Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record and conclude the public hearing; Adopt resolution approving and adopting an Addendum (EIRA-02-21) to the General Plan Land Use Element and Urban Design Element Program Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) (PEIR-SCH# 2015051054), in accordance with the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Section 15164 of the CEQA Guidelines, and making certain CEQA Findings and Determinations relative thereto, including a finding that the adopted General Plan Land Use Element PEIR Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program shall apply; and that no new or different mitigation measures are required; approving the 2021-2029 Housing Element of the City’s General Plan; and authorizing City Manager, or designee, to submit the Housing Element to the California Department of Housing and Community Development for its consideration and certification; and
Thank you. Now here we have our first hearing, which is item number 16, I believe, which are our general plan amendments. So let's go ahead and get right into our hearing. I'll ask the correct to introduce the item. Report from Development Services recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record and conclude the public hearing and adopt a resolution approving an addendum to the general plan. Land Use Element and Urban Design Element Program Environmental Impact Report Approving the 2021 through 2029 housing element of the city's general plan and adopt a resolution to submit general plan and ordinance amendments citywide. I'd like to. Report I'm going to go ahead and introduce our staff and our I believe that our assistant city manager Mysterium, is going to be doing the report. Yes, Mayor and Council, I'd like to introduce Patricia Defender for who will make the staff presentation for this public hearing. Thank you. Hi. Good evening, Commissioner. Sorry. Council members. Mayor. Vice Mayor, can you hear me? Okay? Yes. Yes. Great. All right. I had a little bit of an issue logging in, but as long as you can hear me, that's good. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor. Vice Mayor, council members. I'll be providing this presentation on staff efforts related to the general plan housing element update Since this Council confirmed the plan back in November, staff have made a number of non substantive technical edits to address feedback from the State. Housing and Community Development Department and staff is back before you this evening seeking formal adoption of the plan prior to resubmitting for final state approval. Next slide, please. As you may recall from our detailed presentation in November, the housing element is a required element or chapter of the city's general plan. It establishes a road map for accommodating projected housing units, demand for existing and future residents over the next eight years. It sets citywide goals and objectives and policies for housing and shows how the city will meet the demand for housing at all income levels. Per state law, the plan must be updated every eight years and submitted to the state on a prescribed schedule. The city must demonstrate that it has sufficient zoning capacity to accommodate the regional housing needs assessment or arena allocation for Long Beach. This allocation is approximately 26,500 new units through 2029. And this number is almost four times larger than the city's allocation for the last housing element cycle. The housing element must analyze the current and future housing needs of the community, identify housing resources and constraints to building housing, and propose a housing plan for the next eight years with specific programs and actions on how that plan will be achieved. Next slide, please. So this slide just provides an overview of the timeline. Thus far, the city has been working on the housing element update since early 2020 and released an initial draft plan in the summer of 2021. That draft plan was submitted to the State Housing Department and the city did receive formal feedback on that plan from the state. On September 17th, 2021. That was the initial formal feedback which outlines the requirements, the required changes to the document prior to certification by the state. On October seven, 2021, the Planning Commission held a public hearing and recommended that the City Council adopt the general plan housing elements that's before you and approve the Environmental Impact Report addendum that was prepared for the plan. On November 16th of 2021, the City Council considered the proposed plan, including the revisions that were made to address the Housing State Housing Department feedback. At that time, City Council confirmed the proposed plan and provided direction to the Department of Development Services to finalize the plan and submit it to HPD for. A second round of review by way of just a brief background. Extensive community feedback and input would inform the goals and policies and programs and other facets of this draft plan and that that outreach and engagement was summarized in the November 16th City Council letter. Details were provided there on the input received and how it was incorporated into the plan. On January 18th, 2022, the Housing Department provided a second round of feedback outlining a much smaller number of issues and edits to be addressed. Most were technical in nature, as I mentioned previously. That is primarily related to additional analysis that supports the site inventory and fair housing analysis. The final plan and technical appendices are what is before the Council for Adoption this evening. And upon action. If the City Council adopts, then it will be resubmitted to the Housing State Housing Department for final review and certification. Just a few sort of legal notes for the Council to be aware of. In September of 2021, the State adopted a 1398 that law. Because of that law, the city is required to have housing elements both adopted by the City Council and certified prior to February 11th of 2022. That's a statutory deadline or be subject to new requirements, including a requirement that rezoning consistent with the site inventory be accomplished within one year rather than three years. While the state housing the state housing Department has not issued guidance about how they will enforce this law. Most cities have been unable to meet the certification deadline with the changes instituted by that new law at the very late stage. But by having council adopt this plan this evening prior to the deadline, staff hopes that the state will make a favorable interpretation and find the city's housing element to have met the statutory requirement. And staff will be working with the state to demonstrate that the city has made all best efforts to meet the changing deadlines and requirements of the new law. So after tonight, again, HPD will have 60 days to review and certify the plan after it is submitted. We submit to the state. If if it is found that the city is out of compliance with the deadline, it is required and is required to complete the rezoning of properties within one year by October 15, 2022, instead of three years. This will create some level of hardship. This is more stringent requirements that would pose significant challenges to staffing resources and would hamper the city's ability to conduct community outreach related to the city wide geographic rezoning program. Even though the rezoning would be consistent with the adopted general plan, community engagement and technical analysis to tailor zoning to respective communities has been a part of this process thus far, but that would be made much more difficult if it was required to be done within the one year time frame. And there are also. Challenges related to funding. Several federal, state and regional funding programs consider housing element compliance as an eligibility criteria, and recent state law creates penalties for noncompliance. So staff will be continuing to work with the state to achieve compliance and certification. Next slide, please. To quickly summarize steps the subsidy staff has taken thus far to achieve HDD or Housing Department certification. The first round of feedback from HCV was addressed in the plan that was brought to the Council in November and subsequent to the November Council meeting, it was submitted to the state and as I mentioned on January 18th, the city did receive the second round of feedback and made a number of minor technical edits. AICD asked for additional analysis to support the site inventory assumptions and to demonstrate how the site inventory strategy is projected to address and begin to ameliorate fair housing disparities in the city and thus fair housing and how the fair housing goals of the plan will be implemented. Specifically by looking at how the inventory impacts fair housing indicators, including access to housing in high resource areas, mitigating placement and making place based investments in low income communities. The letter also requested that the city update programs based on that analysis and show how such strategies will improve fair housing conditions when paired with identified sites. And again, all that feedback has been incorporated in the draft that is before council tonight. And I'll go over a few more of the specific changes on the following slide. Next slide, please. So most of the changes since the Council started plan last were focused on additional data and analysis, such as those listed on this slide, and include estimating the number of housing units in need of replacement based on the age of the city's housing, stock and data and analysis of how often and by how much developments do not maximize their building potential. The changes also involve clarifications on previous analysis, such as whether transitional and supportive housing is currently allowed in the updated zoning code, Title 22 zone and what the parking requirements are for things like congregate care facilities . Refinements to actions and objectives. Actions of actions and timeframes of certain programs to make them more quantifiable, specific and measurable, such as the example shown on the slide here and shown with the changes shown in blue, are representative of the types of refinements to the programs that were made and that are similar to refinements that you saw last time we presented. The staff presented the plan to you. Next slide, please. So in particular, additional analysis was focused on the site inventory and the fair housing assessment, specifically on how the site inventory is expected to improve and or exacerbate fair housing conditions. And more information will be provided on this in a little bit later in the presentation. Additional analysis to support assumption. The assumptions used to develop the site inventory, such as the likelihood that sites would be used for 100% commercial use rather than housing. The likelihood of non vacant sites being developed with housing and what potential impediments to residential development are. And to demonstrate that small sites and lot consolidation are not impediments to housing development. So generally speaking, all of this additional data and analysis is to support the fact that the sites, inventory sites really are feasible for development and that they are likely to be developed with housing in the time frame of this plan. And the plan appendices in particular were augmented with additional information about that, essentially shared local knowledge and identified relevant factors that contribute to the city's fair housing issues and experiences in achieving high achieving housing goals. So, for example, more information and community feedback was added from the framework of reconciliation, the draft race and suburbanization context historic context statement, which is being prepared currently the 2016 Housing Assessment of Fair Housing and the city's success in in the last several years in implementing the housing goals identified in the Mayor's Affordable and Workforce Housing Report . Next slide, please. So the next several slides are data heavy, but they are intended to just convey what some of the quantifiable outcomes of the planned site inventory are, which are supported by the plans, policies and programs. This slide shows how the site inventory sites and participated units or committed units are distributed among state defined, high, moderate and low resource areas, which you can see on the map on the left. That map shows what areas of the city fall in each of these categories. The high resource areas are shown in the shades of blue. Moderate resource areas are shown in the darker green shades, and low resource areas are shown in light, green, shade and yellow. The site inventory sites are shown on this map in the dark stuff that you see on the map there. The data on the right represents the important strategy that the city has put forward to help address patterns of segregation by focusing new low income units in high resource areas and more higher income units in low resource areas. You can see that the data on the right show overall a disproportionately high number of percentage of site inventory units in lower resource areas. But that is in part explained by the fact that those areas are where some of the highest transit access is located, and again, that there are most there are the most moderate and above moderate or market rate units focused in low income areas as well. And conversely, there are low income units in high resource areas. Additionally, many of the low resource or high segregation poverty areas, like I mentioned, are near transit and locating housing opportunities. There help align with the city's climate goals of priorities of prioritizing housing near transit and reducing carbon emissions. And it also addresses prevent future displacement by directing additional housing where residents are already living. So just to point out very quickly, some notable stats from this table, which have a lot of numbers when looking at the distribution of units as a whole. Just over 50% of the units are in the high and moderate resource areas, and just under 50% of the units are in the low resource areas. But when you look more closely at the numbers, it does illustrate the mixed income strategy. 19% of the lower income units are in higher resource areas as compared to just over 9% of the market rate units. And 38.2% of lower income units are in the low resource areas. Those areas that are near transit and proximate to job. 61%, almost 62% of lower income units are in the combined high and moderate areas as compared to just under 40% of the above moderate or market rate. Conversely, 54% of the above market rate units are in low resource, high poverty areas, as compared to 38% of low income units. And this distribution allocation of higher percentage of a above moderate income units in low resource, high poverty areas ensures that these areas will be more mixed income in the future and addresses concerns about concentrated poverty and segregation. Next slide, please. So this this slide more specifically looks at the racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty, which are called recap. You can see the map on the left shows the site inventory with the blue dots and it's overlaid with the with these recap areas that are shown in yellow. As a reminder, the map on the right hand side shows in green and then the circles within the green areas, the areas that are most that have that are transit priority areas and have the highest quality transit, in particular in the black circles, which is where the inventory is focused most. Again, the table shows how more higher income units for the site inventory are concentrated in recap areas, and fewer number and percentage of lower income units are in those areas to help begin to reverse some of the patterns of segregation. Only 10% of the lower income units are in the recap areas and nearly 90% are located in non recap areas. And similarly, nearly 40% of the moderate income and mercury units are located in recap areas. Helping again to make sure those areas become more mixed income in the future. Next slide, please. Finally, this is the left data slide, which shows how the site inventory units compare to total units citywide, putting the distribution of units into a sub regional and historical context. You can see the city was broken down by zip codes into six subregions listed on in the table. Those subregions are north, central, east, south, east, downtown and west. For purposes of the data analysis and at the request of the State Housing Department, the table shows how many site inventory units and what percentage of the inventory are at each of the sub areas. You can see that west, south, east and east are underrepresented in terms of proportion of site inventory units compared to existing housing units. While North is proportional and downtown and central are overrepresented. You'll remember, of course, the high quality transit map on the last slide, which explains why more of the new housing is focused in downtown in central, which are served by the highest quality transit. The bar graph on the bottom of the slide puts all this into historical context. While there's still some over and under concentration of housing by area, some areas had very specific historic developed historical development patterns due to a combination of market forces and governmental policy at both local and national level, which has resulted in the distribution that you see represented by the bar chart here. When taking a long view of the site inventory, the distribution of the site inventory is an important step in making the city's housing stock more equitably distributed among the subregions of the city. Next slide, please. So it was noted earlier that refinements were made to the programs of the plan. The most significant refinements were made to programs related to the fair housing strategies and strategies to affirmatively further fair housing there. Cuts are shown here on this slide specifically, and additional refinements to actions, objectives or timeframes of certain programs were made based on the additional fair housing and site inventory analysis that I just ran through, the data that that was just shared. And so the the changes are shown here in blue. Some specific examples for is more specificity of geographic focus such as housing production of A2 use in high resource areas, which is shown in the first row there. There other examples are a commitment to have to do targeted programs such as home ownership assistance and tenant right to council program to ensure low income communities of color have access to these resources and services. And those are the two middle rows of this table. And finally, a program was added, program 7.3, to do a mid-term evaluation of the housing element implementation, to assess the overall performance and progress on as it relates to the fair housing goals that I talked about in detail. Next slide, please. In compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act and this state's equal guidelines, the city prepared an addendum to the previously certified program Environmental Impact Report that was prepared for the general plan land use element. Update Housing element builds off of the vehicle's policies and strategies and provides a more detailed road map for creating sufficient capacity for needed housing in the city, including through the zoning code, amendments and rezoning of properties that are on the site, and how the elements inventory, which will be reasoned in alignment with the LME and will implement the values that are EUI, which is the land use element of the contemplated and anticipated buildout of more than 28,000 housing units and the housing element. Rina goal as you know, our allocation is 26,500 units, which is within the framework of what was anticipated by the land use element. The housing element update and the rezoning of specific properties do not result in any physical improvements that were already analyzed, and particularly because this is a planning action. These are planning actions that are consistent with value and intended to comply with state law, identify to identify a plan to meet the housing needs of the city and to implement the zone change program. That is a an actual program of the land use element. And it's important to note that future discretionary development facilitated by the implementation of the housing element would be subject to project level score review as appropriate at the time of the project that the projects are proposed. Next slide, please. So this concludes my presentation. The recommendations to council are listed here on the slide staff recommends consistent with the Planning Commission action. The Planning Commission recommended that the City Council approve the Environmental Impact Report Addendum er a to 21 and adopt the 2020 129 general plan housing element and staff will resubmit to the Housing Department for final certification by the State upon action by the Council this evening and implementation. As you know we discussed in our in some detail and the November presentation is underway and has been underway and the slide just demonstrates some of the actions that have been taken that have implemented the housing element even while we've been updating and preparing the update of the housing element. With that, that does conclude my presentation staff is available to answer any questions and we do have our consultants on the line who have joined us and are available to answer questions as well if necessary. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. We didn't and we will go on to any public comment that we might have. If there's any members of the public that wish to speak on this item, please use the raise hand feature or press star nine. Our first speaker is Leona Libra. Hi. This is Lianna Noble from Libra. I live downtown Fourth and Pine. I am speaking behalf on behalf of Long Beach residents empowered as part of the Housing Justice Coalition here in Long Beach. And I'm not going to speak on the details of the content of the plan. Rather, I want to refer you to a letter that you've received from all of us and make the point to you that from a community perspective, the way in which it was possible for community based groups to are accountable to their constituency is primarily renters and people of color. The way in which we were. Recruited and worked together with the Development Services staff was a new experience. As. Radically different from the debacle of the land use element? And to me, what it proved, and I hope the Council will consider this it proved that it is more than possible for community based organizations and their constituents to make very real, concrete contributions in a process. Thank you. Your time. Is over. Our next speaker is Brie Larson. Good evening. Great presentation. My name is Brie Larson and I represent the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters. We are a labor union representing over 50,000 carpenters to live in six states, including California. And we have a strong interest in well-ordered land use planning and addressing environmental impacts of development projects. Individuals, members in the Southwest work, live and recreate in the city of Long Beach and surrounding communities and will be directly affected by the project's environmental impacts. City should require a use of local, skilled and trained workforce to benefit the community, economic development and environment. The city should require the use of workers who have graduated from a joint labor management apprenticeship training program approved by the State of California, or have at least as many hours of on the job experience in the affable craft which were required to graduate from such a state approved apprenticeship training program who are registered apprentices in a apprenticeship program and approved by the state of California. Community benefits such as local hire a skilled and trained workforce requirements could also be helpful in reducing environmental impacts and improve the positive economic impact of the project. Local higher provisions requiring that certain percentage of the workers reside within ten miles or less of the site project and reduce the vendor trail. Here do talking about. It. Our next speaker is Susanna sime. Hi. My name is Sam and I'm the executive director of United Kimberley Meeting and I want to thank the city for partnering with CBOs in the Housing Element Plan. The CBOs that we were able to engage and build the capacity of is Long Beach, Miami toward Lake Agency, Miami to immigrant rights, coalition, labor, my Girls in Action and UCC. And together we were able to host a joint community in which we had over 120 community participants. And we also were able to engage committee members in public comment at planning and City Council. Individually. Our organizations were able to do outreach and education through social media workshops and training in English, Spanish and Canadian do these engagement efforts. We were able to prioritize community residents and their priorities around housing, which you have heard us share in the past. Overall, I want to continue to urge the city to engage the community in meaningful ways from the very beginning of city planning processes so that our committee recommendations can be included and that these changes can be made to these plans. Specifically, I urge the city to continue to engage it in the consolidation plan and any rezoning plan processes that are moving forward in our communities. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker, Stephen Donohue. Can you hear me? Just right here. Yeah. Good evening, Mayor. Vice Mayor and council member. My name is Steven Donahue. I'm a member of the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters Local 562. I work and recreate in the vicinity of Long Beach. The city should require projects to be built utilizing local and skilled and trained work forces, local hire and skilled and trained workforce requirements . Reduce construction related environmental impacts while benefiting the local economy. Thank you for hearing my message. Thank you. Our next speaker is tonight Kemper. City Council and mayor. I'll be concise. We you know, you should if there's any biblical scholars in the room, should read the book of Jeremiah, in which the protagonist warnings for the destruction of the city of Jerusalem were unfortunately left unheeded with respect to the air. Thank you for the presentation, Miss Patricia. You know, historical context wise, I didn't hear the term redlining referenced explicitly, which is why these transit hub areas are so remarkably transit focused because the land was purposely maintained as blight in order for the development that we see today. With respect to this general plan, we have to put teeth and have prerequisites, contextually speaking, before we even have these development projects come down the pipeline. There needs to be mandated. Low income and affordable housing. There's a there's an agenda item later that you guys are changing the definition of what affordable rent even looks like in the city. Chapter 21.67 In the Municipal Code. You guys are changing that in the agenda item later. Mark my words, these kinds of developments are going to push out black and brown and Asian people and low income poor Caucasians out of the city. We need to make. We need to mandate prerequisite affordable housing. Thank you. Your time is up. Our next speaker is Ailsa Chang. Good evening, Honorable Mayor and City Council Members Ailsa Chang, District five resident and Long Beach Forward Staff. I want to start by thanking staff from the Development Services Planning Bureau, especially Patricia Defender for Allison Spindler, Ruiz and Alejandro Sanchez Lopez for their tremendous, tremendous work and leadership over the past two years of the housing element process. Now, as a result of years of tenant and housing, justice organizing and as a result, as you heard from others of the city's investment and community based organizations to engage in capacity building for the first time ever, the housing element incorporates critical community led housing justice solutions that reflect the needs of the people and the people of color. Renter Majority. Such community wins include program 5.2 to implement various tenant protections, including a program to allow substantial remodels while minimizing displacement program. And 6.8 on Community Land Trust and Program. 7.2 to establish dedicated rental housing staff slash division within the city government. Despite, however, the significant progress, the housing element still does not go far enough to advance and invest in housing justice solutions, including, as you just heard from the staff presentation, fair desegregated housing. Born from generations of racist policies and market practices. I want to turn quickly to the community engagement process. While which forward is grateful to have been one of the CBOs to partner with the city during the. Thank you. That concludes your public comment. Our next speaker is Gabriela Perez. Good evening. My name is Gabriel Perez. I'm an organizer with Land and Lobbies, Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community. The stories and experiences we've come across from community members have made clear that the programs incorporated the housing element are significant victories for working class voters of color. Program 6.5 in particular, which implements tenants rights to council, is a huge win for monolingual residents like my earlier Breda, as well as working parents like Calvin Warren and Reynoso, all of whom face the threat of eviction and will now be more empowered to navigate a confusing legal landscape and advocate for themselves and their families. That said, the city still has a way to go to ensure that Long Beach residents are protected by a proactive, comprehensive and just approach to housing. Moving forward, this means a housing element process where CBOs that have trust and relationships, marginalized bipoc communities serve as critical, positive partners with the city, especially when involved from the very beginning of city processes and a housing delivery process where engage in marginalized communities and land use planning processes is mutually supportive and beneficial instead of extractive and tokenizing. This means meeting the immediate needs of people by collecting and sharing resources and potentially offering direct services such as rental assistance, application support, housing counseling and legal assistance. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Ruben. Good evening, Mayor. Vice Mayor, Little Beach Council members, thank you for your time. Thank you for the presentation. My name is Ruben Minerals and I am as well a union member from the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters. So I just come to you, the panel here today, you know, off script, just with an open heart and humble mind. I work and live in Long Beach. I'm currently involved in marine construction with the Port of L.A. and Long Beach. And I just can't express to you enough the importance of local workforce, skilled and trained workforce. We definitely all know the challenges of logistics, right? When with the rail, the freeway, 710, 110. So we come to you, you know, with numbers and just want communications, transparency, be involved and again can express how important it is to having this local and trained and skilled workforce. Our apprentices are dreaming in the field, doing a safe job, doing a good work, beautiful product, put out skilled craftsmanship, and that's only going to help the logjam. Like was mentioned earlier with suppliers just, you know, the highways and byways again. And just please take my words. Thank you. Our next speaker is Natalie Hernandez. Hello, councilmembers. My name is Natalie Hernandez and I'm a ninth district resident member. I'm speaking to support the adoption of the City of Long Beach housing element in the housing need. Summary data shows that Long Beach is a city of 61% of renters, with black and Latino renter households more likely to be rent burdened than white renter households and having the highest rates of rent hardship in a city that is majority renter, there should be more programs that assist first time homeownership, like establishing the Homeowner Assistance Program with Recovery Act stimulus funds. I can personally speak to the barriers to homeownership as a next resident. My family and I were in the process of buying a home for about all of 2021. One barrier was constantly being over bid by all cash investors in our Long Beach flipping properties. I was even overbid by Zillow. I see in the housing element there's no policy guardrails to limit investor speculation. And another barrier I haven't seen addressed is incentivizing sellers to prioritize first time homebuyers. More work needs to be done on the barriers mentioned, but I hope the Down Payment Assistance Program proposed in the elements will be one tool to give local residents a pathway to homeownership. Though the housing element needs strong and swift implementation, I fear the suggestions put in the element are already being outpaced by the Long Beach housing market, controlled by investors and realtors. The city needs to actively work with local realtors to ship local renters to be first time homebuyers. And the city needs to continue to work through this so that we will stop being a city of renters and workers and won't have to keep talking. Our next speaker is Luis Flores. Yes. Good evening. My name is Louise Flores with the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters. Look, 22 and I just want to say that, you know, I believe in that you should hire, rein in your workforce that we provide through our union. And also, you know, if you hire local hire, it would diminish the pollution in our city. And also, I believe that if we live here, which you work here in our city. You know, bring more revenue to our city and reduce our traffic as it is. You know, I live here then we in. All the pollution that we get from that and also the refineries around. So I believe that if we live here, we shall be the first to work here. They'll be all. Our next speaker is Myron Walden. Hello. This unmarried woman. I am the immediate past president of the Long Beach Great Panthers. We are advocating for seniors in Long Beach, and therefore, we are concerned most about affordable housing for seniors. And we see that there are mentions of seniors and disabled, but we are concerned about some certain things that can be done to improve what is generally has some very good things within the plan. We find there's no provision, for example, for multi-generational housing. We see that there's nothing there about LGBTQ people. We like very much the fact that it mentioned no net no net loss. However, there's one provision within that one thing that's happening within the senior community that we're very concerned about in terms of loss of affordable housing for seniors. And that's among the high housing where the contracts are up and speculators are buying what the housing and therefore converting them to market rate. We are concerned about this issue. There would be, therefore, a net loss of affordable housing for seniors, and we would like the city to get involved and come up with plans to alleviate the problem of loss of senior housing, affordable housing. Please think about this as an issue and don't leave it to HUD, to this to the federal government. Think of innovative. Times included our final speakers, Melody Osuna. Evening. My name is Melodie Osuna, and I'm an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles through our Long Beach community office at 601 Pacific and clinics at the Long Beach Courthouse, LeFlore is deeply invested and committed to justice for the people of Long Beach. As such, we take a great deal of interest in the city's housing element and its impact on poor and low income residents of Long Beach. We appreciate all the hard work and effort that went into developing the housing element over the past two years. We genuinely appreciate the attention the city has given the developer to developing a robust housing plan that addresses the needs for tenants. We look forward to working with you on developing and implementing these programs. Many of these programs, such as technical assistance for Community Land Trust and expansion of the inclusionary housing requirement, have specific target dates in the next few years, and we eagerly await the opportunity to help develop these policies on their scheduled timelines. Others, such as the rental housing division, are more aspirational in nature, and we hope that the city remembers that and the housing element and also that they remember that these legally mandated objectives and timeframes over the next eight years as we work together to make Long Beach a safer, healthier and happier place for tenants of all income levels. We do have certain reservations about the assessment of fair housing and what this plan does plan to do. And we hope that the city takes more. Thank you. That concludes public comment. That concludes public comment for this item. Well, thank you. I appreciate all the comment. We're going to continue the hearing that we have. I'm going to have counsel deliberation first. So if you want to speak, please make sure that you queue in. Let me just get to the queue really quick. I first up, I have Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, I want to take a moment to just thank staff. We've certainly come a long way as a community. You know, I was around the last time we did this, I believe I was Councilman Neal's chief of staff at the time. And it was a very different experience. We didn't have community coming forward saying thank you for including us, very different experience. And you know, what I saw in terms of the consultative process between HCB and Skaggs last year as president? It was it was you know, it was a little tense as we were discussing Rena and disagreements. I'm glad to see that you've had a better consultative process here with our original plan. Here's our feedback. Here's we're responding to the plan. I think that's helpful. That's helpful. That's going to help us to get where we need to go. I think more more globally here. You know, I think it's important for people to understand what it is we're doing. You know, cities need to plan for growth. Growth is going to happen. Demographic growth will happen whether you plan for it or not. The question here is where the growth is going to happen in a haphazard way. We have over crowded conditions, folks living in cars, overcrowded in homes, or, you know, living in motels and on the street, or whether we can plan in a healthy and safe and smart way for growth and accommodate the growth within our city. And that's what the goal of this plan is. You know, the good thing about it is we plan for it. We protect ourselves. One of the kids, through something down the stairs threw me off a little bit. So, you know, we plan for it. I think that's a good thing. We can advance economic development, create jobs. But one thing we definitely need to do and we've done a lot of strategies in terms of inclusionary housing and other things include include including here. But it will be hard to develop the affordable housing without a dedicated source of revenue. We still haven't replaced it. We know we used to have it with redevelopment. We knew we to invest $45 million a year into that. And we're doing a lot of other things. You know, we're squeezing as much from the term as you can. But the truth is, we just can't compete with the scale that's needed to keep them affordable. Premier housing, great housing, we'll get there. But as it relates to affordable housing, we have to continue to work to find dedicated source of revenue and some of the middle income housing stuff and all that. That helps. We have a lot more work to do. I also think it's important to know that, you know, we've got projects today that were held up because of the entitlement processes. We have to make it easier to get projects approved. I've got a project on Artesia on Artesia Boulevard right now. Smaller project was the first one using up plan zoning. And, you know, they're being required to go well and beyond what I would have expected them to be able to do. We have to just keep in mind that we are in a housing crisis and we have to build housing and we're going to have to be flexible . We have to be more in our in our in all of our processes of getting approvals, get housing built. And so that's what we certainly need to do. I think the downpayment assistance and homeownership programs are incredibly important. We're funding a pilot recovery plan. I think that's important. I like that we have a mid-term evaluation on this. I think that's good. And so I'm generally supportive of what I have today, what I hear, what I see today. So I'm happy to make the motion to support staff recommendation. I think it's certainly timely. We need to get this done. And one question. I know that we have we've done a number plates. We have the idea of zoning. We've done a number of things downtown, uptown, midtown. What's actually left to do? What areas of town actually need to be? What zoning needs to be updated? I'm really curious about that. Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson. Patricia Defender For the record. So currently we're working on the central Long Beach area. So you may have heard us talk about the Anaheim Corridor zoning implementation program. That is the Anaheim Corridor, some area north and south through the central area of the city. We still have to work on the West Long Beach rezoning in West Long Beach, and it's just going through and all of the places where the land use element changed the place type, we have to just go back and ensure that the zoning is consistent with that place type. So it's generally in there's some areas within continuing the plan, right? The plan north Long Beach, the phase to the west, Long Beach, Central, Long Beach, there's some areas in the east side looking at the the founding contemporary neighborhood place type and developing, you know, low density residential zones that are more commensurate with that place type as well. So there's still a lot of areas of the city that we need to evaluate and read them. Just a thank you. Thank you. I have the second by Councilwoman Allen. Ank you. I'm mayor and I just want to thank staff for the presentation today. I appreciate all of staff's hard work on this, and this is important for our city's future. And I enjoyed seeing the progress unfold. This updated housing element gives a roadmap for accommodating. All of the help you need and also guide our future decision making when it comes to housing issues. I really am impressed with what we have today. We are prioritizing housing production for all income levels, including those with special needs and improving housing affordability and preserving existing affordable housing, and also promoting fair. Housing options. For all of our residents. So I really appreciate the community outreach and the incorporation of feedback on this plan. I think that has been a really important role that what we're seeing today and I will be supporting this item. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I, too, will be supporting this item. And I want to thank Patricia for an excellent presentation. I have a couple of questions that I wanted to talk with you about. Just couple of because I know these questions have come up in terms of our our radar numbers. What do you think is contributing to us being able to increase our housing production in the way that we have? I mean, I know that I'm familiar with some of our specific plan CCF and the downtown plan and others that have allowed for additional housing. But what are other factors that are contributing to our ability to be able to make progress towards that 2029 requirement? Thank you for your question, Councilwoman Pryce. So as you noted, our specific plans have made a huge difference in particular and more recently, the Southeast Area Specific plan, which accommodates 2500 units. I think, to answer your question, streamlining the environmental review process by doing the program level eyes and tearing off of the the program level. I.R. for the land use element. Do you facilitate the housing production by streamlining the process for the environmental review? That's a significant way in which housing units are facilitating the development of housing units. Some some programs going forward are looking a little bit more as site plan review thresholds. You may have noticed some of the programs in the plan that look at both site plan review thresholds and can they be increased in order to allow more projects to go through a more administrative review process for things like design? Applying objective design standards is going to be important going forward and taking advantage of some of the state streamlining as the 35 we had one SB 35 project in the city recently that qualified for that process, which is a process that if it meets various criteria, it can go through a more streamlined review without hearings, but through a staff level review. So those are some of the ways in which those those housing can be facilitated by the things that we're doing. So is that the streamlined process? Is that because it reduces the turnaround time or the time that a developer has to wait? Is that okay? All right. So basically, it's it's facilitating more housing production within the timeline of between now and 2029, because we're shortening the time that people have to wait for entitlements. Yes. We're doing everything we can to do that. You know, from the entitlement process itself to the environmental review process and taking advantage of different in sequence streamlining. Okay. Can you talk a little bit about I mean, I just reading this article about only 24% or something like that of Californians can afford to buy a home right now in California, which was a shocking number. So can you talk a little bit about down payment assistance programs? And you know what what we're doing, I'm I'm hoping and I'm assuming that we're being as aggressive with those programs as possible and that we're leveraging all state and federal resources. But maybe you can talk to that a little bit more. Yeah, I believe that. I think our deputy director has and our housing staff have a little bit more information on the homebuyer assistance program. But I believe there's a program there's money available through the Long Beach Recovery Act, too dedicated to providing the homeowner assistance program in the calendar years of this calendar year in the next calendar year. Believe that a dollar amount is about $3 million. And this is Christopher Terrence. Patricia is correct. There is $3 million in the Long Beach Recovery Act that will go to first time homebuyer down payment assistance. And, you know, that will not, um, you know, that will help hundreds of families that want to help thousands of families. But it will be incredibly significant to those who we are able to help through that program. That's kind of going through the procurement process now. And families should be able to apply come January of next calendar year. We also have a state program, which is how we do programs like Habitat for Humanity, and we're looking at funding kind of there are homeowners that may have very low incomes, but they do own homes they bought at a time those homes were more affordable. And we're looking at how can we help them build 80 years on their backyard, which would provide additional rental housing in the city, but also provide an additional income stream to those low income homeowners? We received a grant from KD to do that. So where we can gather funds, like I just mentioned, we're able to intervene directly into the housing market. But the most important thing we can do in terms of homeownership is having a robust supply of housing. So that means, you know, producing housing units in general to the degree that we can get rent increases under control, that gives people more money each month to save towards a future home purchase. And then we need to find the right mix of carrots and sticks to make sure that that we're building condos in the city as well, because, you know, a single family home and you look at the price of a single family home in this city and throughout California, that's not going to be a first purchase for for most folks. But to the degree that we can build condos that maybe are smaller or they those could be available at a much lower price point and at current interest rates at a price point that's probably commensurate with your rent. So that could provide a lot of great options for first time homeownership. And that's all part of the overall housing strategy we have here in the city. And then the housing element is one piece of that. But there's there's other pieces that, you know, we want to continue down that road that continue to make improvement. Thank you so much for that. I appreciate it. I think my head's pretty much up. So all of you. Thank you, Councilwoman Sara. Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank staff for just really your hard work in getting the housing element plan to this point. I appreciate the effort and policies taken to include community voices in this, and I hope that you'll continue to do that as we will be able to get report back on how things are progressing on a periodic basis. That's what I know, that we're not going to get everything we want in this plan. But what I do hope to have is a periodic follow up to see where we're at a meeting. Our goal on a yearly basis to also, hey, what, what can we learn from what's not working and catch that and see what we could do to improve it for the following year. You know, one of the things that I'm wondering is, you know, we we we try to make sure that we create a housing element plan that will develop housing for all different income level. But I'm wondering, how do we collect data and how we're helping to address our homeless numbers? Like how are we are we, you know, at the end of the day, I want to make sure we're also helping people to get home, becoming homeowners, getting into affordable rent. But I also want to make sure that we're decreasing our homelessness number. Is there a way for us to see if by meeting our rent, a number were also able to decrease our homeless numbers as well? Thank you, Councilman Ciro. You know that there's a whole continuum of care infrastructure in the city that's charged with providing those kinds of services. And we work closely with them and the housing authority to to, you know, implement all of these plans and to track numbers. And we do have to do annual reporting each year on how we're progressing and in developing housing units and how, you know, the site inventory is working. And we can certainly try to look at additional data points that we can include in that process that can help us understand how we're making significant strides in addressing with this as a result of the housing that is being developed through that. And of course, there's the the programs around permanent supportive housing and shelters, all the things that the the many different ordinances that the council has adopted recently. And the plan cumulatively tries to address those issues and those concerns. Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate that because I do know there is a fine line and how where development services track you know that the number of people getting housed as far as making sure there is, you know, units available and that they're being built. But I think that it's really important that if we could make sure there is a connection to our Health and Human Services numbers, I know that we don't track people going into long term housing or even if it is short term. But I think that that I want to make sure we're painting a whole picture about how we're housing people in addition to making sure that we're increasing housing. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Councilman Ringo. Basically very simple. I think that's a wonderful job and doing there in the analysis done. I think that value, as we know, is a very stressful process that we went through four years ago. And to get to this point, this is a it's a good indication that we've made a lot of progress. Still a lot of work to be done, obviously. Our numbers have not gone down. They've gone up. And we still need to be aware that we still are challenge with our housing. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Jan De. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you very much to staff for all the hard work that they've done on this great presentation and throughout the time in bringing that up. I know it's been eight years, eight years. That seems like it's an eternity to some, but as many of you know quite well, time really flies. This is why it's critical that we act now to address. And yet we saw at the same time that long term solutions. What got us to this situation and where we are now was a combination of the past decisions, of past agendas, of past decisions and standards. What we need to build for the future is that desire, and what we deserve is a new and long way of looking at things, especially when we're coming together with community. I think that is the main thing. Making sure that our agenda is equitable and that our visions raise humane living standards for all. That is exactly what this housing element presents as hope for a better tomorrow, in which housing will no longer be a dream or a necessity, but actually a reality. And I have a lot of hope for that with the housing element. It is going to take a lot of work and it's going to take an intersectional approach to getting there. But I know that here in Long Beach, we as a community know what work is all about and we're willing to put in the work. So thank you to every single community member who showed up and participated in the process by voicing your needs and concerns and guiding the development of this housing element. I'm excited for the future of the cities of Thrive and I support this item wholeheartedly. Thank you, Constable Austin. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I share of most of the sentiments of my colleagues already expressed here today. Obviously, this is a this has been a long process, one that I have been part of from the very beginning. And I'm very proud of the document that is actually before us. Obviously, our need is great for to build housing and our goals are our aspirational. We need to build 28,000 new units in the next ten years. That's that's significant. So this decision, this housing element is a huge step forward. This housing element will help to give us strategic direction and clarity for future housing development in our city. It will certainly. And one thing that I'm really pleased to see with this document is that it has taken an integrated approach to community engagement and outreach. Because mentioned in this work several different types of community outreach forums where they extrapolated public input related to housing, put it to this and that consideration and I think that is very important, shows that our city staff is smart with their time and resources, but also is listening to our constituents, listening to the people of Long Beach . And so this document is comprehensive. Looking at the housing plan, I'm literally seeing just about everything that this council has voted on related to housing in terms of our values and direction in this document. So with that, I, too, am happy to support this 100%. Thank you so much. Thank you. That concludes council comment. I'm going to say a few comments and then we'll go ahead and go to the vote and close the hearing. I just wanted to thank the the staff for really the incredible work I'm putting the document together. It should be noted that if you look regionally and how housing production is faring in our neighbors, I mean, Long Beach is certainly ahead across the region. Whenever when when you're looking at population and versus the amount of housing units that we're creating. I think we cannot forget that that in Long Beach, we should always strive to ensure that housing is a right for everybody, that it's accessible to all people, regardless of income level. I think the council has worked really hard to change in the last decade of our approach to housing, whether it's been through inclusionary housing policies or that's been through protections and new protections for tenants and renters, whether it's also been through the amount of affordable housing that we're building, which I'm really proud as a great to see, particularly go along the downtown corridor along midtown, along Cambodia town. Are you going to see a lot of great housing projects and development that's happening and much of it affordable? And I think that's really a testament to not just the staff work and the community work and the community work, but a lot of organizing around housing that has happened in the last ten years. And I remember I was just thinking at first, one of the first meetings I had with now Councilwoman in the House was when she was a housing advocate and I was on the city council and she was advocating for housing policies ten years ago. I think believe you're on the board of Housing Long Beach Councilwoman. And I remember that very well. And so many folks have been involved in this work for a really long time. So I do want to thank everyone that's been involved in housing. Your voices and organizing and advocacy and advocacy has really made a difference, I believe, and has made us have better housing policy, more inclusive housing policy. I also want to thank so many partners. I think when you look at a housing element like this and the progress we've made, it's it's easy to not think fully about who's been at the table. But we have worked with incredible housing developers and partners, both on the nonprofit side, as well as, of course, private developers that have built significant amounts of housing. Whether that has been the affordable projects, we have some of our new middle income housing projects that are starting to come up and our market rate projects. I have been one and not everyone agrees all the time, but I think that we should be supportive of all types of housing all the time. A unit of housing is is good housing. We know that we need all types of housing in this community, particularly focused, of course, on housing that is affordable to folks. But we are we are I believe also the research is very clear which which I think tells us that any type of housing development actually overall helps folks get into housing at all levels of income because it's just an additional unit that enters the marketplace. And so we got to continue that production, not just in Long Beach, but across across the state and across across the country. I want to add that the this housing element reflects some really significant policy decisions the Council has made, especially, I would say, in the last 4 to 5 years around protection of renters. I think about some of the decisions that were made, not just to build affordable housing, but to preserve housing that has been traditionally affordable. Some things to remember that when when the city steps in to preserve a unit of housing, there is a cost there's a public cost to doing that work. And and it's an investment that the city decides to make. Well, we hear all the time we want more affordable housing. Think we all do. Someone has to build that housing. Someone has to, in many cases, subsidize that unit for a period of time since the housing unit can actually get built. And so it is a complex system to get affordable. Housing is not easy to get it developed, but thanks to the federal government, the state county support, city support and the work of our commissions and our city. I want to thank our community investment company. That commission or housing groups that have come together to support this work have really done. It really fantastic job. And so I just want to thank everyone. Lastly, just moving, looking forward. It is great to see all the housing that is currently under construction and I would just encourage us to continue that work. We should not be afraid or we should not be reactionary to looking at opportunities for up for us to up to zone appropriate areas across our community. We've had that discussion in the past. It's been difficult sometimes, but we have as a as a city up zoned much of the city, whether we're talking about certainly the downtown or we have up zoned midtown. We have done a lot of zoning across the northern part of the city and even in East Lombard recently with what we went through with our or Southeast plan there, there was a housing up zone that we did there. And so I am encouraged that the city has supported a smart and as they call it now, a gentle density and commuter phase where it's been appropriate. And certainly there are communities where where we're built out and we have historic neighborhoods and single family neighborhoods that folks deserve to have their neighborhoods preserved in a way that is historic and that is there for their families. And and that makes sense. But we have so much of our city still where we have opportunities, I think, to to develop and to build more housing. And and certainly that's something that we should continue to support. And it looks like where there is success in this work, thanks to our city team and looking at these numbers, I hope that those numbers continue and I hope that we continue to to create strong density, especially in our downtown and our long along or our Midtown transit corridor. There's so much more opportunity to build really great housing. So thank you to staff for this. I know it was a long presentation, a lot of council comment, a lot of community comment, but it's a really important topic as it relates to housing. And so thank you for all the great work. And there is a motion any second by Vice Mayor Richardson and Councilwoman Allen to approve and close this hearing and move forward. So I will do a roll call vote when the clerk is ready. District one. I district to. My. District three. I. District four. All right. District five. I. District six. I. District seven. I. District eight. By District nine. I. Motion is carried. Thank you. That concludes our hearing. Now we are going to go to the regular agenda and we will be hearing. The first item, the instructions for my agenda here. We will be during our first item, which is going to be item 17, please.