Recommendation to request City Manager to draft a report on the feasibility of implementing a "Safe Parking" program such as those found in the cities of Santa Barbara and Monterey Bay that would (1) move people who reside in their cars off the street and into safe spaces (2) that those locations would provide basic essential services (3) connect these individuals with programs that will work to move them into permanent housing. Items for the report to include: · Review of best practices from other cities, · Potential locations that have both parking spaces and services (Multi-service center, Churches, etc), · Identify the basic essential services that would need to be provided at locations, · Number of potential parking spots, and · Provide 1-3 program options including their time to implement and their costs.
Thank you. And item number 18, please. Communication from Councilmember Pierce, Councilwoman Price, Councilman Andrews and Councilmember Otunga. Recommendation to request the city manager to draft report on the feasibility of implementing a safe parking program. Thank you. We'll go to Councilmember Pearce. Thank you. Yes. I just you know, we have here to review best practices from other cities with potential locations that could volunteer to have their parking spaces available to people who find themselves without shelter, that we can connect them with services. So making sure that this is a pathway to housing and to getting back on their feet, i. So I want to just put it out there as having staff come back with some best practices. This is something that's been done in several cities, and I think it's the right thing to do. And think Long Beach. After last week's council meeting is primed for, you know, stepping forward and doing this. So thank you. Sorry, guys. I feel terrible. Tonight. Thank you, Councilman Andrews. That's okay. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You know, and as you and I think, councilwoman, you know, cheers for doing this because this is an item. It's really been something that I think is on most of our minds. And I think it's time for us now to really act. And year fiscal year 17 will allocate it $840,000 for general fund to the homeless service and $2.6 million to Animal Care Service. I love our cats and dogs and we have to remind these homeless people that we have families and we need to have a compassion for this and we have to do something to help them and we need to do it more. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Price Pryce. Thank you. I want to thank my colleague for bringing this forward. I'm always looking for opportunities to collaborate with my colleagues. And this is one of those projects that really allows us to think outside the box. Having said that, I think it's implied in the report, but I. Hope that the report. That comes back also shares with the Council any detrimental impacts that such a program has had in other cities, so that we can be mindful of that as we move forward as well as identifying opportunities. So I think several of the cities that have that were mentioned, I know just by speaking with folks in Santa Barbara last week who work for the city there, they they've had their challenges, to say the least, with this issue. And there are opportunities that come as a result of this. But I'm hoping that we can explore all of it, because I think this is a really great. Way. For us to think outside the box. And I commend Councilwoman Pearce for for doing that, because that's that that's the kind of thinking that's going to get us to some long term solutions to deal with this with the issues that we're seeing. So with that, I urge my colleagues to support this item and request that a report come back so that we can all be further educated on this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Superman. Thank you. I just want to follow up on what was was just said on the report. We have items for the report to include colon and then five bullet points and Mr. city attorney that that would infer to include but not limited to. We're here to take direction. But I believe. Yes, that's correct. If there's an additional thing. Like that would. See. Thank you. Well, I think that Councilmember Price did not add friendly amendments. But I would just like to add and as she did, that the report would include unintended consequences. You know, those types of things would be part of it. That is, if if we created this service, would there be an attraction for those outside the city to come utilize it, those types of things, if that's what's implied in in her comments. That's great. The other thing is, last week, we just kind of set course on a citywide ordinance involving RVs. And it seems like this might be a carrot without the stick as it is written here. So I would like to see the report on the RV ordinance come back and be part of this. So if that constitutes a friendly amendment and then I'd like to add that at this time. Council member? PEARCE Yeah, I mean, the reason why I put this on so quickly was so that it could be along the same timeline as the RV item. And so knowing that they are not, you know, separate from each other, but that if we do if we come back with this RV report, we should also have a report about what opportunities people who are sleeping in their cars have in the city. And, you know, I don't think it requires a friendly amendment for us to continue to give direction about what we want the staff to come back with. So thank you. Sure thing. Is any public comment on this item? Good evening, counsel. My name is Angela Kimball and I testified last week in respect to the RV warrant ordinance. We kind of feel like the ordinance got hijacked a little bit and went off track dealing with just homelessness and what. We started with? Well, I started with Jockey Cal in the fifth District. Jerry shipped ski and now this mongo trying to look at a city wide approach to put an RV ordinance in place. Other cities have done it. Other coastal cities have done it. Redondo Beach. Manhattan Beach. Huntington Beach. SEAL Beach. It's reasonable for our viewers to be able to bring their RV's home, load them up and go out and enjoy their families and have a great time and a great vacation. But it's unreasonable to expect the neighbors that live around them and on the streets around them to have to navigate around these large vehicles that are littering the community. And we're asking you once again to take a city wide approach. We're concerned with the issue tonight that we're talking about with homelessness, that the city look at the possibility of if we if you move forward with safe parking, are you inviting more homeless people to come to Long Beach that you're struggling with now to provide services and support? When we go to community meetings, we hear that 90% of the contacts made with homeless people are rejected, which is staggering. I think Councilmember Durango mentioned that only one in 50 of the people in his park area near his district accepted help. And that's that's really tragic with the amount of money and the efforts, because I know Long Beach is really working hard to try to solve homeless problems. But we're asking you to also think about the residents in these communities who get up and go to work every day. And, you know, we're trying to raise our families and we want safe streets that are not littered with RV's all over their neighborhoods. I mean, it's the long term storage that we're concerned about. And we appreciate Councilwoman Price bringing this issue forward. I wish she would really get some more support from the council and the mayor on this because it's a district wide problem if you solve both of these. If you look at these both of these issues together, if you have a reasonable plan in place for parking, you can also have a reasonable plan for addressing the homeless issues and people living in those cars and in those RVs in the community. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Stefan Lawson Solo, a second District resident with the issue of RV specifically and with the safe parking we have to take into account the resistance is coming to these folks is mainly it is coming to it their appearance and in their apparent poverty in which they're bringing. Making an ordinance in which they would be limiting their ability to park inside of the city is discriminatory on its face. And its impact would be that it would be in line with others, with other cities that have chosen to do this as a way of punishing their poor residents, the homeless, our residents. We need to start making that distinction. They have less means that they're available or they're available than other people. But the folks who are specifically who are specifically having to live in their cars represent a certain degree of homelessness. That is more that is more in line with what we would experts would call working poor. These are folks who, like the residents inside of their homes in Long Beach, wake up every day and mostly go to jobs. They're raising their families inside of their cars. If you go inside Bixby Park and take a lap around there any time around 1130 at night or so, you're going to be seeing parents tucking their children in the back seats, providing them with a safe access without the fear of police. Retribution is going to be the way the way to be able to increase the people who are going to be accepting help in accepting services. When you are facing criminal repercussions for perhaps parking in a place where where you've been, where you've been told that you had or defecating in a place where there isn't an open restroom for four or five miles. And that's our conference. You don't really want to accept help for you don't really trust the government when they when they're coming in to telling you that they're going to be providing new housing. The last time that you maybe had a contact with them, the housing that you received was a criminal citation and a trip overnight in jail. So I'm sorry. So if you really are looking at that at a the creation of an ordinance and especially one that will not create a discriminatory impact, I say take a look, a strong look at the ones in Monterey and Santa Barbara. Look at the ways in which they they designed an ordinance that was not specifically trying to move away the homeless so that they were less apparent to tourists, but instead was a way to actually promote both public health and a redistribution of necessary resources to those who need it. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Honorable Council. Members. And Mr. Vice. Mayor. Andy Kirk, excuse me, Vice Chair of the Homeless Services Commission representing the eighth District. I was the person that spoke on this issue at the homeless, the study session actually it was it was after the study session, but at last week's meeting. And I just want to bring up a couple of points. First of all, I want to thank the council for bringing up this issue again this evening, because I think it is an important thing to bring up in coordination with the possible creating new policies around the parking of Arby's and just the the living within vehicles in general issue. And so that's why I had I had originally brought up the safe parking measures that have been used in other communities. But just one point or a couple of points I want to bring up. First of all, I think there's a fine line policy wise between the issue of encouraging homeless to come to Long Beach versus exploiting the homeless issue that already exists from Long Beach to other communities. And I think that's why we need to to look at this truly as a regional issue. And that was the strong point that was made during the study session as the city of Long Beach isn't an island of itself. We are a part of a very large county. We're right next to another very large county in the county of Orange. We're part of a very large state that is grappling with this issue. So I think it's really important to keep in mind that we need to address this issue as a regional issue. And I think we should also possibly look at what the Los Angeles Homeless Services is also losses of so doing with regards to this issue, because I know they're also grappling with this issue on a city, city of Los Angeles level and the county, which are our neighbors in which we're a part of. So I think maybe there's some coordination that could happen along those lines that hasn't hasn't been talked about yet. Also, I also wanted to make sure in my bringing this up that we're not looking to maybe settle this on the Multi-Service Center. I did discuss this a little bit since last week's council meeting, and I don't think the Multi-Service Center in speaking with Theresa Chandler that that's the ideal setting for this type of program because of the location, because of what is already being done at that location and how that location is set up and providing the services they already provide. And then finally, just one last point. I think it's important also when we talk to the city governments that are doing similar things like Santa Barbara and Monterey and Las, I think we should also talk to some of the nonprofits that are also administering these types of programs to get feedback from them, because I see them as an important partner. If the city were to move forward on something like this, because they're the ones that would provide a lot of the services and would have the hands on knowledge of how these programs work. And so that's it for me. Thank you. Thank you and we'll take it back behind the rail. Councilmember Pearce. Thank you and thank you, Commissioner Kerr, for your comments as well. I want to speak to two things. One is the out-of-towners I think that we can look at when we look at other cities, making sure that we have Long Beach residents that have a Long Beach driver's license, that those are the first ones that are welcomed into a program like this. I also want to talk about the fact that there are only a limited number of parking spaces that are probably out there and that we wanted to ensure that we're doing this partnership with churches. So I've reached out to Pastor Sanders and I've also reached out to several other clergy folks in my district that will welcome having a community process as we look forward. So it's not just with city staff coming back with a report, but that we in the community and in the districts are also coordinating with nonprofits and churches that might be ones that are volunteering to open up these services. And so I think that we can definitely ensure that we're not opening this up to everybody. And even though we've had the health department say that people aren't driving here by the busloads but so one I think that and to I also had a comment around parking and how this impacts parking. I think that if anything, this is something that helps with parking. And when we look at the cost to cities, it looks like HUD has estimated that taxpayers pay about $40,000 a year for every unsheltered homeless person. And this includes expenses like emergency room fees and parking ticket enforcement. And so this is one other area that we can alleviate some of the costs that occurred with having a homeless population. So again, look forward to a study coming back. So thank you. Councilman Austin. Thank you. And thank you, Councilmember Pierson, the rest of the council members who brought this forward. I will be supporting this because I think it merits our attention. I'm especially appreciative of the public comments. I think there's a lot of value in public comment and hearing from our residents. And so and I don't want you to get me wrong, I think this is an important issue that needs to be before the council. But in the future I'd like to see it on a normal schedule so that we have the time to, to air it to, to for public disclosure and to give the public the heads up to be able to come in and weigh in on an important issue like this. And so to the best extent possible, if we can avoid the supplemental agenda for or for items like this that isn't that doesn't necessitate an urgency. I would appreciate that. But I will be supporting this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Pearce. Thank you, Councilmember Austin. I'll just put it on the supplemental just so we can try to get along with the RV. If that's a 30 day or 60 day, I'm okay with having this come back in 60 days so that we can have more community input. I just would say that. Thank you. Thank you. And I will just say I want to thank Councilmember Pearce and those who signed on with this proposal. Sometimes public policy development is a process. One item may lead to another item, one thing that you think might be an unintended, unintended consequence. You come out and give, you know, do a good, try it out at fixing it or make an attempt to fix it. And so sometimes it comes together organically. So I like this approach that allows staff to study it. It engages stakeholders like clergy in the process. So so I'm you know I'll be supporting this tonight councilmember been. 20 seconds. Already past the 730 go. I got to go for it. Because the FISA study was on the agenda tonight. I'd just like to remind you, this is we're voting for a study. All right. That's all over the place tonight. Councilman Andrews, anything else? Anybody else want to say? Anything. All right. Thank you. Members, please cast your vote. Motion carries. This concludes our regular business. We have one more opportunity for public comment and anyone wishing to comment on an agenda items. Please come forward and state your name. You have 3 minutes. Is there any public comment?