Affordable-housing advocates demonstrate in front of Long Beach City Hall on Jan. 7 before the City Council approves an update to the City’s Housing Element, a planning document that sets guidelines for housing for the next seven years.
Staff Writer
A planning document for how housing will be shaped in Long Beach for the next seven years was signed off by the City Council at its Jan. 7 meeting, preparing the lengthy proposal for final State certification.
After a nearly two-hour public hearing, the update to the City’s Draft Housing Element, which covers a period from 2013 to 2021, was unanimously approved by the Council as presented by city staff. The California Department of Housing and Community Development Department is expected to provide an official finding of compliance to the City by May, according to city officials.
The Council’s approval culminates several months of discussion between city staff, state officials and community stakeholders. Under state mandates, the City is required to institute policies and planning in order to ensure there would be enough housing available for residents of all income levels in the years to come.
The Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA), which is allocated through the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) and determined by the State, requires that the City accommodate a total of 7,048 housing units from last year through 2021 to align with projected regional housing needs.
Amy Bodek, director of the Long Beach Community Development Services Department, assured the Council that city staff has expanded several existing housing programs and is adding new ones to meet the State’s requirements and goals. She said the State already issued a letter on Dec. 27, stating that the City’s Housing Element as drafted is in compliance with state law.
“We believe we have been very responsive and have pushed the envelope quite a bit from where we were as a city from the old housing element to the new housing element,” Bodek said.
New programs that were added to the Housing Element include a “right of first refusal” program for displaced low-income residents, expanding the zoning code to include areas the City would allow emergency shelters by right and planning transit-oriented development, particularly along the Blue Line corridor on Long Beach Boulevard.
City staff has also proposed studying the possibility of a rent escrow account program (REAP), which is implemented in Los Angeles and allows residents living in “substandard units” to pay their rent to the City where it’s held in an account until code violations are fixed by the landlord.
The REAP proposal was brought forward during community discussion by affordable-housing advocates Housing Long Beach and the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. However, Bodek said it’s not clear if the program is needed in Long Beach, noting that only 24 rental units out of the 10,000 units the City deals with annually in code-enforcement issues have been deemed “substandard.”
At the request of 9th District Councilmember Steven Neal, the Council approved a friendly amendment to have city staff come back with a full analysis of a REAP in addition to other programs throughout the state that deal with habitability issues for rental units by December. A rental-habitability program would be up for Council approval no later than the end of 2015, Bodek said.
One request from affordable-housing advocates that was not approved by the Council was for the City to allocate 20 percent of new property tax funding— that the City now receives after the State demolished redevelopment agencies (RDAs)— toward affordable housing.
Prior to the dissolution of redevelopment, cities were able to set aside property-tax increment funding to provide developers with incentives to build affordable-housing projects. However, City Manager Pat West clarified that, because RDA no longer exists, property-tax revenue can no longer go toward affordable housing because it is now a part of the City’s revenue source for the General Fund, which pays for critical city services. Setting aside such money for affordable housing would create a budget deficit, he said.
“There are no funds that are boomeranging back to the city,” West said. “Redevelopment is dead. It’s gone.”
Councilmember Neal proposed setting aside 10 percent of property-tax funds for affordable housing, however he later rescinded his proposal after receiving clarification from city staff.
Bodek noted that the City currently has $16.8 million in its housing fund for affordable housing in addition to $16 million that the Council, acting as the RDA successor agency, committed when approving a repayment schedule last year.
She said the City also has a repayment of debt of more than $24 million owed to the housing fund. Additionally, the City is expected to receive $85 million for affordable housing on an annual basis through federal programs, such as Section 8 vouchers for homeless families and community development block grant funds. Councilmembers agreed to further discuss the city’s affordable-housing funds during the budget process.
The Council didn’t approve an inclusionary housing or zoning ordinance, which would have required that a percentage of all development in the city be set aside for affordable housing. The ordinance, which has been heavily pushed by affordable-housing groups, was opposed by various business entities, including the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Long Beach Associates.
