In the first city council meeting of the year, Long Beach’s leaders unanimously declared a state of emergency in response to the homelessness crisis.
“This declaration of emergency allows us to move faster, it allows us to establish some priorities and place some focus,” said Mayor Rex Richardson, who authored the item with councilmember Mary Zendejas. “This allows us to say very clearly right at the beginning of this year that homelessness is our very top priority.”
The declaration will give City Manager Tom Modica more freedom to request assistance from state and federal resources, streamline contracts with homeless service providers, hire supplemental staff and reassign City staff and resources to address the issue. It also increases Modica’s hiring budget from $200,000 to $1 million and allows the city council to approve purchases up to $1 million.
Modica and City staff will return every two weeks with an update to the council on the state of emergency.
The action is in response to the nearly 70% increase in people living unhoused in Long Beach from Feb. 2020 to Feb. 2022, when the most recent Point in Time Count was conducted. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass introduced a state of emergency due to homelessness for LA on Dec. 12 and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors did the same for LA County on Jan. 11.
“Prior to the pandemic we had a homeless problem in the city,” Richardson said. “We had a housing crisis in our region, but the pandemic has exacerbated that crisis, and when you add on top of that skyrocketing housing costs, inflation and a mental health crisis … you find yourself in an emergency.”
Although Long Beach has increased the number of interim and permanent low-income housing in recent years, Kelly Colopy, director of Health and Human Services, said that Los Angeles County now has half the number of winter shelter sites than it did last year, and two-thirds the number of beds available for those unhoused.
Nearly half the people who were homeless in Long Beach in 2022 said it was their first time being homeless, and there was a 143% increase in individuals who are homeless and suffer from mental illness. Thirty-six percent of people who were homeless in 2022 suffered from a physical disability and 31% had a chronic medical condition.
“The systems that we have in place are not at the levels to serve these physical and mental health issues,” Colopy said.
The state of emergency will classify City workers as disaster workers, giving Modica more flexibility to shift positions and priorities as needed. Modica said one of the priorities will be speeding up the recruitment and selection process for unclassified government positions. The Civil Service Department and Civil Service Commission will review and modify the same process for classified positions in order to speed up the hiring process across the board.
City staff laid out a number of metrics that the City will follow to measure its success in addressing the crisis:
- Decreasing the number of people experiencing homelessness
- Decreasing the number of people who die homeless
- Increasing housing placements
- Increasing starts on new affordable housing options
- Increasing the number of temporary and permanent housing units
- Increasing outside aid through access to mental health and substance use beds
- Decreasing the disproportionality in which Black, Indigenous and Pacific Islanders experience homelessness
- Decreasing the number of people becoming homeless
- Increasing regional partnerships
- Increasing efforts to address violence on or perpetuated by people experiencing homelessness
- Increasing the speed of delivering critical projects addressing homelessness
“We’re already putting out calls to our departments to see who’s able and willing to join this effort and then if we need to, we can also do assignments to help with the staffing as well,” Modica said. “We’re also looking for employees who have specific expertise to help in our emergency response.”
Long Beach’s state of emergency to homelessness is similar to its state of emergency during the pandemic, Modica said, since it gives the City more flexibility to streamline the approval of shelters, safe parking sites, mental health care and other land uses as well as permits and inspections for homeless-related projects.
It differs however, in that the money spent to address the COVID-19 pandemic was reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency since it was a nationwide emergency.
This state of emergency is local and will require City staff to find the funds internally, either through one-time funds or previously unspent appropriations. Modica emphasized that they are not working with “unlimited resources.”
“Other projects and priorities may experience some delays as we rapidly shift more resources to homelessness,” Modica said.
As of Jan. 11, Long Beach established an Incident Command Center, similar to the one established during the pandemic. The model allows employees from various agencies and departments to work together to use resources from federal and state entities throughout the city for a prolonged period of time.
Colopy from the Health and Human Services Department and Eric Lopez, director of Public Works, will lead the Emergency Operations Center which comprises nine work groups and nearly 100 City employees.
The nine work groups will focus on different areas of the homelessness crisis and include: intergovernmental work, public health and safety, communications, data and technology, housing and land access, procurement and finance, human resources and staffing, logistics and educational institutions, businesses, faith-based organizations and nonprofits.
Multiple residents voiced their support for the declaration and cited the need for preventative services to keep more people from becoming homeless. The state and LA county eviction moratorium, which protected residents from evictions due to COVID-19 hardships, will end on Feb. 1 and risks an even greater increase in homelessness.
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