The legislation will remove a significant hurdle in creating urban housing, and seeks to decrease the need for cars in traffic-dense cities like Long Beach.
The City Council will consider a proposed “Middle-income” housing program that would allow developers to partner with a joint powers authority to issue bonds to finance the construction of new housing, or to acquire existing buildings, so long as the units are reserved for moderate-income households.
The new law eliminates parking requirements for new developments located within a half-mile of a major transit stop.
An emergency housing voucher program offers improvements to the decades-old federal solution to the housing affordability crisis, but landlord reluctance remains a crucial hurdle.
Health department officials say that over 400 homeless people have Section 8 housing vouchers that pay up to 70% of their monthly rents, and sometimes all of it.
Student housing in California is already tight and the state has big plans to expand enrollment at the University of California and the Cal States. A $5 billion proposal would give campuses loans at no interest to expand their housing stock.
The City Council could enter into a deal that would use $490 million in tax-exempt bonds to construct residential units that will complete the new Long Beach Civic Center.
Long Beach and other cities have been trying to increase the region’s housing stock for middle-income earners, which often is not attractive to developers—but using bonds to purchase housing comes with pitfalls, consultants warn.
The Long Beach Armory building on Seventh Street is being sold to a development group that could build 64 affordable housing units in the parking lot behind it and between St. Anthony High School and Gumbiner Park.
Despite the city’s best efforts, the development of affordable—and moderate-income—housing remains well below targets outlined by the state’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), which projects housing needs and the number of units each city must create to keep up with that need.
