Recommendation to receive and file a status report by Centro CHA, Inc. and California State University, Long Beach on the Economic Profile of the Latino Community in Long Beach.
Okay. Let's see. Next item that's been moved up is item number 11. Madam Clerk, please read. Communication from Councilmember Urunga, Councilwoman Gonzales, Vice Mayor Andrews and Councilmember Richardson. Recommendation Receive and File Status Report by Central Asia and California State University, Long Beach on the economic profile of the Latino community in Long Beach. CA, Councilmember Yu Ringa. Thank you, Mayor. I'm very pleased to welcome the members of the community to come here and talk about the impact of Latinos in the economy here in Long Beach as well as originally. We had a nice conference a couple of months ago at the the Convention Center, which was very informative and provided a lot of good information about how we can all work together to create a better economy. So I'm very pleased to welcome Professor Armando Vazquez Ramos and our newest elected professor. Elected professor. Professor at Cal State Long Beach, an elected member of the Board of Education, Juan Martinez. So I don't know which one of you is going to be making the presentation tonight, but you're certainly welcome to come forward and get it going. We're also joined by the executive director of Central Cha. Jessica Quintana. Thank you so much, Councilman Harrington, and thank you so. Much for the opportunity to be here today. Bear Garcia, Members of the City Council. City Manager Pat West. We're thrilled to be here tonight. As you know, the organization is the largest Latino serving agency in the city of Long Beach. And we're. Bringing today the first Latino Economic Impact Data Report for the city of. Long Beach. If you can imagine, this data report has never been done in this city. And. You know, we were very fortunate. To be able to be commissioned by the state of California. Department of Social Services, to be able. To uplift this data. For years, we've been telling the story and the needs of the Latino community. But, you know, we needed to be able to have a data and a. Roadmap to be able to help guide some of the decisions, you know, with our families and youth and children here in the city of Long Beach. So we're just thrilled and pleased today. More excited, you know, for the first time, really having this. Partnership with the university. With our city government, with our community leaders that are here today. I know you see some of the folks sitting in the audience. And so this really took and a labor of love. Love, a little nervous. But, you know, we launched. The first ever Latino Economic Summit. We held a Latino. Economic roundtable to really look at the data and discuss, you know, what are some of the challenges, what are some of the successes? You know, what are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? And then really looking at our communities, you know. Where are our Latino families? Where are our children, where of our youth? You know, as an. Organization, we've been working on initiatives to promote. Better jobs. And I know we have our workers here today who will talk about jobs and better jobs, but really looking at, you know, how do we develop those. Education. Pathways, how do we. Strengthen our workforce. Development programs that we have an equitable workforce development programs for all. And really looking at the violence in our communities and in opportunity. So we are pleased to have this partnership with Cal State, Long Beach and with our local city government, with our economic development department. This can never happen without the partnership. This is how we work together to really look at our communities and and promote possibilities. And so without. Really? I know. It's just, you know, this is something that we have been developing for years. And, you know, this this partnership. You know, with Cal State, Long Beach and. The Center for Community Engagement, it really started with just, you know, looking at how do we make things better in our community. And so having a conversation with Dr. Wayne Bennett this and really pulling together our resources and saying, how can we make this happen, you know, with the resources and talent, expertize and time, you know, that it took to make this happen. You know, this this this was all done by the resources of our city. Of our. Education department, in the community. You know, there was not a. Dollar that was invested, you know, from any other place. And I don't think we would have been able to get this kind. Of report or paid for it. You know, for our city. So I just want to thank everybody for their time, for their investment in our community. I want to thank, you know, our economic development committee, our city council members, you know, our team who is here in the city and sitting in the audience. I know we have some of our leaders. We have Cal State, Long Beach, Armando Vasquez from the professor from Cal State, Long Beach. We also have run Aureus was a former director from the health department. We have Teresa moreno who sits here. We also have her, Linda Chico and our board chair, Mario Gonzalez. You know, these are all folks. That have, you know, lived Long Beach and and were really invested and. Want to see our communities and our families do well. So, again, thank you so much for your time. But. Jerry Garcia, distinguished councilmembers, city staff and our committee members. We ready rock n roll, ready to see this thing. All right. So I want to reiterate, this is a preview has not been rolled out or disseminated publicly. There are a couple of things here that are we're in the process of updating. So this is the kind of the first public roll out of this preview. So I want to make sure to address that. This is a best practices community engagement initiative. That's a partnership between, as Jessica mentioned, the nonprofit sector central to our university, Cal State, Long Beach, our distinguished city, in particular, our economic development leaders. So I want to make sure and highlight that this can be a model that we can continue to leverage and build on and share across our country as well. So the goals and objectives of our project, it's twofold. One, it's to help us better understand and address key economic education and health data for Latinos in Long Beach. And second, it's in alignment with our university's vision around the public good. And this can only be done through these partnership and community engagement opportunities. The concrete objectives of our profile, if you will, we're still trying to name it something. So any help with our branding is much appreciated, but our objectives are very clear. One is to share this report in community settings. So this is the first public opportunity for us to do that. Second, and it's to spark discussion around key policy considerations and implications. We want this to be an action oriented document. Third, to serve as a mechanism for ongoing work updates and further development and dissemination. And then lastly, it's to help inform future research and decision making. So that's why we take this very seriously, being able to roll this out with you all here today. So we're going to start off with the data, and it's my great pleasure to have partnered with the chair of the economics department, Dr. Seiji Steinmetz. Why don't you take us through the data? Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. Members of the City Council on City Staff are looking forward to seeing many of you at the 2019 Long Beach Regional Economic Forum this Thursday. It's a collaboration between our Cal State, Long Beach and Mr. Kessler's department. Oh, he's not looking. I totally blew that. I'm giving you a pitch here, sir. So between our department and the economic department, there is so much we want to show you. And we only have a few minutes, so I'm going to take you through what I'm going to call a brief profile of the Latino community in Long Beach. I might even skip a few slides. So first, let's look at the population. There are about 230,000 Latinos living in Long Beach right now, representing 43.2% of the city's population. Close to 80% are of Mexican heritage. And about 13.2%, excuse me, are Central American or South American heritage. So we see the part of the Latino population in Long Beach has grown over the last few. Over the last decade, although it's been a bit flat in more recent years. And again, this is going to be a big data dump. I'm just going to show you a bunch of stuff and most of the slides in front of you. Population. One of the things I often ask people, just when they started asking me, how did I get involved in this project? And sort of what motivates me? I often ask, Well, let's look at all of the children or all of the young adults in Long Beach are all 18 excuse me, all youth, 18 and under in Long Beach. What what proportion of all Long Beach Latinos under the age of 18 were born in another country. And the number I usually get is 20, 30%. That's sort of the common discourse. But I want to point out that, yes, although 33.4% of Long Beach Latinos are immigrants, only 4% of all Long Beach Latinos under the age of 18 are immigrants. Put differently, there's only about 2400 immigrant and Latino children in Long Beach or. One thing to note, too, by the way, overall, of all the immigrant population approaching, half of the Latino immigrant community are naturalized citizens. All right. So what I've done is I know it's a little hard to see, but this is what you want to do is look for the patterns here, the darker shades of green. This is a heat map of the population, the Latino concentration in the city. So darker green means a larger share of Latinos in the neighborhood. So if you look for the darkest green areas, we see. The 710 freeway along the left side and then the four or five coming through the city. And then above the 91 up there is the greater Long Beach, we might call it, or north of Long Beach. And we see that there are some fairly you know, the darkest green are 50% or more Hispanic, Latino. And we see that there are some pretty identifiable areas that are predominantly Latino. Particularly in downtown and north of that, towards central and the north side of Long Beach. In terms of education. If we're looking at the population of Long Beach Latinos over the age of 25, 37.6% of Long Beach Latinos in that age group have less than a high school education. Now, by comparison, 10% of all other residents in that age group have less than a high school education. That being said, 15.3% of Long Beach Latinos have earned a bachelor's degree or higher. And we're going to skip that one in the interest of time looking at health insurance coverage. There are 23,000 plus Long Beach Latinos who do not have health insurance coverage. Looking at children. There are over 2200 children in Long Beach who do not have health insurance. The working of the working age population, 18 to 64, 16.3% of the Latino community is going without health insurance right now. Three and a half percent of kids in Long Beach and in the Latino community. Two and a half percent of our seniors. Health insurance covered rates have gotten better, though. Looking at the graph over here in the orange is the health insurance. It's the percentage of Long Beach who are uninsured, who are Latino. And below that, in the blue line is the percentage of Long Beach residents who are in, who are not Latino, who are also going without health insurance. So we've seen declines in the uncovered rate. That's good news, right, that the uninsured rate has declined by 13 and a half percentage points within the last decade. Probably in no small part due to community efforts like at Central Cha's. Thank you. But also, at the same time, there's you could see there's still a persistent gap between Latinos and everyone else in terms of being uninsured. Okay. So let's look at some more economic data. And again, we're just gonna give you a brief economic profile here. Look at the occupations of Long Beach Latino residents, and these are in very broad occupational sectors. So management, business, science and art. Think of that as like the professional sector, for lack of a better way of phrasing it, white collar jobs. And then we have their the service sector, sales and office sector. And then the last two categories are natural resources, construction and maintenance and production, transportation and material moving. We can think of these as more of the heavy lifting jobs in blue are all other residents of Long Beach, and in gold are the Latino residents of Long Beach. And it gives you a sense of the composition of the workforce who lives in Long Beach? There's a relative there's a disproportionately low number of Latinos working in the management, business sciences and arts sector. And but a relatively high proportion in what I'm calling the heavy lifting jobs and in the service sector. And what that's going to do is that will inform what we're going to see next. If we look at median household income among one resident, again, gold is the Latino resident's median household income over time in blue is in this case it's overall right. So while Long Beach Latino household incomes have been rising, although flat in the most recent year, there's about a 14.7% gap compared to the overall median household income. The Latino median household income of about $51,000 per year is about 14.7% lower than overall. Now, keep in mind, too, there's an extraordinarily large labor force participation rate among Long Beach Latinos. Now, if you were an economist, you wouldn't just geek out on this number. 70% is an extraordinary labor force participation rate. Seven out of ten working age Latinos who work in law, who live in Long Beach are in the workforce. That's phenomenal, actually. All right. So despite having a higher labor force concentration, there's still lower household incomes. All right. I'll skip that for now. Now, let's look also at unemployment trends over the or the more we'll say over the last decade. And what I want you to do is pay attention to. Again, we have in blue is everyone else in Long Beach. And in gold, we have the Latino community. I want you to pay attention to the end points of these trends. Right. When? Times are good during prosperous economic times. There's relatively little difference in the unemployment rates between Long Beach, Latinos and all other Long Beach residents. But when times become more difficult, when unemployment rates rise, who gets hit the hardest? Along those lines. The poverty rate among Long Beach, Latino families is 16.4%. One in six Long Beach Latino families lives below the poverty line. By comparison, 9.8% of all other Long Beach families live in poverty. All right. So looking at a trend of poverty rates over time, on the right, we see that the poverty rates have fallen . All right. For the Latino community, they've been fairly flat for everyone else. But persistently, again, we see systematically higher poverty rate. Then among all other Long Beach residents. All right. And this is just one type of heat map we can do one snapshot. What we've done here is I've said let's look at predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods. In other words, neighborhoods that are at least 50% Hispanic, Latino. And also then I said, of those neighborhoods which have a 20% or higher poverty rate or some one in five families in these neighborhoods is living in poverty. In these predominantly Hispanic Latino neighborhoods. And what we see as a pattern, we we can identify. So you think of this as among the poorer Latino communities. Where are the most stricken, predominantly Hispanic family neighborhoods? And again, we could see along the seven, ten quarter around downtown towards central and up on the north side of Long Beach . And also, by comparison, we can see some of these same areas in the surrounding region. It's almost as if there is a imaginary line at Redondo and the four or five that that divides the region. Okay. That being said, what we want to also illustrate for you what I mean, we basically illustrated some challenges for you. I think what we also want to show you is the extraordinary economic impact that Long Beach residents have on the community. And to take us through the economic impact analysis first, let me just I'm going to give you the world's fastest lesson on what economic impact analysis is. All right. And it's through my mad clip art skills you can see here. So. If I have a job right, I'm going to I'm going to take my earnings and I'm going to spend it on groceries and I'm going to spend it on coffee and I'm going to pay my rent. Okay. And then the grocery store and the coffee shop and my landlord, they're going to take my money and they're going to go spend it on goods and service as well. All right. So we call this the induced effect. My dollar in earnings spent in the community multiplies throughout the economy. In this case, we're going to focus just on the Orange County and Los Angeles County's almost trillion dollar economy and long, Long Beach Latinos contribution to that trillion dollar economy. Also, when I work, I need a computer and I need a chair. So the people who made the chair and who made the computer, they're also getting paid and they're spending is also rippling out into the economy. So these multiplier effects permeate through the economy. And what we end up with at the end of the day is we can measure for a specific group like Long Beach, Latinos, how their economic activity permeates through the economy and ends up having a large impact. All right. And to take us through that, we have our extraordinarily celebrated economics undergraduate student Megan Anni, who's going to teach us about the Long Beach Latino economic impact. Hello. So according to our. According to the findings from our impact analysis, we find that over 100,000 jobs held in the region are by Long Beach Latinos. These 100,000 jobs generate $33 billion to the local to the local region. And these 100,000 jobs also sustain an additional 79,000 jobs throughout the local region. This are the $33 billion of economic impact, also accounts for roughly 40% of long beaches. Total impact into the economy. So now. Now let's focus on Long Beach, Latino immigrants. 52,000 Long Beach. Latino immigrants are working in the local region. These 52,000 jobs create $16.8 billion. Real quick, I think the distinction is important. When you say immigrants, you're including both documented and undocumented immigrants. That's correct. I just want to make sure people are aware what that data point is. I just want to make sure. Yes. Okay. So that is correct. Immigrants we are going to consider undocumented in addition to documented. And so looking at Long Beach, Latino immigrants, we see that. 52,000 jobs in the local region are held by these Long Beach immigrants, Latino immigrants and the economic output generated by this by these by the Latino immigrants alone generates $16.8 billion into the economy. This accounts for 20.6% of long Beach's total economic impact. To the out to the region. So. These 52,000 jobs also create an additional 39,000 jobs into the local region. So let me restate that. The 52,000 Long Beach Latino immigrants employed in the local region are creating an additional 39,464 jobs in the local economy. Now, this. Oftentimes, we have a misconception that Latino immigrants are taking jobs when in fact the data supporting that they're creating jobs in the local economy. So now let's go ahead and just take a look at our self employed Long Beach Latinos and our self employed Long Beach Latino immigrants. These are essentially our entrepreneurs in the region, and we find that Long Beach Latinos represent about 9000 of these jobs held in the region. And their economic impact accounts for 2 billion. And that's roughly 2.4% of Long Beach, just total impact. And it also sustains an additional 5000 jobs into the local region. Focusing on self-employed. We see that focusing on self-employed Latino immigrants. We see that they account for 6852 jobs in the local region, and this generates an additional 3000 jobs throughout the region. Thank you, Megan. Okay. So moral of the story. Latinos work more than anybody else, but earn less. That's what the data shows. Higher labor force participation, less earnings. And Latino immigrants generate a huge impact into our regional economy. So Latino immigrants create jobs, don't take jobs away. So what's next for us? So we've had two community stakeholder meetings. As a Councilmember Wodonga referred to, we had a Latino Economic Summit in the fall. We also had a policy roundtable with systems leaders and these were some of the next steps that have been proposed to us that we were going to work on the rest of this calendar year. One is to present this rollout report in different community context and community settings and provide ongoing updates. We're working on the current update right now for this year, which will be released in fall of this calendar year. Second, to include more comparative data. So how are we doing in relation to other cities comparable to ours? And then how are Latinos doing in relation to other population subgroups? So that will be included in the update. Third, how do we leverage, support funding and partnerships both public and private around what the data is telling us here today? Next, how do we also explore alignment with our local, regional and state efforts, strategies and initiatives? Economic Blueprint. Dr. Simons referred to the Economic Forum in two days next to identified targeted action oriented strategies, policies and programs to address these conditions and issues, not just from a deficit approach, but how do we continue growing our economy based on the efforts of Latinos here in Lambics, and how do we make policy decisions again to enhance those efforts? And then lastly, a developing policy framework to better understand the data. The data by itself tells us something. But how how do we frame the data around policy needs, policy implications and move forward that way? So out of these stakeholder meetings, these are the policies have emerged. And what we're hoping to do is start developing recommendations out of the policy areas. This is a first sneak peek at how we organize the recommendations and the data provided at our stakeholder meetings. So policy areas are around economic inclusion, closing opportunity gaps in education, eliminating health disparities and immigrant integration. So this is the way we're framing the data moving forward. What do we mean by implementing economic inclusion? It's really developing policy framings that address Latino poverty and wealth in Lambic. What do we mean by closing opportunity gaps? Again, framing the data around Latino educational outcomes. So although in our region, high school graduation rates are improving, we still have a systemic gap which we refer to as an opportunity or equity gap. Next. Eliminating health disparities. Again, framing our discussions around Latino health inequities. So the fact that we have children uninsured in Long Beach tells us something, what can we do about it? And then the last piece here is around immigrant integration. So we have data here that shows that immigrants are a vital part of our economy. How do we build. Protections. Around our immigrant populations and how do we increase support for our immigrant populations, given that they are contributing. Members of not just our local society. But our local economy? So that's the preview for you, distinguished council members, city staff Mayor Garcia and. Our community members. And we're looking forward to providing you some. Next steps on what the data and the findings. Demonstrate. I want to thank again our colleagues here from the university, from the Economic Development Department here, and, of course, our partner in crime, Central Asia. In this effort. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Benitez. Let me let me just do two things, and I'm going to turn this back to customary ranga in a minute here. What I want to thank, of course, just all the the collaboration that happened here. Obviously, any time that the university gets involved in such a large research project, I think is is a great thing, especially when you're partnering with Central Cha, a nonprofit agency in the work that's happening in economic development at the city. And so I just want to thank all the partnerships. We know when you get the head of the communication program in and the heads of our departments and all the folks at the university so engaged in this work. This work is also very important to President Connerly, who I know is very aware of the results. I just want to thank the Cal State Long Beach family for four for doing the work, which I'm a proud member of, by the way, which I love you guys. And let me let me let me add that two things that are not here that I think are critical. One is I remember and I talked to Jessica about this a few years ago, you might remember when the State of Black Long Beach came out, that report that was, I thought, really well done at the time. And I know a lot of folks had discussions back then when that report came out about all the information that that that provided around the African-American community and the challenges that there were different needs and other populations would also be great to have data on. And so I think, you know, the folks that were involved in that report and I think to where I think them also for that work and the fact that this is happening within within the Latino community is also really important work. And so I just wanted to uplift that. And then I also wanted to add that the number that the numbers that aren't in here that I that I find important are the numbers around Long Beach Unified. And I know Dr. Bennett is you know, this as good as anyone at the while, the population of of Long Beach Latinos is 43%. The population at Long Beach Unified is much higher than that. 54.5% mayor. And and can and continues to grow pretty rapidly year after year. And so I think what that what the what the data shows is, you know, we have to ensure that that I think it's our interests that every population succeed. Right. Regardless of of of color of where people are in life. And I think that is the mission of this work is to ensure if if Long Beach is going to have and be successful five, ten, 20 years from now. It will it will achieve success if the Latino community also achieve success because it's a growing continues to grow up growing piece of this pie. And so we know this is a community that still lags behind in some of these indicators. And so we want all of the we want every population wannabees to succeed. And and I just want to thank you for the work you bring on on this important topic. And so thank you very much to the whole team. So with that, I want to turn this back over to Councilmember Ringo. Thank you, Mayor, and very observant about what's taking place here. And I want to thank Seiji and Dr. Benevides for bringing this forward. The question I have is an effort for being here as well and to set the shop. We're putting this together. I mean, it's things don't happen in a in a vacuum. And there's there's a lot of support and impetus that goes into this when when I see my my, my my former colleague Ron Arias in the audience and my friend, my former professor and student Armando Vazquez Ramos, they're still involved or still engaged because we need to continue that into the future. But more importantly, I think that this preview is very timely. We know that in 2020 comes the census, the 2020 census, and we know that we're going to get a lot more information from a result of that, that census data and in terms of employment participation and community participation in the economy as a whole. But also one thing that wasn't here and perhaps it's another story for another time is voting rights. Obviously, if there's any one thing that's important to us as city council members is a voting patterns and and voting participation and education among the Latino community. We all you always hear the same refrain, yep, Latinos, maybe 40% population, but they only vote at like 5% or 10% of the total electorate. So that's another aspect of maybe what what I said Richard could focus in on in terms of not only the economic impact of Latinos in the region or an anomaly specifically, but also the affects of the voting patterns as well. But I want to congratulate you. Thank you so much for putting this together, bringing it forward. Perhaps two years from now, we could get another one once the 2020 census data is out and we could evaluate it and study it and see where we at at that point. So I want to thank you for for being here. Thank you very much, Councilmember and Councilwoman Gonzales. Yes. Thanks again for delivering this amazing report. I had the opportunity to see this live with over 100 or so, probably over 200 people that attended. And it was really great to see all of the in-depth data and be a part of that. And I know that thanks to all of you, Megan, Seiji and Dr. Benitez and Central Cha and Cal State, Long Beach. The collective work. I know this will be a living document and evolving document. We're already getting an update, which is exciting and I'm just very glad to see this. This is not only unprecedented in our city, but it's unprecedented in the region. You go to L.A. and they're like mind blown that we actually have an economic impact report dedicated to one demographic that is growing at a rapid rate here in our city. And I've said the same thing relative to Councilmember Turanga is that it'd be really nice. I mean, the Cambodian community is now asking for their own economic impact report, the LGBTQ community. So it's just we have so much potential there. And especially given the fact that Swedish Japanese friend of ours is delivering the Latino Economic Impact Report is amazing. Thank you, Seiji. What you're doing is is incredible, and I look forward to working with you in any capacity possible. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Vice Mayor. Fine, thank you very much. You know, I apply that. You know, I think after the mayor was speaking of, you know, the African-American Vietnamese, we have such a diverse city in which we live in. I think an impact like this should be done all over our city. So we'll all know where we are. But I think on first of all, I'd like to thank Councilman Murang'a for taking the lead on bringing this to the council. And I would also like to thank Central Cha and Cal State Long Beach for that diligently and effort in compiling these reports. This report validates what we have all known for a long time. Latinos are an important, are important, vital and growing segment in the city of Long Beach and in the sixth District. We as a city must take this fact into account and plan for the future. We must ensure that we develop the process of a 2030 strategic plan, and we use this strategy that will include Latino communities. We must dedicate more funds, more funds into the language, access and digital inclusion. Lastly, Senator, share your leadership on this effort has been extraordinary and it's always is is solving issues in our community. And I want to thank all of you again. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Councilmember Richard. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to just share some share some thoughts. Councilmember Ranga, thank you so much for allowing this opportunity to see this presentation here at council. I saw it the first time I saw it was with Councilwoman Gonzalez at the roundtable. And I was impressed then and I'm impressed now at the detail in the organization on how the data was presented. It really paints a clear picture and I love to see the team how organized the team is at presenting this one. Seiji Jessica from Central Cha. Megan You know I can't wait to hire Megan one day. So my my larger takeaway here is that, you know, over the last few years, there's been this constant threat of equity. And it's been coming up at council, it's been coming up in the community. This common denominator, it's common language. You know, you see, here's a Latino economic equity profile discussing racial equity. There was just the policy link equity profile. There's a conversation about Parks Equity and Office of Equity. And what we're hearing is that it's time for the city to really acknowledge that equity is important to our values and it needs to be woven into our service philosophy as the city. Baked in knots, sprinkled on top right braid at the root. What we do in every department. Because, you know, I think the mayor said said it best is that when the Latino population thrives, Long Beach thrives. And the same goes for people of color. And everyone in our city, as you know, as people thrive, our entire city thrives. And that's important. I also like the fact that the way you framed it, you you you tied in opportunity. And I would even say open with the opportunity. Have people understand that asset, the asset, the the aspirational framing that Long Beach is doing great. But imagine how much greater we would be doing if we had racial equity in our city, if we had if we closed our racial wealth gap in our city, if people had access to owning homes and starting businesses and we're making money, imagine how much greater Long Beach would be. And everyone can sort of connect at that point. And then we say, but here's the barrier, here's why we're not doing as great as we could. It's because certain communities need attention and they need you know, we need to make sure that we're being intentional at closing those gaps. And so those are my my thoughts that I think it's I think this is very timely. I thank you for for this presentation. You clearly have my support, as you know, as we continue this conversation on economic inclusion in the city, I'm going to continue to engage you to make sure that we again, we make this in and then we braid this throughout things that we do. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilman. I really appreciate the work. This was a phenomenally done report. I would only I want to echo councilman or vice mayor Andrew's comments, but I also would love to see the data. There's some L.A.. County reports that also talk about mentorship versus home. Ownership and that ability to then be able to afford health care and the others and then what local opportunities we could have, where we. Encourage those who are selling off their wealth to sell it to those who live within those apartments already and to condo. Wise, even smaller, smaller units, whether they're even triplexes or quad plexus, so that there's the ability to have that ownership. Because the L.A. County report that I remember talked a lot about the difference of two communities that were significantly similar in every aspect. Except for. The ability to own your future through housing. And so just great report and I can't wait to see more. Thank you so much. And congratulations to everyone, especially all of you that pitched in to make this happen. So great work. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Price. Thank you. I echo the comments of my colleagues. Fantastic presentation. I definitely learned a lot and you guys did a wonderful job, especially to our student presenter. Fantastic job with your presentation, so thank you. I know that we live in such a diverse city and having come from an immigrant background myself, it's always interesting for me to hear the different economic data that we have and educational data that we have of the different communities. I know I actually save the presentation. I'm going to give it to my son's teacher tomorrow. He goes to Long Beach Unified and they're studying this issue right now in a human geography class and talking not just about cultural demographics and information, but also the impact of working families in terms of the development, the development of, you know, successful, I guess, contributors in society. So finding that in places where you have, you know, family members, everyone is working outside the home because they have to to, you know, live live within the expenses and the costs of living within that community. What kind of impact does that have on unemployment in the future, education, those kinds of things? So it's very interesting. We live in such a diverse city. It's very interesting to learn as much as we can. I welcome these kinds of studies and reports as to every every population in every different, diverse segment of our of our society. I think it helps us really understand the journey that everyone has to take, regardless of their race or financial background, but the diverse journeys that everyone has to take. So I appreciate it. And I thank you, Center Cha, for bringing this forward. And thank you for these awesome mugs. I appreciate it. I appreciate you guys continuing to educate us and partnering with us. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilwoman and Councilmember Pierce. Thank you. Great job. Great collaboration. I applaud you. I think it's really important to remember when I was at Cal State where I met Professor Juan Benitez, I did one of my last papers there was on immigration and the contributions that it made that they make into society. And it's so fascinating to see where the different thoughts come from. And so I really appreciate having an academic look at the economic impact because it is so important. Jose Lin D.A., who I mentioned earlier today. He worked three jobs. He worked at the Westin. He worked at the Hilton, and he worked the convention center. And so now having, you know, he was Latino. He had three kids. And so what is the economic impact for somebody that finds themselves in this poverty area, finds himself working more but making less? What's that impact on families and how does that impact their health? How does that impact study practice like it is so intertwined? And so to be able to have you guys really make some policy recommendations to us. I mean, one thing that's clear being on council is we might have ideas, but we really need to rely on experts to come forward and say, here's some models that we should try. And so I, I also want to give a shout out to our economic development team. Recently, we had a small business that was going to be put on the market, and their employees, all Latino, had worked there for many of them for 30 years. And so he was talking about selling. And if he sold to a Starbucks or Jack in the Box, those employees would probably lose their jobs. But with the work of community members and council working with economic development, hopefully now that ownership is going to go to those employees with this great grant program that our team has worked on. And so how can we use opportunities like that to think outside the box versus just how do we just build this one level of wealth? You know, and so how do we think creatively about that? And then in downtown? One of the things that I think we're going to start working on is how do we fill our office spaces? Like what type of job should we have in downtown that will contribute to a thriving downtown? What opportunities are there for Latinos, for African-Americans, for our community and communities to own businesses and operate in our downtown as well? So I would say one other area that I don't think we talk about a lot, but prep I got to I'm a renter and I got a prep notice at my house and my landlord said, don't tell the city you're going to be here. You don't have to do that. Because he was scared about what they might find. If your landlord tells somebody that is undocumented or poor and struggling to make every single dollar count, they're likely not going to let somebody in to help make their lives better. And so I think we as a city have to continue to think about that. And so those are just some some thoughts off the top of my head, but I really appreciate the work and I look forward to hearing more from you guys and seeing how we can collaborate. Thank you so very much. Thank you so much, Councilmember and councilman. Thank you. And I'd just like to lend my words of support to this. This is a very, very powerful economic report. I want to salute and commend the the information. I want to salute and commend the partnership, but most importantly, to the work and the work that will be done. This this report really kind of warms my heart, makes me very proud of our city because I think very few cities actually can can put together this type of partnership with the city. A world class university driven by a passionate community based organization like Central China, with with with collaboration and and of so many people involved in this, I had opportunity to actually go in and personally attend the Latino Economic Summit a few months ago, sat at the table with some some very thoughtful leaders. I learned so much just in the couple of hours that I was able to see there to to to be there for that. And there was so much more powerful information shared during that period of time that obviously you couldn't go into all of it here today. But if there is an opportunity, I would love to get that entire report to and possibly to the entire city council, because that data is very powerful. And as an elected official, I want to know as much as I possibly can about all of my constituency groups to be able to make good, sound decisions. And I think the report that you guys have put together, the presentation here this evening, will help us move in that direction. Moving forward, I think one of the big takeaways that I got a few months ago after attending the the economic summit was that, you know, we really have to turn to really. Focus on creating good jobs in this city. And I think one of the indicators there was not so good in terms of the economic forecasts. One of the presenters gave in terms of the type of jobs that are going to be available in the future. I think we really need to look to to stem that tide and figure out how we can make sure that people are going to be compensated so that they can have the good health care and access to good health care, the access to education and good housing. And that is what's going to be the great equalizer or the equity that will come from that. And so, again, I wanted to just commend you all. Thank you for this report. And also thank my colleague, Councilmember Yarrawonga for bringing it forward is very conscious. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And I want to thank all of you again for a great presentation. I'm going to do we're going to do public comment just as a as a note. We do have another large item right after this. So if we could just limit public comment as much as possible. If there's public comment, please come forward on this item. Okay. I guess that's going to be good. Okay. We like that. Good evening, Mayor. City Council. Ron Audio's eighth district. I simply just want to thank each and every one of you for your comments and your thoughtfulness in receiving this report. I can say that I've been coming down here for. Close to 40. Years, 24 as. A city staff member, and a lot more before that as a as a community activist and now as a as a a veteran of many of those things. But this council, without question, in my mind, is one of the most representative city councils that we have ever had. You actually look like the Long Beach that I know. And we just want to congratulate you guys to make us feel the way that you've done tonight. That was it. That didn't happen. 25, 30 years ago. You know, we were on the. Outside trying to peek. In. And now with each and every one of you and. Who you represent, I just want to congratulate you guys. You guys are doing good work. Keep it up. I think Long Beach is in very good hands. Thank you. Thank you, Ron. Next speaker, please. And I'm going to close the speakers list after these four speakers. Okay. So thank you. Good evening. My name is Lily and I'm the director of Health, Education and outreach for the Children's Clinic. And Dr. Nicholas, our CEO, sends her regards. She couldn't be here tonight, but we really wanted to thank Cal State, Long Beach, Go Beach. They teach students really well. Thank you very much. I think I graduated with a mayor's class. And we also want to thank Central Cha. Thank you very much for bringing this very important report. You're very right. We are geeking out over the data the children's clinic has. It's one of the largest nonprofit clinics here in Long Beach. We have 13 clinics across the Greater Long Beach area, and we serve well over 40,000 individuals ranging from ages zero two all the way to the grandparents. And this report is going to greatly influence our strategic plan moving forward. We don't just do 1 to 1 patient care. We're very focused on social determinants of health and from a public health point of view, socioeconomic resources and having success and access to all of these things that were presented in the report makes a huge impact on health. And it's really. Important for us to focus on these. Health and these economic and health inequities to. Make sure. That we have positive health outcomes in the community. And we're going to try to partner with all of. The stakeholders in the room and hopefully with the city and all of the council people to make sure. That TCC is able to. Deliver more. Services and health care and insurance to our community members. Thank you so. Much. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Our last speaker on this item. Uh, hello. Good afternoon. Uh, Mayor Garcia and the City Council. My name is Abraham Ordaz. Um, I was raised here in Long Beach. Um, I lived in the Eastside for the majority of my life growing up. I was, um, unfortunately gotten into a lot of trouble in and out of school. Um, never really attended school. Unfortunately, I didn't graduated when I was supposed to. Thankfully, um, after finding a few resources, I was able to complete my high school diploma. Um, I finished here Long Beach Conservation Corp in December 1328, 2018. Um, I found Santa Rosa due to a court mandate. I had to do a few community service hours for an altercation I got myself into with the law. Um, thankfully, my probation has been terminated on April 11th, 2019 on. Central Georgia has benefited me greatly by giving me access to job training, job certification, and now a part time job as a project coordinator here along Port Vila. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn, make, graphic design, screen printing, e-commerce and marketing with sales and retail. If it wasn't for Central China, I would probably not been in the position where I am. I probably would have been out in the streets doing what I was doing before. We have provided these lovely coffee mugs that we had made ourselves by our team members here. Lambie's. Uh, central to. Uh. Uh, please check us out is for the dot com. Um. All Oh all of the proceeds that we get back from the sale from making all of these. Um. Uh, cells will go back into the communities to help people out. I want to thank my mom, Jessica Anthony, in the central team for all these opportunities. Um, thank you very much. Thank you. Good job. Excellent. Where until. I want you to tell. Where can we. I'm going to. I'm going to go buy that hat you're wearing right now. So where can we get working? We buy that hat and other things that you're selling. Um, well. We have a. Budget to tell it, tell everybody. We have a location. And the mix of people back. People on the TV area. Um, we have a location here on Long Beach. Boulevard and PCH. Um. But if you, if a lot of people can make it out there, we also have a website. Um, it is a long beach port vila dot com. And right there you'll be able to find all their products. And what I mean a well-designed logo and look. And it looks good. Mm. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. I'm definitely buying that hat. That's my new hat. Okay, so we have a motion in a second. Members, please cast your votes. Mm. Motion carries. Great. Thank you very much. We're going to go ahead and move on to the next item, which is item number 21. No, I'm sorry. Item for the play, item 14.