New Long Beach mayor’s first 100 days to focus on homelessness, housing, local economy

By KRISTY HUTCHINGS | khutchings@scng.com |
PUBLISHED: January 10, 2023 at 7:43 p.m. | UPDATED: January 11, 2023 at 1:03 p.m

Long Beach’s new mayor, Rex Richardson, delivered his inaugural State of the City Address — and unveiled the plan for his first 100 days in office, which will focus on achieving goals focusing on housing, homelessness, and the local economy — at the Long Beach Terrace Theater on Tuesday, Jan. 10.

Richardson said during his address, that in 2022 Long Beach completed more than 100 miles of street repairs, adopted a balanced budget, created more than 1,000 new housing opportunities for those experiencing homelessness, and created a new Office of Climate Action, among a slew of of other accomplishments.

“Now together, we should be proud of our progress,” Richardson said, “We achieved all this because of dedicated city employees, neighborhood leaders and community organizers who work diligently every day to make our city better and brighter, but the work does not stop — we still have big challenges to tackle.”

To that end, the mayor unveiled the plan for his first 100 days in office — dubbed the Opportunity Beach Agenda — which lays out a series of long-term and short-term goals across several key sectors that Richardson’s mayoral tenure will center on.

The Opportunity Beach Agenda was put together by Richardson’s 100-day plan team, which includes a swath of local leaders from various industries from business to education, through a series of subcommittee meetings held over the past several weeks.

“I’m proud to have assembled a team of the city’s best and brightest civic leaders across business, government, nonprofit education sectors,” Richardson said, “to join our mayoral transition team and help put together and accomplish a plan of what we will accomplish over the next 100 days.”

Housing and homelessness
The mayor’s plan to further address homelessness in Long Beach — which spiked 62% from 2020 to 2022, according to the city’s most recent Point-in-Time count of unhoused people — draws largely on the city’s recently approved emergency declaration on the crisis.

That emergency declaration, approved by the City Council on Tuesday just a few hours before Richardson’s address, will allow Long Beach to expedite its response to homelessness by shortening the city’s hiring processes, eliminating some bureaucratic red-tape for homeless shelter and interim housing development, and facilitating the City Manager’s office to request Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office and the State Legislature to enact a California-wide state of emergency.

The Opportunity Beach Agenda expands on the city’s plans under the emergency declaration, though, noting that it will allow Long Beach to support the creation of new mental-health care facilities, social service centers, food banks, and personal storage facilities for unhoused people.

“In the days to come, we’ll also stand up a mobile command center, a data dashboard for transparency and a rollout of mobile access centers to help every community in our city,” Richardson said.

Richardson’s plan also calls for the establishment of new safe parking sites to give those who live in their vehicles a safe place to park — and asks for the legalization of any occupied Accessory Dwelling Units, so long as they pose no imminent public safety concerns.

“In addition to these immediate actions, Mayor Richardson will begin the development of detailed plans to address the largest concentrations of homelessness that exist throughout our city,” the plan said, “beginning with convening roundtables of local stakeholders in Downtown and along the LA River within his first 100 days.”

The Opportunity Beach Agenda also calls for the city to begin work on establishing a Mental Health Collaborative in order to localize the city’s delivery of social services for the unhoused. Los Angeles County’s Department of Mental Health currently administers mental health and substance use disorder treatment in Long Beach, rather than the city’s own Department of Health.

“We’ll work together with our Health Department and L.A. County to explore a more robust local infrastructure to localize mental health services,” Richardson said. “By increasing funding to provider, providing better coordination, and supporting the expansion of wellness facilities and taking our pressure off of our local hospitals by adding recuperative care beds — we can make a difference.”

In terms of housing, Richardson intends to launch a Long Beach Housing Promise — a collaboration between the city, industry partners, and local educational institutions reminiscent of the city’s College Promise — to support the production of accessible housing throughout the city.

“We have to forge new partnerships to ensure that housing is available for everyone and we can’t do it alone,” the mayor said. “That’s why we’ll be launching the Long Beach housing promise, calling on our city’s largest employment sectors — including hospitals, aerospace and education institutions — to go all in and making meaningful investments to support housing production.”

Richardson’s office also plans to launch a new Downtown Plan within the first 100-days, which will guide the development and standards in partnership with existing residents and businesses to prevent further gentrifying the area.

Richardson will also appoint a deputy mayor for housing and homeless to oversee his office’s varied efforts to address the crisis, the plan said.

Local economy
The Opportunity Beach Agenda, meanwhile, includes plan to bolster the city’s economy through a variety of partnerships and investments in small businesses.

“Long Beach has boundless opportunities as a multi-modal hub in the region and state with assets like the Long Beach Airport, the Port of Long Beach, and access to the regional Metro and light rail transit system,” the report said. “Mayor Richardson will be laser focused on unleashing thepotential of our emerging business sectors.”

His office will start the process of developing and launching the Grow Long Beach Initiative — another collaboration with local organizations including the Long Beach Accelerator, the Long Beach Economic Partnership, and the Long Beach Center for Economic Inclusion — to support 100 new business startups within the aerospace, supply chain, tourism, healthcare, and educational industry over the next five years.

“As we implement the rollout of the Grow Long Beach Initiative, will use the convening power of the mayor’s office to stand up the long be Strategic Growth Council,” Richardson said, “a roundtable of business and academic leaders that will identify strategies and policies to support the growth, retention and success of those critical sectors.”

That council will be recruited and host their initial meeting within Richardson’s first 100 days in office, the report said. Richardson’s office will also appoint a deputy mayor for economic recovery.

Long Beach will also explore the creation of a Strategic Growth Fund to support small business in the city.

“This fund will help identify resources and private capital to recruit and support 100 new startups in the city of Long Beach and its fastest growing sectors within the first five years,” Richardson said, “with a goal of ensuring that these startups reflect the vibrancy and the diversity of our community right here in Long Beach.”

Richardson will host host a small business “listening tour,” wherein he will meet with 100 businesses within his first 100 days to gain a better understanding of their challenges.

To support the local workforce and fill 400 vacancies at Long Beach City Hall, Richardson’s office plans to establish a Public Service Pathways Program — which will give preference to local students working towards degrees at Long Beach State, Cal State Dominguez Hills, and Long Beach City College for city jobs.

That program will also determine whether the city can implement waivers for those local job applicants to eliminate barriers that prevent them from applying for employment within city government.

Richardson’s office also plans to increase investment in Long Beach’s arts community, including requesting the City Manager’s office to identify funding in the 2024 fiscal year budget to build permanent sites for Latino, African American, Cambodian, and LGBTQ+ cultural centers.

Long Beach, under Richardson’s leadership, will also work to prepare for its turn hosting of six Olympic events by appointing a 2028 Olympics Planning Committee in partnership with the Long Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Public health and safety
Richardson’s plan also calls for creating safer streets in Long Beach.

The city has already begun work on a series of community policing initiatives — including launching a new Park Safety Ambassadors program, which will staff 39 city parks with unarmed safety professionals.

The Opportunity Beach Agenda will see through the launch of the city’s new Quality of Life Officers within the Bureau of Collaborative Response and Engagement. Twenty new officers — including 16 bicycle beat cops — were add to the city’s rank-and-file in Long Beach’s 2023 fiscal year budget.

Richardson’s plan, though, calls for the launch of a new Community Service Response team — which will house 21 new positions to respond to unarmed non-emergency calls for service in an effort to free up critical police resources.

“This year, we will also make a number of critical investments that complement our traditional police and fire services,” Richardson said. “This includes alternative forms of mental health crisis response, the new Park Ambassadors Program, and an additional REACH team to conduct a broader scope of outreach on homelessness.”

The mayor’s office will also oversee the implementation of a new Police Oversight Department and a Police Oversight Commission, which was approved by voters in November.

Richardson’s office also plans to request an expansion of support for the Long Beach Justice Fund in the 2024 fiscal year budget. That fund provides free legal services to the city’s immigrant population to help them fight deportation and family separation.

The environment
Richardson’s office will also renew the Long Beach Open Space Element Plan — a document which guides the city’s long-term development of parks that hasn’t been updated since 2002 — to ensure more residents have access to park no further than a 10-minute walk from their home.

“This would improve air quality in North, Central, and West Long Beach, increase availability of Park programming for youth,” the plan said, “and create more opportunities for recreation for seniors in park-poor neighborhoods.”

Richardson also called on the Port of Long Beach to establish a $10 million vehicle electrification fund to help support truck operators at the Port the transition away from diesel trucks. The plan also calls on the Port to establish 100 public electric vehicle charging stations within the next three years.

Aside from those core areas, the Opportunity Beach Agenda also lays out a series of plans to invest in youth leadership — including the creation of a public service fellowship program to help Long Beach students try out a career in city government.