Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn updated business leaders and other officials on the state of the county Wednesday afternoon in which she said the county was strong but faced a number of obstacles that it must confront to continue its progress in the coming years.
Hahn, speaking Wednesday at the annual event hosted by the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, said that while the economy has improved, witnessed by the county’s credit upgrade to AAA in July, challenges remain. She pointed to the work being done at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to innovate its movement of cargo.
Automation has been a divisive topic, especially at the Port of Los Angeles where earlier this year workers rallied against the port replacing workers with robots. However, Hahn praised the Port of Long Beach for its Long Beach Container Terminal and its ability to create jobs even while implementing automation services to move cargo on and off ships.
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“One was done right, one, not so much,” Hahn said. “When it’s done right like at the Long Beach Container Terminal, workers are brought along together and feel included in the process.”
She highlighted plans by the board to create a new financing district in an area of the Redondo Beach waterfront that currently holds an old power plant to create a new oceanfront park as well as hotel space.
Hahn hinted at the possibility that the shuttle bus that connected passengers from downtown Long Beach to Downtown Los Angeles directly while the Blue Line was under construction earlier this year could become a permanent thing as her and Mayor Robert Garcia, who both serve on the Los Angeles County Metro Board of Directors, would fight to continue.
But much of Hahn’s roughly 30-minute speech focused on the homelessness that has gripped the county in recent years. In June, the county reported that nearly 59,000 people were counted living on the streets in L.A. County, a 12% increase over the prior year.
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Hahn said that while cities in the county, especially Downey, have been doing their part to help with the homelessness crisis, it simply can’t keep pace with the number of people being displaced from their homes. She said that for every 133 people the county housed per day another 150 became homeless.
She said she has plans to expand new approaches to getting more people off the streets as quickly as possible including using master leases with motels to temporarily house those who are living on the streets, and the construction of more shelters like the one that has been proposed in North Long Beach.
While the region’s focus has been on building more housing and increasing the number of affordable units on the market Hahn said that the factors that are leading to people losing their homes are not slowing down and the county’s focus needs to shift to more readily available transitional housing opportunities.
“These projects are taking years and years to build,” Hahn said. “We can’t wait that long.”