{"id":1738,"date":"2024-02-24T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-24T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/?p=1738"},"modified":"2024-02-22T10:20:36","modified_gmt":"2024-02-22T18:20:36","slug":"column-city-council-candidates-plans-to-fix-homelessness-miss-the-crucial-piece-a-lot-more-homes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/opinion\/column-city-council-candidates-plans-to-fix-homelessness-miss-the-crucial-piece-a-lot-more-homes","title":{"rendered":"Column: City Council candidates&#8217; plans to fix homelessness miss the crucial piece \u2014 a lot more homes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>There\u2019s a pivotal City Council <a href=\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/news\/politics\/it-may-take-only-a-few-thousand-votes-to-win-a-long-beach-city-council-seat-in-march\">election on March 5<\/a>, and homelessness \u2014 maybe the most visible problem in Long Beach right now \u2014 is going to be on a lot of voters\u2019 minds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, when the Long Beach Post sent <a href=\"https:\/\/cyc.lbpost.com\/\">questionnaires to all the candidates<\/a>, as it does each election season, homelessness was at the top of our list:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAfter more than a year under a state of emergency in response to homelessness, it remains one of the most pressing issues facing Long Beach. What would you do differently to address this crisis of housing, addiction and mental health?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here\u2019s a few excerpts of what we got back:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>\u201cThe primary focus should now be investing funds in operations for a 24\/7 response to homelessness.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201c[I will] call different levels of government entities, federal, state and county agencies for shelter and resources for mental and addiction issues\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cI\u2019ll work [to] quickly shelter and stabilize people experiencing chronic homelessness, and promptly facilitate connections back to permanent housing\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Almost every candidate (you can read their full answers <a href=\"http:\/\/cyc.lbpost.com\/\">here<\/a>) was sure to mention mental health and addiction, services to support homeless individuals, and lots of coordination between local, regional, and state partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a genuine need for all of these things! But they are all a response to the crisis at hand rather than a way to address the root of the problem, which is that we don\u2019t build enough homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The main reason homes are in such short supply is because <a href=\"https:\/\/belonging.berkeley.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/2022-02\/Long%20Beach.png\">62% of Long Beach<\/a>\u2019s residential land is off-limits to apartment construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With strict limits on development, the city of Long Beach, like most of California, hasn\u2019t seen the construction of enough new homes for the last 30 years. Between 1991 and 2016 no more than 1,000 homes a year were permitted by the city, far fewer than the state said we needed to keep up with demand, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/housingdata.app\/\">housingdata.app<\/a>, which tracks building permits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The result, as vacancies vanish and still more people want to live in the city, is rising rents, pushing more people to the brink of being without a home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gregg Colburn and Clayton Aldern wrote about this in their book, \u201cHomelessness is a Housing Problem,\u201d the data for which you can explore <a href=\"https:\/\/homelessnesshousingproblem.com\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the authors, issues like drug use, mental illness, and even poverty rates, fail to explain why places like Long Beach have such high numbers of homeless individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cInstead,\u201d they say, \u201chousing market conditions, such as the cost and availability of rental housing, offer a more convincing explanation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Long Beach, <a href=\"https:\/\/lbbusinessjournal.com\/business\/news\/long-beach-rent-costs-will-keep-growing-new-report-finds\/\">rents spiked sharply<\/a> after the pandemic, with several ZIP codes seeing an increase of <a href=\"https:\/\/lbbusinessjournal.com\/news\/these-long-beach-zip-codes-saw-the-biggest-year-over-year-rent-increases\/\">10% in just two years<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But then, partly because <a href=\"https:\/\/lbbusinessjournal.com\/business\/column-pricey-new-apartments-in-downtown-are-already-nearly-full-what-that-says-about-our-housing-market\/\">a whole bunch of new homes were built recently<\/a>, rent prices this year are down 12% for a 1-bedroom and 9% for a 2-bedroom apartment, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rent.com\/california\/long-beach-apartments\/rent-trends\">rent.com&#8217;s<\/a> analysis of&nbsp;listings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those homes were built because of changes to zoning laws in the Downtown and southeast areas of the city to allow more dense construction, and none of the thousands of new homes going up in the near future would be possible without those changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why aren&#8217;t City Council candidates calling for more changes like this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Incumbents Cindy Allen and Daryl Supernaw both mentioned individual projects and things the city has done in the past, but didn\u2019t speak about the broad changes that are necessary to fix rising rents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And not a single candidate mentioned zoning or directly committed to supporting more development. Only four candidates mentioned housing, not shelter space, at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The closest we got to broad housing solutions was <a href=\"https:\/\/cyc.lbpost.com\/race\/2024-city-council-district-8\/\">in the 8th District<\/a>, where two candidates are running to fill the seat vacated by Al Austin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe need to \u2026 focus on addressing the root causes,\u201d said Tunua Thrash-Ntuk, who said we should rapidly build affordable units, and convert \u201cnuisance\u201d motels into long-term housing opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sharifa Batts said she would like to \u201cpromote ADUs and ensure the construction of new housing has a mix of market-rate and low-income units.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both of these get much closer to addressing the supply side of the issue, but still haven\u2019t hit the mark on how to address this crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But they\u2019re not alone in California elections this year, as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailynews.com\/2024\/02\/09\/how-would-californias-u-s-senate-candidates-address-homelessness\/\">each of the four leading candidates<\/a> for U.S. Senate have plans to address housing that barely mention zoning or land use at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The housing shortage is the biggest issue facing our city and state, and it\u2019s directly responsible for exacerbating the homelessness crisis. But, somehow, the leaders tasked with fixing it never state the plain answer: We need to build more homes, and a lot of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can\u2019t \u201cfacilitate connections\u201d with housing that doesn\u2019t exist. We need a City Council that understands this issue and is ready to do what\u2019s necessary to get homes built.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We asked City Council candidates what they would do about the housing, mental health and addiction crises fueling homelessness, but the first \u2014 and biggest \u2014 item on that list went largely unaddressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":295,"featured_media":1757,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[98],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[131],"class_list":["post-1738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-homelessness","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1738"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1756,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions\/1756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1738"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=1738"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}