City leaders may look to create incentives for more landlords to accept Section 8 vouchers, which cover a large share of rent for those who qualify, after the city’s homelessness numbers rose dramatically this year.
Homelessness is up 62% from 2020, the last time the city conducted a count. Long Beach counted 3,296 people living in some stage of homelessness earlier this year, with the number of those living on the streets or in their cars increasing by over 700 since 2020, the last time a count was conducted due to the pandemic.
A proposal from Councilmember Stacy Mungo Flanigan is asking for the city to design a program that could incentivize property owners to accept housing vouchers, possibly in exchange for a refund of permit fees for accessory dwelling units or the installation of dedicated gas and water meters and other city services.
Mungo Flanigan said Monday that those fees typically run property owners thousands of dollars when they’re applying for permits to add on to their properties and providing a monetary incentive for them could help bring more people off the streets.
“The quality of housing in Long Beach would go up and and it could help more people with vouchers find housing,” Mungo Flanigan said.
Mungo Flanigan’s said her plan could be mutually beneficial for the city and its utility departments because it could help meet conservation goals while also helping to only charge tenants for what they use, rather than a landlord charging a flat fee.
The housing vouchers are paid for by the city’s housing authority and are based on a fair market rent schedule that’s posted to the city’s site. The housing authority typically pays about 60% to 70% of a tenant’s rent, with the tenant expected to cover the rest. If the person doesn’t have an income but are approved for a voucher, the full balance is typically paid for.
In Long Beach, the fair market rent for a one-bedroom unit can range from $1,595 to $2,343 per month, depending on which ZIP code the unit is located in. The program also has built-in allowances that help cover a portion of utilities.
City health officials said there are about 500 people who are currently unhoused who have vouchers that will pay for their rent or to stay in a motel but they are having trouble finding willing landlords.
“If you are a landlord please help and call the housing authority and sign up to participate,” Kelly Colopy, the city’s director of Health and Human Services said at a June press conference. “You can make a very big difference as these people have the opportunity to be permanently housed with your support.”
Colopy said that if everyone who had a voucher could be paired with a home, about 20% of the city’s unsheltered homeless population would be housed.
The city’s report put out earlier this month cited the rapidly rising cost of housing and other financial stressors as big contributors to people ending up homeless.
Long Beach has tried to spur the production of accessory dwelling units by designing a list of pre-approved designs to accelerate the permitting process and lower costs for homeowners.
City planning officials estimate that production of ADUs could peak at about 500 per year and remain at the level for about five years. City officials said applications have so far been averaging about 300 per year.
Los Angeles County and the city of Los Angeles have also looked at incentives to house the homeless with ADUs.
The county launched a pilot program in 2017 that offered up to $75,000 to people who built ADUs and rented them to formerly homeless persons for a decade. The city of LA also looked at using Proposition HHH funding, a tax passed to fund homeless services, to build ADUs in the city.
Los Angeles’s ADU accelerator program pairs ADU owners with tenants over the age of 62 who are provided with case managers and are pre-screened by the program to ensure they have a history of paying on time.