Will Long Beach mandate affordable housing in new developments citywide? City Council to decide in early 2025

Starting sometime in 2025, home builders across Long Beach may be required to include units for lower income families in nearly all new developments, under a proposed new framework awaiting the City Council’s approval.

The city has been testing the requirement (called inclusionary housing) in the Downtown and Midtown areas since 2021, and it’s now poised to go citywide. The Planning Commission voted Thursday night to send the policy on to the council, which is expected to take it up in February.

Two common arguments on inclusionary housing have already been made here and will likely be heard again by the City Council: that it will create desperately needed affordable homes and help keep more families from becoming unhoused; and that it will stall development by making some projects financially infeasible and will raise prices on whatever does get built.

City staff say new construction hasn't slowed in the two areas where the rules are already in place.

“There initially was concern that inclusionary requirements would suppress development, but we have not seen that,” planning staffer Stephanie Harper told the commission Thursday.

“In fact, annual housing production has actually gone up in the inclusionary zones,” when comparing the two years before and two years after the policy was adopted, she said.

The proposed citywide framework sets a range of requirements for different parts of the city, with a focus on homes for the poorest residents in wealthier – or “high resource” – neighborhoods in the eastern half of the city and the Bixby Knolls area.

Moderate resource areas – including the Alamitos Beach and Shoreline neighborhoods and several pockets in the north and west parts of the city – would see a mix of homes for very low- and low-income residents, and new projects in the poorest communities in central and north Long Beach would include units for low-income families.

Staff recommends phasing in the rules, so the mandated amount of low-income homes would ramp up through 2027, when new developments would need to include up to 12% affordable units.

State and federal rules and data would be used to define household income levels and set boundaries for high, moderate and low resource areas. For 2024, a family of four that earns less than $69,350 is considered very low-income.

Other recommendations include requiring that affordable for-sale homes go to first-time homebuyers, and making tweaks to rules that let developers comply by paying a fee, donating land or making some other concession.

Over the long term, city leaders hope the policy will create a mix of affordability levels across Long Beach, so poverty is less concentrated in low-income communities and a broader range of people are able to live in high resource neighborhoods.

But a more immediate goal is to help the city comply with state housing mandates, which set numbers of homes at all income levels that cities must plan for.

Most California cities easily meet the target for new homes at the “above moderate” income level but struggle to produce homes for lower income families. In the current state planning cycle, which lasts through late 2029, Long Beach had only reached 3% of its overall affordable housing target at the end of last year, versus 20% of the above moderate income goal, according to city information.

The City Council could discuss the proposed inclusionary housing framework as soon as February, but it would take longer to move forward in the city’s coastal areas, where the state Coastal Commission would have to sign off on the policy.