Column: Long Beach permitted fewer homes last year than it has homeless people. Where is the urgency to address the problem?
While Mayor Rex Richardson touted the record 2,934 units that were entitled in 2023, it still falls short of the 3,376 homeless people that are living in Long Beach, and is nowhere near enough to address the housing crisis.
Mayor Rex Richardson said at a press conference this year that the city of Long Beach had a record number of entitlements, or units officially permitted by the city, in 2023, with 2,934 homes.
According to housingdata.app, a tool that uses California’s HCD annual progress reports to track permits in the state, this is actually only the second most permits issued in a year (since 1980) behind the 5,789 that were permitted in 1986.
But still, 2,934 is the most the city’s allowed in nearly 40 years. The problem is, that’s still not nearly enough!
There were 3,376 homeless individuals counted in the 2024 point in time count. So, even in a record year, we still permitted fewer homes than there are homeless people in Long Beach.
Only 921 of those are in homeless shelters or temporary housing, and the city report says their emergency beds are at 95% capacity, leaving more than 2,000 people with nowhere to go.
As far as shelter beds go, the city has a 78-room Project Homekey in the works and is still looking for a location for the 33 tiny homes Long Beach received a grant to build two years ago.
Where is the urgency to fix this problem? We have a crisis on our hands that requires drastic action, not barely reaching our state-mandated requirements.
California requires every city to submit plans for a number of homes, called the Regional Housing Needs Allocation. Long Beach is expected to allow more than 26,000 homes by 2029, but at this rate, it would take until at least 2032 to hit that goal—by which time the new cycle will ask us for even more homes.
Last cycle, between 2013 and 2021, we were expected to build just 7,048 homes, and we still fell far short of that goal. Only 5,202 were permitted, and the vast majority of those were not affordable housing.
Even San Francisco and Los Angeles have built more housing per capita than Long Beach for more than 20 years. San Francisco accomplished its RHNA goals for the last cycle and then some, building roughly 125% of the state’s requirement.
But we haven’t reached our housing goals for more than 10 years, and we haven’t even kept pace with other cities in the state that have infamously intense housing crises. Barely meeting our state requirements this cycle just isn’t going to cut it!
I already wrote about how many new homes Long Beach should be allowing to address the root cause of the homelessness crisis: rising housing costs.
According to the city, rents for studio apartments have roughly doubled in the past decade. The only places that have limited this runaway rent growth did it with one weird trick: they built housing.
Yes, nearly 3,000 entitlements is great, and a big jump from the decade or so of fewer than 500 a year in the early 2000s. But it is nowhere close to enough, and while we wait to take more serious action, the problem will just keep getting worse.
We need tens of thousands of new homes in Long Beach and anything short of that is a failure that will push more people into homelessness and out of the city in search of cheaper rents.
It's time to treat this like the crisis it is and take actions that will fix the problem.
