Long Beach is looking to strengthen its nuisance hotel and alcohol nuisance abatement ordinances in response to decades-long issues on the Long Beach Boulevard corridor.
“A lot of community landmarks and history on this corridor,” Vice Mayor Rex Richardson said. “There’s also a history of chronic issues that have lasted for decades—literally decades—that involve human trafficking, nuisance motels, nuisance liquor stores, all of which are sort of anchored along Long Beach Boulevard.”
On Tuesday, May 10, residents from the Coolidge Triangle and other neighborhoods adjacent to the corridor decried the city’s slow progress in addressing nuisance issues like prostitution in the area.
“It’s not just on Long Beach Boulevard. It’s in the neighborhood,” said Patricia Long, longtime resident and president of the Coolidge Triangle Neighborhood Association. “When I take my dog for a walk, I have to look and see paraphernalia from sexual activity in the gutters on my street, by my house. My neighbors are just frantic.”
Monica Keller, president of the Starr King Neighborhood Association, said that children in her neighborhood are “witnessing things they’re too young for and should not be seeing,” noting that she has to do visual sweeps before neighborhood cleanups to make sure volunteers don’t come into contact with paraphernalia.
Today, 80% of the City’s calls to service for prostitution come from the area, known as “Beat 23,” according to Police Chief Wally Hebeish.
Beat 23 encompasses a portion of North Long Beach that includes neighborhoods of College Square, Starr King, Hamilton and Coolidge Triangle, as well as landmarks like Uptown Commons, the Atlantic Bridge Housing Community and the North Long Beach Community Garden.
Hebeish noted that most calls are for prostitution, but those calls can be escalated to human trafficking investigations after an initial assessment.
“That level of concentration demands increased attention,” said Councilmember Cindy Allen, a former police officer.
City officials first embarked on policies to address nuisance liquor stores in 2012, when the Long Beach City Council passed a directive to the Planning Commission to consider changes to its zoning regulations to prevent nuisance from liquor stores.
The City defines nuisance as “an umbrella term that includes everything from noise disturbances, loitering and the unlawful selling of controlled substances to overgrown vegetation and the violation of any building codes.”
The changes included requirements for exterior lighting, security cameras, unobstructed entrances and windows and the removal of pay phones and graffiti.
The resulting pilot ordinance was approved by the council in late 2013 and less than a year later, 11 of the 26 targeted liquor stores had reached compliance.
In 2015, all 26 liquor stores were in compliance and the program was extended citywide. The program won the 2016 Award of Excellence from the American Planning Associations of both Los Angeles and California.
Discussions on nuisance motels began in 2017, leading to a nuisance motel ordinance pilot program and later, in early 2020, the full implementation of a nuisance motel ordinance—which created security and facade standards for motels, among other requirements.
“I believe that if patterns of disparity exist for generations, that means this is systemic and the system is doing what it’s designed to do,” Richardson said. “So we have to commit to systems-thinking and a lot of the chronic issues are really related to policies we have, and land use hasn’t been updated in decades.”
The council item requests an update on the City’s alcohol nuisance abatement and motel nuisance regulation policies, including options to strengthen the ordinances, within 90 days. The city manager will also work with the police department to identify resources to address prostitution and human trafficking along the corridor.
“The challenges are facing North Long Beach […] and neighbors who have to deal with many of those unsightly nuisance issues that, if they were in any other neighborhood or a lot of other neighborhoods in our city, it would be an outrage. It would be a crisis,” Richardson said. “These conditions have been standing for far too long.”
