request about this issue. So while we will be talking about, you know, some funding and strategy, this is an ongoing discussion that started for a long time and builds on the great work of the Health Department and Development Services. At the same time, we also have our Everyone Home Language Task Force that's going on right now engaging the community and about 30 real experts in this area who all bring varied backgrounds and expertize to the issue. They've met three or four times and they'll be coming back with some recommendations in a report in fall of 2018. So the reason we're here tonight is there was the agenda item on the 24th that was sponsored by councilmembers Richardson, Gonzalez, Andrews and Austin to come back. And specifically, we were asked about these areas. Talk a little bit about gaps in prevention, in services, costs and opportunities to address those needs and potential funding strategies and implementation. And also specifically to talk about an effort for a permanent shelter motel conversion source of income discrimination policy, which is Section eight. So talk a little bit about gaps in prevention and strategies. We could talk about this for a long time. We have talked about this at the council. So I'm really just going to use this opportunity to sum up a little bit. We see three major areas for really addressing homelessness in affordable housing, really in the area of affordable housing availability, prevention services and homeless services, kind of those three main, main buckets. We've done a lot of work in this area. This council has been very proactive and in pursuing funding for affordable housing and pursuing funding for homelessness. Just over the past decade, we've created 1694 new affordable units. We preserved 1957 existing units, and we've rehabilitated 367 units, and we have another 799 in the pipeline. But so where we see some of our need is obviously the construction of more affordable housing, the preservation of existing affordable housing, and continuing to do more work there. The concept of tenant protections, which we'll cover a little bit later in the presentation prevention services to increase and continue our workforce development and give people jobs and training to work on housing services, to get people who are homeless and others in their houses to retain their houses, to find situations that that work for them in a living environment. Obviously, family support and domestic violence prevention is is a big key that leads times to homelessness and of course, physical and mental health and substance use care . When people are addicted to substance or have mental health issues or sometimes have both, that obviously can lead to two other issues in their life. Homelessness, continuing our continuum of care. We do a great job in getting over $14 million through our Continuum of Care Network over continuing to grow that and our outreach services. We've been implementing rapid response teams and obviously we have a need to do more. They're our team in our fire department has been a new innovation and we can continue to do more there. And we are in this for 19 budget as well as quality of life teams in the police. That's in our needs and our strategies. So we want to talk a little bit about the opportunities to address those needs. So a great piece of news. I really want to thank Mary Garcia and the 11 big mayors that they came together and really pursued at the state level, saying of the surplus the state was seeing put some of that money back into homelessness. And so $500 million brand new money has been allocated in the 1419 state budget. The eligible activities for that are things like emergency housing vouchers, rapid rehousing, emergency shelter construction, temporary shelters. They prohibit things like planning and administration. So it's really supposed to be go into direct kind of outreach. And so Long Beach has been very lucky. And we actually hit three different buckets of that funding for a total of 12.3 million. We've got a direct allocation to Long Beach of 2.9 million. We have continuum of care funding to Long Beach because we're our own continuum of care for 8 million. And there was additional legislative funding to continuum of care of 1.1. 4 million. So that's the 12.3 million. We've outlined some strategies for how to spend those funds. We haven't gotten to a detailed budget yet. We're still really working through the state ideas. But these are things like purchasing the winter shelter, a emergency shelter location, a permanent shelter, a storage facility for belongings, looking at additional bands for transportation, a labor pilot program, a day labor pilot program. Enhancing our homeless rapid response looking at Innovation Fund or another one home fund for a new approaches for Youth and for prevention. And Parking Meter Donation Program are some of our concepts at this time. So there's a couple of ways to fund additional revenues. If we're really interested in moving this conversation forward and creating a dedicated funding source, that it was one of the things we were asked to look at. And so we had provided previously some information on a general obligation bond. I want to go through two different big options just for you and explain the difference. One is a bond and one would be a parcel tax. A bond would be really a funding for affordable housing or for purchase of capital facilities to deal with homelessness. It would basically be an increase in property taxes or other local special taxes requires a two thirds majority of the electorate any time you're dealing with property tax increase. And one thing that's notable is that cannot be spent on operations. So if the goal is to spend money and increase our operations, this would not be really your primary funding source. You've got on the slide kind of three different options. If it were about $100 per $500,000 home. This would be an ad valorem tax. And it it varies with the amount of the of the property. So $100 gets you about 300, 100, $500,000 home gets you. I'm sorry, $100 on a $500,000 home gets about $313 million and goes all the way up to 250 per $500,000 home. About $783 million. Another concept is a parcel tax. So this would be a fee per parcel. It's not based on the value of the property, but rather each parcel would pay the same amount. You may vary that fee depending on the type of parcel. So that is an option. Another option would be to exempt certain classes or types of property. There can be sunset provisions or an annual CPI adjustment. Those are also options. It still requires a two thirds majority vote. So it would be dedicated and because it's property, it's two thirds majority. And one difference here is it can be pay as you go. So you can spend it on capital, but you can also spend it on operations. So that is a different option. For example, if we did $50 per parcel, it could generate about $13.8 million and up to $150 per parcel could generate up to 41.4 million. So obviously those are two very large options that would generate significant dollars. There are some other options. We wanted to list them for you on this slide. They are lower in the dollar amount. And the reason that we picked the other two is really if you're looking at creating affordable housing and really investing in homelessness, those are expensive and it requires a lot in order to get affordable housing in this day and age in our market. So that's why those two property taxes are on there. But other options include the utility users tax. We're currently at 5% and a 1% increase would be 7.7 million transit occupancy tax, a 1% increase. It'd be 1.4 million. Some cities, not very many, but some charging admissions tax where it could be on anything from an admission to a sports event or to a movie or to an arts event. And so a couple of cities have done that. We don't really have an estimate at this time, but you can see Avalon has one for $350,000 and Santa Cruz has one for $2 million parking tax. We don't have that in Long Beach. L.A. has it, for example. But a 10% parking tax could potentially bring in 1.7 million. And real estate property transfer tax are if we were to double our amount and go up to one by 110, that would be about a dollar ten per transaction. That would be about $1.7 million. So we're asked to talk a little bit about if we were to talk about a revenue measure, what would that be and what would the timeline be? The next available election would be in 2020. So there are two options. In 2021 would be March 3rd. And then we would need that language finalized before September 18th of 2019. And the other option would be in November during that through the general 2020. And the language would need to be finalized by May 20th. And our city clerk always recommends that we not wait till the very end, that we try to do things at least 1 to 2 months prior to the deadline to make sure we're successful and we would be on a ballot. So talk a little bit about other efforts. These are some of the things that council asked us to come back to in this report on. One was a housing choice voucher anti-discrimination ordinance. We know that about 700 people in Long Beach have a Section eight vouchers but cannot access their housing. They exceed the 180 day limit to find the housing, and often they're in danger of losing their voucher. If you can see on the slide, oops, excuse me that we have these are three examples we found just from Zillow. Renter posts that say no evictions, no pets, no proof of income. And it also says no section eight. So we know that's happening today where people are saying if you have Section eight, you need not apply. So we've been asked to look and research whether we need a local ordinance to address this or whether we're also looking at the current federal restrictions. So we'll be doing that research and coming back to you. We've also wanted to talk a little bit about permanent housing or homeless shelter we have. We are lucky in that as a city, we do a winter shelter every year. Most cities do not. They don't have that in their in their city. And we have done a winter shelter. We really are looking at doing a permanent shelter so that we can have that availability throughout the year for 100, 125 beds. We believe the state funding can help with the purchase. And so I really want to give credit to the entire council for wanting to go in this direction, to have that resource in our city. And I also really want to recognize the council members who have accepted the winter housing shelter in their district in the past and have also kind of stepped forward and said, hey, let's look at those locations as possibility for a permanent shelter. So that that takes a lot to step forward and say we want to do that. And we've had a number of council members accept all kinds of different services that are really helping with this problem, everything from mental health services through to in District seven, the new social services there. So it really requires everyone to help out. So in L.A. County, we believe will fund a rent, a homeless shelter, a permanent homeless shelter through Measure H funding. And we get tenant improvements from L.A. County through a $3.4 million grant. So we're in the process right now of looking and identifying locations, and we'll bring that back to you. We were also asked to look at nuisance motel conversion. This we've done a pilot program already to reduce nuisance criminal activity through compliance plans developed by interdepartmental teams. We identified six high activity motels that when you see here is the luxury inn up in Cedar nine. And those are based on calls for service and crime incidences. We're looking at the cost and the feasibility of amortizing that land use out and what that looks like. That's a complex process. So we're doing some research there, but we also got some great partnerships with L.A. County, has stepped forward and said they may be interested in funding some of these properties and converting them into permanent supportive housing. And some housing developers might be interested in jumping in and taking over those sites if they can convert them through through state funding or grants into affordable housing. The last thing we were asked to look at was the Safe Parking Program. We did a memo on probably about five, six months ago where we came back with the research on this. This is the idea of using or removing individuals who are using their cars for, you know, to sleep in and to move those off the street and connect them to services and transition them into permanent housing. We really would recommend that this would be a nonprofit partner to operate and identify a suitable location and work with that property owner and work with the surrounding neighborhood. If you wanted to do a program, it would be recommended to do a 12 month pilot program for about 20 parking spaces. That would include things like porta potties and enhanced refuge collection services, case management, so we can connect people to services and have a housing plan. And the estimated cost for that was 230, $221,000. I did want to remind the council we have a lot of other great efforts underway to address homelessness and affordable housing. Our tenant protections policy that is actively being worked on right now and will be reporting back to the Council on on an update in October 2018. Our short term rentals policy will be coming back to the Council as a report in November of 2018. Our inclusionary housing policy. That's also a big effort coming back as an update in December 2018. And of course, we have our 29 Housing Affordable Housing Strategy recommendations. The short term ones are already done, and we're working now on the medium and the long term. And so that's my last slide just for next steps. We're really here to to start a conversation and to hear from the council tonight about what you know, what thoughts you have. But if we were to take next steps, what we would recommend is if you want to look at a dedicated measure that you have a review and other measures that have been passed or proposed in other cities. We're not the first one to really look at investing in homelessness, in affordable housing on a local level, that we would review structures for broad based outreach to partners. And to really begin that discussion with the community, we would recommend tying in strategies with the Everyone Home Task Force recommendations and all the great work the continuum of care is doing. Develop a list of potential funding categories in the highest need based on that outreach. Education of the community on the need and what can be accomplished is key. And of course, having some resources set aside for this, you know, would would be required. And we don't have a firm estimate on what a four year program would be, but at about a $50,000 initial funding to get us some consultant support and be able to have someone that that focuses on, this is what we would recommend. So again, this is really for the council to kind of discuss these concepts and we stand available to answer questions. And Linda and Kelly all appear here to answer questions as well. Thank you. Thank you. Great presentation. And I especially Mr. Murdoch, I want to thank you at the slide that showed the was coming back October, November, December. I think a lot of us have been waiting for for those policies to come back. And so I'm really hard to see. Those are all will be in front of us for the end of the year. So good work from the the housing team. Councilman Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And Tom, I have to tell you, this is this is a fantastic presentation. I know it's difficult to try to take an issue so large in and narrow down the conversation to really the topic of revenue. But I think you've done a good job at framing everything that we've done together the council, the city staff, everything we've done together, and then really talk about what it's going to take in order to fully fund and have a local dedicated revenue source. And when I remind people this conversation started around a dedicated local revenue source, I know that we've done a lot of other work, and I want to exercise a little discipline and kind of focus a little bit on the report that came back. So number one, the implementation timeline that you presented is fantastic. So it says the next available elections are March of 2020 and that the language would need to be presented September 18th, 2019. So that will be the first available opportunity. Now it's August of 2018, by September of 2018, that allows a full year of engagement and outreach before language would need to be approved by the City Council and forwarded or noticed that language needs to be noticed for the first public hearing. I think that gives us a full year. So. Question If you look at our processes, measure HHS and others about how long did those agencies take to sort of go through this process? So I'll use the county kind of store measure one because that's the one that's the most recent. That tends to be about the timeline. So about a year, depending on how sticky the issue can be, it can be a little bit longer, it can be a little bit shorter. So we've seen anywhere from six months to a year and a half to two years. So it can it really there's no set timeline, but a year would be in the ballpark. Absolutely. And I wouldn't want to lock ourselves into March or November, but we want to be ready for either one. So if we start now, I think the conversely, the timing is right to start to do something sincere, something that we can take to the community, engage the continuum of care, engage community partners, advocates, and, you know, the industry, the building trades sort of engage all of these stakeholders is going to take a full year. And by starting this conversation now, I think we can give that time to really put something together and test that among our very diverse community. So number one, I would say great timeline. Thank you for presenting that. Next on some of these some of the other things that you have here, I think on the housing vote, housing choice, voucher, anti-discrimination ordinance, number one. So I've chaired housing authority the last two years. We've done two different efforts around sort of landlord incentives to try to use incentives to improve the lease up rate. But we, you know, we've been full on engaging with the apartment association and partners that, hey, if we don't really see any movement here, we're going to move to the policy round route. And I think that's the next natural step for where we are. So the question for you is, so after tonight, what does that timeline look to actually develop research and develop this ordinance? So we think in six months or something like that. So we'll come back with a timeline, I estimate a couple of months. We've got a number of ordinances that the city attorney is already working on. We added another one tonight, but we've done some initial research through Allison King on kind of what other cities were done. So I'd say probably in the 3 to 6 months time frame. Is the estimate right now. Sure. That's good. Just to remind folks, every year that we have that gap in our lease up, we're susceptible to taking that money away. And the last thing we want in a circumstance in this situation is to open ourselves up to HUD, taking funding away for housing. So she do everything we can to deploy that funding. Thank you. Next on the permanent how permanent homeless shelter. I know it's been an ongoing conversation. I think what's different is that the council members who hosted the winter shelter stepped up and say, look at these facilities in our district, we want to start that conversation. But a part of that is getting rid of the stigmas around having a shelter in our communities. And so I think, you know, the fact that we're in a position with the state funding and the county tenant improvement funding and the ongoing operations funding, I think what we should be presenting when we get to that point, we've identified a site, we should be presenting a really comprehensive plan for how how this sort of is introduced to the community, how the services around it, even down to the you know, there were there were a number of articles in me and Councilman Price. I exchanged about some articles. You know, the reality is folks are looking at really nice architectural styles for these shelters. So they shouldn't look or feel the way shelters have felt in the place in the past. But rather, they should really be aspirational in something that people say, look, look at that. Cool. I'm really proud of this shelter, this in our community. It looks good. It feels good. And it and and frankly, it doesn't seem like a blight in our community. And we absolutely agree with that. And with really good management, which is what we have here. We have had winter shelters where people haven't even known that it's there. So the North Library, the Old North Library turned into a winter shelter. And we didn't get, I don't believe, one complaint from the neighborhood. KELLY So that was really a success. So I wanted to point that out. Mr. Austin's not here today, but his support of that was great, sir. And I'll just say I think it's that we should not think about we have to hide it and that people don't see us there. I think it's a matter of we should we should embrace it. And from the way it's designed, the way we engage it, and we should lead with it. So I think it's okay. On Nuisance Motel Conversion I'm really happy with the direction this is going. I'm glad the county valet has stepped up to to help us look at some of these sites, acquiring them for nuisance motel conversion. That's great progress. I want to continue the track that I think it's a great example of smart planning or smart land use. We're able to take something that's outdated, that really doesn't have much of a use and use it to address something that's current, which is, you know, permanent supportive housing, transitional housing and things that we actually need in the community. So I think that's great. I echo what the mayor said about the continued effort. So it's going to be a busy fall. So tenant protections in October, short term rentals in November, inclusionary housing policy in December. And so Merry Christmas. And then and then in terms of next steps, I think this is a good strategy for next steps. I would say. I think if we were to set aside this additional this initial funding, when was the everyone home wrapping up this fall? Right to the last meeting, the last scheduled meetings in September. We'll be taking the policy recommendations from there and then putting together a report. Bring them for. Sure. I think it would be great if we have a full year. We said September to September was a full year. I think if at the conclusion of everyone home, we begin this broader this broader engagement policy process around revenue options. If that I would love to see it as seamless as we can this next fiscal year that possible that would actually be very helpful because the same team that would be doing this is the team that's really busy right now and everyone home. So in order to keep that moving forward that, you know, have them complete that work and then be able to help support this next effort, great. And I think everyone at home is really quality good, a good team. But I think there's interest in really going out beyond the everyone on task force to sort of broader group and really understanding the perspectives of all the different interest groups on this issue. So that's what I would like to see. And so I support this timeline, I support these next steps. And so so I'm going to make a motion that we forward this $50,000 initial funding recommendation to the BRC and to the city manager for figure to figure out how to include this $50,000 initial funding recommendation into this current FY19 budget. Thanks. And if I may, we had a question earlier in the day about whether or not the $12.3 million can be can fund that. We'll definitely review that to see if the 12.3 million is an eligible funding source. Great. That'll be a good source of possible. There's a motion and a second counselor appears. Be? Yes, thank you. I know it's late. I want to think. Council Member I still have to get used to calling you council member Rex Richardson and I want to thank the staff and also other community members. I know that some of you guys are here and some of you guys will watch it later. But I know that all the efforts have really been several years of everybody trying to tackle housing, and it's feels like we're due for some good wins. Right. And everybody's rolled up their sleeves. The staffs were working hard. So I really appreciate this. I fully support moving forward with the bond measure, as Councilmember Richardson mentioned. I think having a year to do that, making sure that we are including not only the community groups that have historically been involved, but building trades as well as neighborhood groups and making sure that we're doing this process are great on the front end so that on the back end, we're not dealing with how in the world did we get here with some of our neighborhoods. So on the Darby Echo, everything on the ordinance for the Section eight piece on the motel item, I know that we've I've talked to people at villages and some other developers that are they're ready today to buy one of those motels and make it affordable housing due to transitional housing. How long is a process right now, do you think, to get to that place? Well, I think the purchase really depends upon who the developer is and what kind of resources they would have to bring along with whatever public resources. The villages of Cabrillo as the main one that I've had about four conversations with and we haven't had conversations with them yet, but we'll certainly be following up. But the entitlement process is probably, I would say, roughly about six months to get through the entitlement process once the purchase is complete. Well, but right now there's still existing motels, right? So what is that process in between in between everything that we're proposing to get to that point where they can purchase it? I would say the city would have to take a really hard look at what that program looks like, because right now it really depends upon how we structure the program. We don't have that program. We haven't put our arms around it. I don't know if that'll be an ordinance. I suspect we may have some type of ordinance that would allow the conversion of a hotel to a residential use. So there are some some some legal hurdles that we would have to go through to put the program together. But the biggest hurdle would be funding. So if they're fully funded and ready, they there is nothing to stop them from purchasing that property and then coming to the city and going through the entitlement process. So if they're funded and the bigger challenge will be to get through the state funding process. Okay, appreciate that. Then on 1/2, the timeline also has been very helpful. I know that we've gone it's taken us a long time, both with the short term rental and the inclusionary housing. I know that we tend to hire on these consultants to come on and help us and support having experts do that work. I know that's the short term rental process is going to come back in November. Do we feel like we're going to be ready with an actual ordinance? You know, our actual policy direction at that time because it seems like a long time to come back with one. Yes. So we're planning on coming back with having completed a pretty extensive community outreach. And we've gotten a lot a lot of feedback. I've been on programs into this area. So there's been hundreds and hundreds of people showing up. So we'll have one last of those meetings will be ready to come back. Kind of summing up what that process was, what our staff recommendation is, and then we'll be for the council to discuss and then we'll turn that into an ordinance. So we believe by November you'll have a lot in front of you to consider. Okay. And then for the inclusionary housing policy, I know that we've had lots of conversations on this as well. And my understanding there's an update in December, but we will still be far away from being able to have a policy presented to us. So we'll definitely have the update and kind of where we're going. It does take a lot of time to do the Nexus studies to make sure that legally that we're not going to get challenged on this and that we put together the ordinances after that. But we expect the council to give us kind of they are are we ready to go move forward in December. Here's the update. Here's where we are, here's what we're thinking, and then we'll give you a timeline for the rest of it. But these these policies do take some time from the from the legal standpoint and make sure that we're not challenged. I understand that anything else that we can do to put fire into the inclusionary housing, I think would be amazing. So that's my $0.02. I understood. And then I appreciate you guys putting the transitional housing, the transitional parking item back in here. Also, I believe the only challenge that we have right now. Can identify the funds. I know we're making an effort to do that, is identifying the correct nonprofit to do that work, but just highlighting for the council on that item, we did several months of community outreach with churches, with the consultant. We have churches right now that have their spots are saying, yes, we will do this today. And so really, it's about funding and then aligning that up with one of the nonprofits, somebody that probably works through the villages or major and that we feel like it's one of the easier or at least ready to go small dollar ones that's not as big as a massive policy like inclusionary housing. So that's my $0.02. I love all of this. I think that we're all ready to have some some work done. So thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Price. Thank you very much. Thank you for the presentation. I think it's an excellent presentation and it's impressive how much staff was able to incorporate into this presentation in a relatively short period of time. But I know it's something that staff has been working on. I will say it's probably just me, but I feel like there's a lot of different thoughts wrapped up into this presentation and I'm having a hard time making the connection between some of them and how it is that they're all packaged into one piece here. So I understand the item that asked for the report was rather broad, but there's just a couple of issues. I don't completely understand how they fit. So I know that Councilwoman Pearce mentioned something about supporting a bond, and I don't know if she misspoke or I missed something in the in the initial presentation. We're not this is a receive and file. We're not moving forward with any policy direction on a revenue source right now. So this is the beginning of a conversation. I took that comment to mean a some type of revenue support revenue, whether it be a bond, whether it be something else that she's supportive of that concept, as we understand and kind of what Councilmember Richardson is talking about is starting the motion would be to kind of start this process pending funding and pending the everyone home committee and then having that kind of yearlong discussion with the community, researching what makes sense, what would be supported, what those funding strategies would be. And then the council would finally make a decision, do we move forward and put something on the ballot or not? And it might be that we don't or it might be that we do. Okay, that sounds good. I mean, I think as we're having those discussions, I'd love to know a little bit more about I mean, again, I'm not at all trying to imply, so please don't mishear me on this, anyone. I'm not saying that the issues are not related. I just think that the affordable housing situation has opportunities, challenges and priorities that might be different than responding directly to homelessness, not saying that the two are not connected. I just believe that those conversations present different opportunities, challenges and limitations. So I think merging them together for me at least I speak only for myself confuses that a little bit. What exactly would this additional revenue go to fund? Because buried in this presentation is not buried. It's actually directly in this presentation. But we talk about the fact that we have identified funding and are looking for a location for a permanent homeless shelter, but then we're talking about additional revenues. Is that for more homeless. Shelters or is that for affordable. Housing? I'm completely confused as to what we're talking about because we do have individuals who are in need of homeless and in need of affordable housing, who might have jobs and just difficulty keeping up with rising rents, but who are not yet homeless. So are we also trying to target those individuals? So I think just maybe my fear is maybe putting and again, please don't mishear me on this. I'm I'm not meaning to disrespect anyone at all. I'm just, you know, trying to do my best to respectfully articulate my issues is that when we put a whole bunch of different words together, it's not clear in terms of how that revenue is going to be spent. And maybe as part of those discussions, if we can segregate how that revenue would be spent, it would help me. You know, we also have this safe parking program in here, which, while I understand how it's related to this topic, is the revenue source that we're projecting to get through a bond, a partial tax or some other increase in taxes going to pay for the safe parking. I don't understand why that's in here. I really don't. But I support it. I think it's. A really. Great program and I want to try to fund it now, not after it comes on a ballot. Right. So I guess I guess for me, it just I'm if you. Look at these. Slides individually, they make sense. If you look at. Them together. It's not really clear how they I guess, you know, on a very broad level, I can see how they would intermix with one another. But in regards to the and I'm supportive of each of the components, I just don't understand how they fit together. But for the safe parking component, I completely support it. I think it's really great. I would ask and. I hear. What Councilwoman Pierce is saying about identifying different churches. I think that's a great option to I think a better option, if it's possible, would be if we could identify one site as a safe parking site so that when our outreach folks are out there, when they're doing enforcement, they have one location where they're routing people to park as opposed to multiple locations throughout the city. I don't know if that's possible or even if we have an area like that. But I just wanted to throw that out. There is a possibility for us to consider. And then. What? Okay. So then the other thing I don't understand is how are. Tenant is short term rental policy connected with this. Yeah. So if I can try to clarify a couple of things. So the reason that these are together is to talk you, right? Affordable housing is kind of can be its own thing and homelessness can be its own thing. And and sometimes they are they are joined. And those those issues do come together. We wanted to as if we're moving forward with this process, it will be important to go through and do a gap analysis and a need analysis and identify what is really needed in the community to address kind of our homeless crisis and our affordable housing shortage. And so we would go through a pretty robust process there through the continuum of care and through the staff and through community to outline what those are. So it would also have to line up with the revenue. And that was the point we were trying to make if if we just went with the housing bond that doesn't fund homeless services. So that would be a conscious choice to say if we picked that that revenue source, that does not match up with funding homeless services, but maybe a different one could do both affordable housing and homeless services. And so that is really to be determined. The second question had to do with safe parking that was included because it was specifically added as part of the motion by Councilmember Pearce as a friendly to come back with a report on safe parking. So that could happen if if that gets funded through the Fy19 budget process that could happen or could happen through future moneys or through this effort. And then the third question remind me. The third question was short term rentals. So short term rentals is part of the 29 affordable housing strategies. If you remember, the council gave us direction on 29 affordable housing recommendations. So we hear about that a lot about where that is. And so we wanted to include that as one of the many efforts that are going on through our affordable housing recommendations. Okay, I might be missing it, but is there any scenario that's reasonably accepted by people in the industry that would lead to short term rentals as being an affordable housing solution? It's included because if it a property is rented out all the time, then it is not available for somebody else to use it as an option. Okay. So by putting putting a regulation in place could potentially help that balance between using it as a visitor serving and using it for housing for people in the community. I got it. So it could actually be detrimental to the concept of affordable housing depending on how it is or is not regulated potentially. Okay. Got it. Okay. I mean, I think staff has done a great job on this. Again, I feel like as you were going through it and I was trying to follow along, I was kept telling myself, I'm going to have to come back and read this because no, no at all. No criticism of your presentation. It was a great presentation. I just think there's a lot of different concepts in here. It's a lot to grasp and a lot. Yes. And I think. Okay. Oh, the last question I had is the $50,000 I think is identified here as I can't remember the exact language. Oh, initial funding recommendation. Initial funding for what? Yeah. So we're pretty tapped out. We've got a lot of projects going on right now. And so to start a big effort like this, we're out in the community and we're doing kind of research and understanding how these other measures have happened. We would really need some additional help. So this would be likely a public relations firm or somebody with expertize in kind of measures and putting together that effort. So we would bring on some help for our staff so that we can actually get to this within that one year time frame and not affect other projects. So the 50,000 would be some initial support from a firm that could help us do some of the outreach in addition to city staff. Okay. And just speaking for myself here, I have no objection to that. I think I think we should not be putting this on staff to research. However, I think that $50,000 should be used for true outreach outreach across the city, neutral and objective outreach outreach that includes input from every council member, and outreach that is not intended to be informational or campaigning in nature. That's the only way that I think I would. Agree with this, because. I do think we need to do this outreach, but we're not clear yet what our community wants. So we should not be pushing forth any information until we have a sense of what the pros, cons, options and opportunities are. And so I think if the money is truly for us to, you know, get additional resources to explore this, then I'm okay with it. But if the message is to if there's a specific goal end game in mind by anyone, I have an issue with that. If this is truly an opportunity for us to educate ourselves and every council member should be equally consulted, every community should be equally invited to council community meetings on this topic. It should be spread across the city equally so that we can get true input and it really shouldn't be put forth to advance any message. And those are just my thoughts on it. And I'm assuming since it'll be general fund dollars that's being approved by the full body, that the spirit and intent behind it would be followed. So thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Council member. Thank you, Mayor. And you know, Councilmember Price, you don't have to be apologetic for staff. I mean, I think they get a bit they get paid the big bucks to take that kind of criticism. You know, we we get criticized by our constituents and we get evaluated by our constituents. You know, every four years. But at the same time, during those that interim four year elections, we get a lot of hits and we get a lot we get a lot of criticism for the fact for the things that we are doing or not doing. So, you know, just a little boost that you're okay with everything you say. And and if. We agree with that. Of course, in a step taken approach to it, then we got to touch that with the most important things that jumped out to me in this report. It's a great report is very thorough and comprehensive. You basically touched all the bullet points that we would want in a report. But the one that touched me most is is the section that you have here and gaps in prevention and strategies, because addressing those, we wouldn't have this issue. We wouldn't be dealing with affordable housing or storage or anything that would. What causes this is the fact that there is a homeless problem or issue that we're trying to address and everything else that we're dealing with in terms of whether it's a bond or a tax or AT&T or whatever is is temporary. I mean, it's a Band-Aid, as far as I can tell, when we're looking at at trying to address our housing issues or housing shortages and whether it's affordable or not. And, of course, there's a whole ton of definitions as to what is affordable and what is not, and especially when it comes to whether a person is on the fringe or is homeless. And so those are the areas that I think that I would like to see further addressed. What are things that we discussed today, today in the budget, especially when we're talking about the Health and Human Services budget, we know the extension of of rapid response teams of the Hart team. And I think that in the fire budget we saw that they added our heart team into their into their budget. So I mean, that's a great it's good to be addressing that, but is it enough? And that's what we need to look at. And one thing that I didn't mention to to Ms.. Galbi and Calliope, I always have a problem with I'm sorry, I always have an issue here with your take. This is like jalopies or Calliope and. Kirby as we more some company. With a you know I'm not you might say maybe my last name is always mispronounced and mutilated as it as it is. So I apologize for that. But you know where it is, I forgot to mention was the fact that when we had a I sponsor hosted a homeless workshop in my district where we had your homeless services representatives come in. We had the police department representative there, and we had the district, district attorney, the prosecutor, the city prosecutor, predator as well. And we talked about what is the issues with homelessness. And a lot of it was the fact that, you know, there are some homeless people that we know who are chronic, chronic homeless who don't want the services. They talked about the the opportunities for staff to go out there and meet with these individuals. And there might be 15 to 20 contacts and they still want to be where they're at. I mean, there is no solution for these individuals, which to me is an indication that there are some mental health issues going on there other than maybe just not just wanting to live a bohemian life, which, as you know, can be fun. I you know, I do that every now and then when I go camping. But the issue is that we need to have some of these services expanded, that we're going to be looking at any additional funding that we include means for behavioral health services, that we include job training. And this this basically is means that we need to look at ways of having all our stakeholders involved, because I think that was somewhat something that was alluded to by Councilmember Pearce, is that we need to have an inclusionary type of approach to this , no pun intended with inclusionary housing. But the bottom line is that we need to have everybody, everybody on board and on that. I'm the same age to it to make sure that we address this issue. Whether and I've seen whether it's with the inclusionary housing or parking lots or alternate motel motels that are in trouble. I mean, that's another issue in itself. But we need to put together this holistic, which I think Councilmember Richardson mentioned earlier, a holistic approach that includes all our stakeholders. So I'm hoping that later on, as we move with this forward, that we have some kind of of items in there that address providing more funding for homeless services , for behavioral health, mental health services, as well as employment and all the other sort of subsequent services that are that are around affiliated with and conjoined with the whole issue of of affordable housing and homelessness. And it's a complicated it's a fabricated issue. So thank you. Thank you so much. Counts go back to Councilman Richardson and backed Councilmember Pearson. We've got to go to public comment on this. And we still have a full agenda. So, Councilman Richardson. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. So just want to refocus for a minute. So I think this presentation was exactly what we what we requested it spent, I don't know, five page five or six pages giving background. I mean, staff always gives background with almost anything you do. And the council when it came up last time. Rather than focus on the motion that was right in front of them, everyone did bring up everything that was done associated with with housing, affordable housing or homelessness. So I think it's smart that you started off with background. Then there are seven pages that go into revenue options and implementation timeline, which is what the measure was, what the motion asked for. I think that is really the focus of this. Then there's about one page of other more short term options, because the conversation was initially sort of, you know, long term revenue, dedicated local source revenue options. And also here's, you know, we'll start short term game plan. And what you've presented was showing that what's coming in September with everyone home. October, November, December is exactly what we asked for. It shows what we're doing in the short term. But beginning this ongoing conversation, the long term, that's how I'm making sense of this is long term is dedicated revenue. But context, you know, we've talked about this for years. We had dedicated local revenue, 20, 22 million a year with the set aside, 20% set aside for redevelopment. We had that. It ended in 2013, five years ago. The cycle to develop housing, affordable housing is about five years. Five years ago we lost our revenue source. Five years later, we have a crisis, one plus one equals two. So it's a conversation that we have to really address, which is the loss of dedicated revenue for the support of affordable housing. Now we have a continuum of care. We think comprehensively. So we know a bond will not allow you to spend some of that money on homelessness, outreach and other things. It's literally dedicated to affordable housing development. That's why we have to look at all the different steps. So just to be very clear, be very clear, the idea here is that we start along going long stand like an ongoing conversation for about a year period to put us in a position should the council choose to put us in a position to play something about. So I want to just refocus. This is about ongoing revenue sources, local ongoing revenue source. Thanks. Thank you. To our peers. Have so many new thoughts that I want to share from Kitty. I would like to ask our staff if we could bring back the transitional parking item for a full conversation, the two from four with the presentation on some of the stuff that the consultant did for the Council to have a discussion about that. I know we have some different ideas in September. Could we do that? So we'd be prepared to bring that back if that's something we want to add into the motion. So we'd if we. Could bring it back in September, that way we're going to take it out of this conversation and it's gets on its own path. That would be great. Thank you. Thank you. There's a motion in a second. I have Councilmember Gonzalez, so I believe. Is still question. Was that included in the motion or is that is that a friendly or is that surmountable? I think I think what you said makes sense. Let's take all the issues separate from dedicated ongoing revenue for either homelessness or affordable housing. Let's put them on their separate path when we get updates on this moving forward. It should just be about revenue. We can still get updates about all the initiatives the council members are driving. But to be clear, I would like forward. Yours in September. Tran Yes, transitional party in September. We clear on that? That's what I'm accepting. That sounds like that's in the motion. All right. Thank you. Great. We do have Councilmember Gonzalez, who I believe is still on the line. Yes. Hello? I'm here. Awesome. I'm still here. I'm still awake. Yes. Go ahead. Oh, I wasn't going to speak. But, you know, I. I tell you. I tell you. I thought you said you were going to speak. I'm sorry. I misunderstood. No, that's okay. I just want to say thank you to staff for the work, and the timeline is really great. And I'm glad that we're including and emphasizing conflict prevention itself. But thank you. Thank you. Any public comment on this item? No. Yes. Please come forward. I think it's time to say good morning and not good evening. Suzanne Browne with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. I'm very tired and delirious, so I'm going to keep my remarks brief. I do want to say that we are really happy to see this item moving forward, and I do think it's helpful to see everything together because there have been so many motions over the last year or two, and just to see it all together and try to get a good timeline around it is helpful. We look forward to partnering with this city moving forward, but also to really prioritizing and moving these discussions that honestly have probably been happening for decades, not just a couple of years and seeing them turn into action. And I hope that the community can help the council and the staff prioritize because I know there is a lot coming in the pike and we really do want to see some things happening. And just to pick up on the comments about inclusionary housing. You know, I had received an update from staff that we were just going to get an update at the end of the year. And the consultant was just starting and the ordinance was at least a year, if not more than a year away. And anything we can do to move that forward, because we have so much massive development going around downtown and all around us, and we're really going to get the most out of inclusionary housing if we're able to include it on these big developments that are happening right now. The last thing I just want to flag for the council that not to get lost in the shuffle is the city council made a legally binding commitment in the 2014 housing element that they were going to increase the replacement and inclusionary housing fees in the coastal zone. It's a state law called the Mello Act, which requires inclusionary and replacement housing in the coastal zone on a one for one basis. Our fees are at about $10,000 per unit, which is super low when you think about a phone. An affordable unit costs about $450,000. The city committed in the housing element to increasing those fees. That study has been done for over a year. It actually looks really good and we just need to turn it into policy. So I know there's a lot before you, but I definitely don't want you guys to lose sight of that because that study's been done. And I think that we just need to clear some time on staff's plate to move that forward. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good morning. Just wanted to say thank you for for bringing this forward. I think for me for us is it's it's really important. The process is really important. It's not. It's great that we get to to some sort of solution. But how we get there is is equally as important, if not more so. And so I appreciate that Councilmember Richardson bringing this forward so that we are including the community and hearing the community voice and developing this sort of bond and fixed source of income together so that we're we're doing it in a in a very collective way. And yeah, I just wanted to highlight that, that piece about the inclusionary piece, I was just sort of giving get in the timeframe when that came forward and it was during the last taskforce. Mary Garcia And that's been a little bit over a year ago. And so we're just now getting the contractor. So the quicker we can get that going, the, the better for, for, for everybody in the community moving forward is just it's a quick way to start getting some some more affordable units on on the books and in our communities. And and the quicker that we can move that along, the the better for all of us. So so thank you. We definitely wish that hope that you support this motion moving forward, $50,000 to get this this process going. So thank you. Have a good morning. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Her last two speakers. Hello. Andrew Carroll, second district. Thanks for staying here so late. I won't take up too much of your time because it's midnight. I just want to say, in regards to a dedicated source of funding for a lot of these are formal formal housing projects. Excuse me, if I don't speak eloquently, it's past midnight. But as you all know, I think the city has a really big opportunity with this new vacant land fee that they're pursuing to get a little more maybe aggressive with that. Then you kill two birds with one stone because, you know, only you can encourage development by charging a lot more for the fee. But then you can actually move that money into a dedicated fund. And then you can also encourage the person once they sell them the plot, because they don't want to be paying that fee on anymore and or develop it. Of course, you can encourage them to develop it into affordable housing. So as my understanding of the vacant land fee that the city is currently pursuing is that it's about 30 something dollars a month. I think I could be way wrong in the master fee schedule on that one. But I would I don't know if there's any limitations to how the dollars that can be, but the more aggressive you can give it that it'll have double the double effect, as I said, of not only encouraging the development of property, the maximum development, depending on how large you fee, you charge the fee, but also you can set aside those funds that the fee collects into an affordable housing project. That's just an I. Another idea is and this past midnight is we could start charging for parking, not just in city lights, but all around the city. Now, that's just crazy. I know, but it's past midnight, and I still have actually some wonderful work on that. If you really want to go spend, get on Wikipedia for a little while and read what Donald Shoop and UCLA has to say on that. And then the final crazy idea is we could abolish Prop 13 and or just find ways to get around it because most the money is sitting right underneath our feet. And I know there are these there's these mail route taxes and these other things. And I don't know what the solution is. It's past midnight and I'm going crazy. But there's got to be a way to get that money that Prop 13 is keeping from us and any any ideas that anyone has. I'm willing to listen. And I hope that we're looking into that. Thanks. Thank you. At last speaker, please. Good morning. My name is James. James was I a. Resident of the third district. And I just wanted to echo and appreciate the sentiments from councilmembers Richardson and Pearce and also just offer two insights from this crazy day that I've had. Just to contextualize in the conversation around identifying revenue sources and I think being able to fully visualize and acknowledge the process that it's got and the conversation that's happened so far. I think the one thing I want to highlight is around urgency. I actually got to share a. Conversation with another elected official in our community today and hearing them share about their $700 rate increase and their need now to look for another place to live. Right. And we know we often we're often here talking about this impact on, you know, a very particular part of our community. But that sense of urgency is real. It's here in our community. It's been going on. I know that's nothing new, but I just wanted to reiterate and contextualize that. The other thing is I actually started my day this morning at 8 a.m. at the Pacific Gateway Board meeting. And we had a wonderful presentation by the developer. The Holland Group for the Pacific. Pine Development. And it was actually Reggie Harrison who actually commented that. Out of the 200 some units. 11 of them are affordable and recognize that this is an entirely private development. But 11 units of affordable, you know, that's commendable. And developer actually just. Said, well, because it's a former RDA, a lot of our part of the lot we have is the form already a lot. The city. Told us we had. To. And I think I just want to offer that just to remind you all that. You all as the city have a really. Powerful role to play in terms of determining the future of our housing supply in our housing market in the city. There's always been throughout the history of our housing market, there's always been government intervention. And unfortunately for a lot of communities of color, that typically has been really negative because it's been redlining, it's been discriminatory practices. But there is an opportunity for you all to identify real revenue sources for affordable housing, to tell private developers what they need to actually include to actually benefit people who are struggling day in and day out in the city. So I just offer that as something to help contextualize and move the conversation forward and looking forward, looking forward to really working with you and continuing the conversation in the work on this. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all all of the comments today. Great report through the motion. In a second, please cast your votes. I'm in. I. Russian case. Great. Thank you very much. That was a last item that was asked to be moved up. So we're going to go to the regular agenda. We have public comment and then all the items in front of us. And so let me call.