The cold-weather shelter has been consistently full since it opened. The city wants to avoid pushing people back onto the streets while it looks for more permanent housing.
“It’s really rough up here,” said one shelter resident, who described having to take a shuttle to a completely different facility if she wants a shower.
The winter shelter will operate at Community Hospital in Long Beach through March 31.
Construction on the wellness campus is expected to begin late next year and focus on bringing the aging facility up to modern accessibility and safety standards.
After years of trying and failing to keep the East Long Beach facility open, the City Council will vote on whether to sell the property for $0 to operator MWN Community Hospital LLC in order to satisfy the requirements of a risky lease deal that required the city to cover operational losses.
The law, called the Surplus Land Act, was a major hurdle in the city’s plan to pay back significant losses to the hospital’s operator, Molina Wu Network, by transferring ownership of the 8.7-acre property in East Long Beach.
City officials put Long Beach on the hook for millions of dollars in losses amassed by Community Hospital’s new operator. Now the bill is due.
A 2019 law has thrown into jeopardy a proposed plan for the city to hand over the now-closed hospital to its operator for a mental health and wellness campus.
The operator plans to operate Community as a mental wellness campus and is exploring the possibility of adding housing to the site.
As of Wednesday morning, the emergency department will no longer accept ambulance dispatches. The department will fully, permanently close one week later.
