Long Beach gets $11M from state to combat homelessness along the LA River

After spending more than $60 million in local, state and federal tax dollars to combat homelessness in 2023, Long Beach reported a modest 2.1% decrease in its unhoused population. Last week, city officials announced another $11 million grant from the state to address homelessness along the Los Angeles River.

“The L.A. Riverbed is an important thoroughfare for bicycle and pedestrian mobility, recreation, and an entryway to our Long Beach community,” Mayor Rex Richardson said in the Feb. 28 announcement. “This funding allows us to continue our work connecting our neighbors experiencing unsheltered homelessness with the services and housing they need, while restoring the riverbed as a cleaner, safer and more accessible space for everyone.”

Long Beach’s 9.5-mile stretch of the LA River is the city’s largest and longest-standing encampment, according to officials. The location presents health and safety challenges, including increased risk of communicable diseases, unsafe air pollution levels due to emissions from the adjacent freeway and difficult access for emergency responders, according to Long Beach Health and Human Services spokesperson Jennifer Rice Epstein.

More broadly, Rice Epstein noted that unsheltered people have a dramatically lower — nearly 25 years — life expectancy than people who are housed.

“Locally, we see in data that people have been dying on average in their mid-50s,” Rice Epstein said of the city’s unhoused population. “This is another reason why it’s critically important to help move people living in encampments into stable shelter and, ultimately, permanent housing.”

Based on data from the 2024 homeless count, Rice Epstein said people along the riverbed had “experienced longer lengths of homelessness when compared with others in the city experiencing homelessness: 92% of those on the riverbed report experiencing homelessness for a year or longer.”

Untold numbers of encampments have been cleared from along the LA River over the years, including a highly publicized effort in May 2021 that saw around 100 unhoused people pushed out of the area. After each sweep, however, the encampments returned, sometimes within a day or two.

According to Rice Epstein, previous cleanups were different in that they were meant to address public health issues, clear debris and trash, and, in some instances, make repairs to public infrastructure — not to permanently eradicate river-side encampments.

“We have not conducted cleanups with the express goal of moving people off of the riverbed permanently, as we’ve never had the resources to do so before,” Rice Epstein said.

“We do offer services and connection to shelter where possible during encampment cleanups, but this [grant] allows us to create a coordinated effort to permanently clear encampments and provide stable shelter/permanent housing to those living along the riverbed,” she added.

The plan is to help people into “non-congregate” shelters (individual rooms), rather than “congregate” shelters, which house many people in large, shared spaces, according to the announcement.

Rice Epstein noted that people are more likely to accept non-congregate shelter, especially if they are chronically homeless. Many people prefer private space over a shared shelter environment, which gives them a sense of security, autonomy and safety, she said.

While the grant is a win for the city, Rice Epstein acknowledged that, despite staff’s best effort, some people will likely continue to live along the river. The hope, she said, is to “help as many people as possible” and reduce the number of people living along the river to make future outreach to those remaining easier.

While the city has added 125 emergency shelter beds (with 150 more under construction), 80 additional rooms through motel vouchers, 50 safe parking spots and 60 temporary inclement weather beds, it is still nowhere near enough to provide shelter to the city’s more than 3,000 unhoused residents.

“As long as there are people who are losing their jobs or leaving situations of abuse, we’re going to struggle with homelessness,” Rice Epstein said, acknowledging that no matter how many people the department helps each year, more people are becoming homeless all the time.

The funding announcement comes less than three weeks after city officials announced they failed to secure a site for a long-awaited tiny home project, which would have brought 33 additional non-congregate shelter beds online. The city must now return the $5.6 million state grant that was funding the project, after having already spent almost $3 million.

The city purchased the tiny homes and retains ownership of them, but they have been placed in storage until the city can determine a use for them or they are sold off.

The new grant is the third the city of Long Beach has received from the state’s Encampment Resolution Funding program. The first program “demonstrated significant success,” according to officials, with just under half of the enrolled people remaining in the program and/or securing permanent housing.

The city’s second ERF is ongoing, officials noted, and continues to shelter 64 people. Ten people have been housed, “making a marked difference in homelessness in the focus areas,” according to the city.

“We are grateful for another round of funding to continue our good work in helping some of our most vulnerable residents, providing the assistance they need while leading to safe, permanent housing,” Health Department Director Alison King said in a statement.

But a new round of funding comes with additional scrutiny from the public, which is unsatisfied with the return on investment when it comes to the homeless crisis. Long Beach government critics lambasted the city over its failure to complete the tiny home project and many have been vocal about the persistent issue of homelessness for years, questioning whether or not the city was spending money wisely.

Those concerns were given fresh merit Thursday after U.S. District Judge David O. Carter released a scathing audit of the city of LA’s homelessness spending. After reviewing $2.4 billion in funding, an independent audit found that LA city officials made it impossible to accurately track homelessness spending, LAist reports.

“Can we expect a disaster with zero to no accountability of where and how money has been spent?” Carlos Valdez, a vocal critic of Long Beach officials, posted on Facebook. “Accountability is important and it's time for [Mayor] Rex to step up, open an independent audit and be ready for the consequences of the audit results.”