Recommendation to request City Attorney to draft a Council resolution in support of the universal basic income initiative established by the Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, as well as federal and state efforts to support residents disadvantaged by the COVID-19 pandemic; Request City Manager to seek grants and private foundation support to fund the pilot and to bring back specific grant approval to City Council; and Report back to the City Council on progress of pilot development.
Thank you. Item 17, please. Communication for Mayor Garcia. Recommendation to request city attorney to draft a resolution in support of the Universal Basic Income Initiative established by the Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. Thank you to the clerk. I just want to thank the the council for entertaining this and having a conversation about what I think is a really exciting conversation about the future of the way the economy is going to work in this country and really around the world. I think all of us understand that income inequality is the single biggest challenge when it comes to working people's livelihoods. That that that we have the very wealthy at the very top continue to get we know and accumulate wealth while it's much more difficult for those that are struggling and to get by to really accumulate any wealth and income inequality, a challenge becomes larger every year and we see that through studies that are happening all across the country. We'll also note that what we're what we're trying to propose is we want to support what is really a pilot project. We think I certainly agree that the concept of guaranteed income or universal basic income has a lot of names, for it is a viable concept that cities are going to have to lead on in the future. There is a coalition of cities of which Long Beach, as mayor I've been involved with, which is a group called Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. It's about 15 cities of which there are foundations and private organizations that want to support this group to fund pilot programs in their cities. We there are obviously folks that have been huge champions for guaranteed income. You have entrepreneurs like Andrew Yang and then mayors like Michael Tubbs in Stockton who actually kind of pioneered a guaranteed income pilot in his city over the course of the last few years. And so the request is is is really three parts. The first is just to have the council draft the resolution to support this pilot program that we are setting out to do in the Mayors for a Guaranteed Income group, as well as through federal and state efforts. And we are right now, to be quite frank, with the council and our rental assistance program that is a form of guaranteed income. $3 a month at $1,000 is a form of guaranteed income. We're already, in a way, piloting a type of a program. And so this would set that as far as a resolution to to show interest. The second thing this would do would be request the city manager to begin seeking and accepting private foundation grants. And nonprofits. And that all grants would have to come back to the City Council for approval and discussion because there is enormous interest and in guaranteed income across the country. And as an example, you know, the founder of Twitter, we're all we all are familiar with Jack, and he is already stepped up to fund the initial cities and wants to do some of that work. And there's a lot of other folks that are interested in funding this, these pilots. And then, of course, the last piece of it is to ensure that any development of the pilot gets approved by the council and all of this would come back. This is a new, very new economic shift that that is being piloted. We understand that there's a lot of a lot of questions, as there should be there should be a lot of discussion about how these programs can work. But we believe that a pilot program is the best way to really discover for the country, and this is a way that we can move forward. And again, the city and the council will have an opportunity to mold the pilot after staff looks at kind of what the best approaches are. And the idea is for the different cities to pilot different types of guaranteed income programs. And again, our rental assistance program could be an example of one type of of guaranteed income program. But there's obviously a lot more. And so I think it's an exciting opportunity for us. The last thing I will say is, for me, the COVID pandemic has highlighted more than ever why it's necessary to explore these types of direct support for people. The future with automation in front of us, with other crises ahead of us, like climate change, are going to disrupt the economy. And Long Beach has always led the way with innovative solutions. And so I am excited to pilot this and to work really with the private sector to bring in that money. So the idea isn't that the city would be funding the pilot. It's really going to be a private foundation and not private sector work. We would be managing through staff time, of course, the pilot, but the funding itself would be coming from other sources. And so I'm happy to answer any questions or to hear comments from the council, have a motion here by Councilmember Richardson in a second by Councilmember Pearce. So let me just go down the line. Councilmember Richardson. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. So I'm supportive of the concept. I you know, I've paid attention to the basic income and basic needs for a while now. I think the concept fits well with a lot of the conversation and study that we've done the last few years around economic inclusion and addressing barriers. I'm glad to know that you're exploring private, private funds. I don't know that public dollars for the pilot are what we should utilize, but I think it has a lot of synergy with the things we're already doing, which you mentioned the direct support for rental assistance, which was federal dollars, and that made a lot of sense. I've said it before. The role of local government has expanded well beyond our traditional services. And so it's it's important that we do make a meaningful commitment to go along with these changes and and sort of help create a front door for a lot of these needs where we're doing this today. As always, the many basic needs of housing. You know, we are putting a front door on it. We are we have more shelter capacity. We have ever had a hunger. We made a meaningful commitment to hunger and basic needs through the CARES Act funding. And that is a form of basic needs. And basic income aligns with food, housing, hunger, food, housing and basic income. And so we actually have a basic needs pilot in Long Beach, a lobby city college in Cal State, Long Beach, already UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco has a National League of Cities has outlined a number of cities are exploring this. You mentioned Stockton, but also Chicago and New York. Jackson, Mississippi, Santa monica, California, Omaha, Nebraska, Twin Cities in California. So I think we know enough about this, too, to express our support. I'm going to support this practice in my Committee of Economic Development, and I'm thinking about this in a way that it aligns with a lot of the commitments the council and the public has already made in terms of economic inclusion and overcoming barriers. So this has my support. Councilmember Councilmember Pearce. All thanks. I really want to thank you. Working on this matter and bring it to the council for a discussion. You know, in the middle of COVID, I think one of the conversations. Councilmember Mondaire to need to mute again. Thank you. One of the conversations that we had in the middle of COVID was really the opportunity for us to shift a system. As you mentioned, Mayor, we have poverty that existed before COVID. I know in Long Beach, in between different census tracts, there is a 17 year life expectancy difference just in the city of Long Beach . And we know that poverty directly impacts life expectancy. We also know that while our system, as it's set up today in our health care system as well, often could be in a position to really benefit from poverty, where cities have a lot to lose from that. And so I think being able to have a universal basic income is something that doesn't just benefit that person that's receiving it. It benefits the entire system. When people are living in a city and they I think it's that every dollar that they make additional an hour, it equals something like $7 back in the community. On a multiplier effect. And so what we've seen happen with our small businesses here in the city of Long Beach is that it's been really tough because of the beginning of COVID. A lot of people weren't working, and we still have some people working, but there are a lot of people that are receiving eviction notices, whether they're legal or not. A lot of people that are struggling to try to stay on, you know, the income that they get from unemployment, even though that number is reduced a significant amount. And so being able to say that we need to have a basic income not only during a moment of crisis, but if we can have a model, a pilot program that we can really test out and see if it's successful, then I think the entire system gets a chance to be overhauled. And we can make sure that small businesses and big businesses that are focused on improving quality of life and supporting community members can see a big shift. And so I wholeheartedly support this initiative. I think that it's great that we've got foundations that are paying attention. You know, my life before council was in that world and obviously foundations really a little bit of their money can go a long way. But a lot of that resources, when given to a city like ours, we've been able to really shift programs. I think one which has a great track record of that. So I love the idea of starting with foundations, but I also think that we as a city have to look at the cost of poverty, how many sick days affects our community. I was doing some research today and found that data shows that one week of someone that's living on a minimum wage job means that they can't pay their rent that month. And so we don't even have a system where people can afford to be sick without the chance of being evicted, particularly if we don't have protections for them. And so everybody from the landlords, the property owners to the local city, that is spending a lot of resources on making sure that we're housing those that are already unhoused. So spending our money on this level makes sense for the entire system. So I just want to say wholehearted support. I look forward to seeing how this shapes up and I hope that the Council is in full support in so much. Like councilmember customers and they have. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say, again, echoing the comments of my colleagues, that I'm really excited to see this conversation coming up. I think that, you know, even before this pandemic, there was a lot of insecurity when it comes to income. So I'm really excited to see what is going to come from this. And I really applaud you for taking the step forward and thinking, you know, in the future what our citizens and residents hear from from the city of Long Beach could possibly. Could possibly get from that and from this such a program. So I'm really, really excited and very supportive of this. Thank you for bringing it up. Thank you, Councilman Price. You, Mr. Mayor. So I this this is an item that I don't personally have a lot of background or education on. I am completely mindful that our mayor is involved in discussions with mayors around the country and paying very close attention to urban planning and urban economic trends and things that our city should and will take advantage of in terms of at least exploring ideas. And I'm very grateful to our Mayor for for doing that and being engaged and active in those conversations with other mayors, because I think we've had a lot of great ideas come to the forefront that those of us who are really dedicated locally to our districts may not be aware of or may not be following the trends on. So this is one of those items. So I'm looking forward to studying it and looking at the data. Our office did receive a number of emails, really expressing concern, perhaps a lot of confusion, just not really understanding the topic. So I'm hopeful that when this item does come back, there's a lot more depth in terms of what the possibilities are, how the data will be tracked, and how we can all learn to engage thoughtfully on this topic. Because I think for me, at least, I'll speak for myself. I don't have a background on this topic and it's really going to be an educational opportunity for me. So I'm happy to support this item. I just want to confirm, I guess I don't know if it would be with the mayor or with the staff. That really no public dollars are being sought at this time to study this and explore the feasibility that this is something that we're going to be really working to identify private dollars, to study and collect data that will hopefully shape future policy. Yeah. This is a mayor. That's that's absolutely right. I mean, the only, you know, public dollars that would that would be currently spent would be staff, you know, staff time interacting with the foundations or the grants. But we already have interest from from these private foundations and grants. So it would not be city dollars that would be spent in the pilot. As far as the the income piece of what we what would be given out to folks as part of the pilot? That's right. That's great. And that's a good clarification that I committed to the people who reach out to my office that I would make this evening. The other request that I would have is once we get a little bit further along on this, I think it would be worthwhile to do some citywide community discussions, to have the experts in this area educate the residents. Because if if we're really going down a path of this is a policy that the city wants to support, then I definitely want to make sure that residents are engaged and educated on the topic. So I'm hopeful that we can weave into this some sort of community dialog that will allow for this and education on what the pros and the cons are and what the data shows. So with that, thank you. Executive Vice Mayor Andrew Lunch man. Thank you. There was a time, but this form of leadership is now because I am supportive of this idea, because right now low income communities like mine are struggling in ways and levels we have never, ever seen before. You know, and people are hurting for rent, dollars, food, diapers, you know, an income as well as a home. And we able to come up with a system to help with this rental assistance. So we have a will. There will be a way. And I think this is an excellent one of leadership on your part. I want to thank you very much, and I'm totally supportive of this item. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Thank you. I was trying to do some research online in response to some of the questions that I had and then some of the questions that have come into our office. I know that each city that has gotten chosen has had different models for how individuals are selected to participate in the program. I was wondering about your vision, Mayor, on if there were any other cities that you thought we would be modeling after or if Long Beach would stand on its own and maybe do a hybrid model, or what your thoughts were on how that looks and what our target is in terms of length of program number of participants . Yeah. I think those are good questions. I think that, you know, I really don't have a set, um, you know, kind of idea of what it should be. I really want to kind of it's scored through staff and some, and some conversations. What, what the best model would be for us. I think it'd be great. I think the idea of the pilots are that they all be different and so that folks can can model different pilots that could be tailor made to certain communities. And so I'm actually very open and not married to any. And any type of program. I think I'd want staff to hear from all of you and from the community and and come up with something that could really, really work. Obviously, I think over the course of the next six months or so, there's going to be a lot of foundation interests and we'll be going out and raising some capital. So we have time. There's going to be some some time to actually put these things together. We want to put something that's fair and that's innovative and then see how they work. And I think that's the that's the idea. They're not all going to you know, some will work better than others and we'll learn from them. So I'm very open to, however put point to it. Well, I would just recommend that we have a lot of data related to our our AI team and the work that they did related to certain individuals that are multi issue callers related to our health care system in terms of our fire. 911 services and our social work services and other things. And I would look for us to use some of the data that we have that other cities have not had access to in that. I mean, then I guess my my question next for city manager is you talked about staff time. What kind of staff time commitment are we looking at to commit to bringing back some information to the council and in searching for these grants? This is Tom. So we do think this will require some work. One of the things that the mayor has in his recommendations is $100,000 to help fund consultant time or temporary staff to both look at this and public banking, which would give us some dedicated resources to do that. So I think we're at the kind of concept phase of this, and we would be coming back with how much dedicated we would need. And then we would, of course, be looking for the administration to, when we go to the grants and the others on how to have a dedicated person if we do are successful getting money , how do we fund that position so that there wouldn't be a city cost to that? Excellent. I was then, you know, I was really supportive of the public banking idea when I brought forward the one card item. I'm supportive of linking these two together. I think there's a lot of synergy in that. A lot of the initiatives that we did as a chair of economic development have kind of been souped up into some of the other citywide plans and acronyms that we have. And I see how it can all fit together, and I look forward to seeing that reported back on what the total cost would be. And then you didn't mention staff time of our staff to potentially work with a consultant and or apply for grants. Are you thinking in the dozens of hours or in the dozens of dozens of hours? I think it all depends on how successful we are. We need to first kind of research the concept and make sure we really understand it. And then a lot of this is going to be going out and talking to the various foundations. I think we've got some good support already. The mayor and his working group already has made a lot of connections, and now it's more estimated that. So to give you a number, it's, it's, yeah, it's not going to be insignificant. I'd probably be in the moderate staff time area. Great. Well, I appreciate your information on that. I, like some of my colleagues, would like to explore a pilot, but being cognizant that we are using taxpayer funds at a time when we are working on so many things. So I appreciate bringing back a plan for getting those grant dollars, and I think that that could be very valuable. Thank you. If it comes, a woman doesn't ask him. I thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I'd like to also lend my support. Offer my support. You know, when this concept was first talked about a few years ago, two, three years ago, it sounded very far fetched and difficult to imagine. And then 2020 hit. And now it makes a lot of sense. I want to thank Mr. Mayor Garcia for mentioning the our commitment already to the Long Beach Cares program that actually provides thousand dollars per month for three months rental assistance for families in Long Beach. And that's that was a real commitment from our city that I, like I said, a year ago, would have been far fetched to imagine. But tough times come and in these these very unique times call for innovative solutions. And so we've already stepped up and done that. I do appreciate that this is a pilot program. I expect that the $100,000 that we are committing will be a one time expenditure right now. And staff can can, I think, clarify that already, Tom. And if I'm wrong, please let me know. But I expect it to be a one time. And it's really a minimal commitment at this time to study something that could be a great benefit to many residents in our in our city, particularly if we are able to find the private philanthropy. I don't obviously the condition of our budget today, public resources are going to be a stretch today to look at that. But but I'm sure it's something that we can build in in the future. But I like the idea of private philanthropy. I like the idea of us studying innovative ways to support our residents. And so I'll be supporting the item. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I want to follow up on the point that Councilman Price made about community outreach. Our office has received the same type of questions. So I would be hopeful that staff could maybe put together some type of overview or a supplement to the agenda item that explains a little bit about what the process is and where we're going with this. Prior to that community outreach, that would be very helpful upfront. Thanks. Because I remember Councilmember Pearce. Oh, sorry about that. Yeah, I'll just say briefly, I think that the new state law that just passed also on some of the tenant issues identified some additional funds that could be used to pay for background that's similar to universal basic income. So I think there's lots of things not only at the local level but at the state level moving in this direction that again, not only benefit tenants but also property owners. And so I do look forward to seeing some of that data come back. So thank you. Thank you. And with that, we will go ahead and do a roll call vote. I don't have any public comment. No public comment. District one. I. District two. I am. District. Three I. District for. My. District five. I. District six. District seven. I. District eight by district nine I. Motion carries. Thank you. And now to general public comment. Removing the public comment colors over. Just one moment, please, Mayor.