A Monday night forum at the Wrigley Association’s regular meeting will give residents an opportunity to ask questions as regional officials begin discussions on whether to install a homeless services hub along the A Line in Long Beach.

After months of discussions, the Los Angeles County Metro Board of Directors voted to begin talks with city officials about establishing a “hub of hope” that could provide services like showers, phone charging and even temporary housing for unhoused people riding the A Line.

The meeting Monday night at Veterans Park will be a question-and-answer session with members of LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn’s office in attendance. Hahn represents Long Beach and coauthored the motion to start discussions on creating the service hub.

Long Beach City Councilmember Roberto Uranga will also be present, and he “eagerly anticipate(s) the County’s proposals and the feedback from Wrigley residents,” he said in an email.

“It is imperative that the County offers ample avenues for community input regarding the end-of-line policy and thoroughly considers all feasible solutions before reaching a decision,” Uranga wrote. “A well-founded rationale that accounts for community feedback must be provided for any outcome.”

Courtesy flyer for a Wrigley neighborhood community forum on a proposed homeless services hub along the Metro A Line in Long Beach.

The hub has been proposed for a Metro-owned site near the A Line north of Downtown Long Beach, where residents have complained for months that the agency’s end-of-the-line policy, which requires riders to exit trains at the last stop of the night, was forcing unhoused people into their neighborhood with nowhere to go.

Metro has two stations in Long Beach with parking lots between the Downtown First Street platform and the rail yard where trains go for maintenance each night: the Wardlow and the Willow Street Station, which Metro directors have referenced as potential hub sites in recent meetings, although no station has been selected for the proposed hub.

The Wrigley neighborhood includes both stations.

Long Beach City Councilmembers asked Metro to reconsider its end-of-the-line policy in October, alleging that forcing people off its trains in Downtown Long Beach had contributed to the city’s 62% increase in homelessness since 2020.

Each night at the end of service, which is around 1 a.m. in Long Beach, the A Line is cleared so the empty trains can be cleaned and maintained before going back into service around 4 a.m.

A Metro survey conducted earlier this year found that over a six-day period, an average of 39 unhoused people exited the trains every night at the First Street station. The move to create the hub comes after Long Beach, the county and other agencies have declared states of emergency over the growing homeless population in the region.

City officials sent numerous letters to local and regional agencies asking them to identify surplus land that could be dedicated to permanent or temporary housing solutions.

The Metro board is expected to get an update on the services hub proposal at its April meeting, where the selected site could be revealed as well as the plan for operations and any measures that might be taken to limit the impact on the neighboring community.

The forum will be held Monday, March 6, at 7 p.m. in Veterans Park, 101 E. 28th St.

Metro, city to begin discussions to create homeless service hub along Long Beach A Line

Long Beach asks Metro to evaluate policy of forcing people off the A-Line at its terminus Downtown

Jason Ruiz covers City Hall and politics for the Long Beach Post. Reach him at [email protected] or @JasonRuiz_LB on Twitter.