Speaker 6: Councilman Zoro. I council member younger. Hi, Councilman Austin. Hi. Vice Mayor Richardson. All right. Motion carries nine.
Speaker 0: Of 21 police.
Speaker 6: And 2021 recommendation to request City Manager to work with Development Services Department to provide a report back to the City Council within 60 days on the status of senior housing in Long Beach.
Speaker 0: I'm so impressed.
Speaker 4: Thank you. A motion. One minute here.
Speaker 1: Hello, my am.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 4: Thank you to Councilman Austin for signing on to this item. I'm looking forward to this agenda item coming back to city council. And I have been reading some of the correspondence that we received today about the item from various senior housing advocates and folks that are interested, like the caller received.
Speaker 5: Earlier, about the.
Speaker 4: Future of senior housing in the city of Long Beach. As our Long Beach population ages, it's increasingly more and more important for us as a city to think proactively about the needs of our seniors. Community, housing, security and availability is a major issue for our senior population in Long Beach. And we should also make sure that as this Council, we're focused and work together to develop for the city's future needs in terms of senior housing for decades to come. It's been a while since we've had a comprehensive report on senior housing in Long Beach today. In fact, I'm not sure in the eight years that I've been here that we've had a comprehensive report on where we are and how we can incentivize or fund more senior housing in the years and decades to come. A lot of times we have developers who want to develop housing projects in the city of Long Beach, and it's very difficult to incentivize them or get them interested in a senior housing project because a lot of times the financials just don't make sense. But it's so much beyond financials and all the work that we're doing to make sure we have inclusionary housing throughout the city where we accommodate workforce and low to mid affordable housing units. We're not doing the same for senior housing and I think that needs to be a major focus for us moving forward. We've seen investment after investment in housing in the city of Long Beach, but very little investment is put specifically into senior housing. And we do have some success, successful projects and some success stories in regards to senior housing, but we certainly use should use that as a base to develop more. One of the other things that we hear a lot about is as we move forward and we we consult with futurists and urbanists about what kind of housing developments we want to incentivize in the city of Long Beach. We talk a lot about mixed use development and ones that are targeted specifically for seniors so that they don't have to drive there. There's a lot of walkability and a communal type of environment. So I'd like to know, as part of this agenda item, what opportunities we have in the future to attract developers to the city of Long Beach, to focus on senior housing projects, mixed use, senior housing projects and projects that will keep seniors who are looking to downsize because they're empty nesters. Their children have moved on and built their own families. How we keep them here in the city of Long Beach and not lose them to surrounding neighboring cities that offer more senior communities. So I ask my colleagues to support this item. And again, thank Councilman Austin for signing on. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman Austin?
Speaker 7: Yes. I'm happy to sign on to this item. It makes a lot of sense in light of our most recent homeless count. That actually was very, very, very illuminating. And talking about the amount of people over the age of 54 that were living that are living on the streets currently. And I think that's most more than 50%. And so this item, I think, is timely. It makes a lot of sense for us to to study, look at opportunities to find out where we are, but also to look at the opportunities to develop more senior housing to meet the needs of our community and our residents today. I'd like to just say that I think that there are some some unique opportunities, particularly with surplus lands that both are with the city, but also the school district. And I would ask the city manager's office to look into those areas. And then to the maker of the motion. Councilmember Price I just it says that, you know, to work with developmental services, that department, but I would just open it up and allow the city manager to include all departments, including economic development and the housing authority to to look at, you know, opportunities there. If you be open to that friendly.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. I think that's a great idea. Thank you.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much. Happy to support.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Sara.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Vice Mayor. I appreciate this item that's brought forward by Councilwoman.
Speaker 4: Pryce, because, you know, I have quite a few affordable housing for seniors in my district. And in fact, I have, I think already maybe 2 to 3 buildings that's been there for a while. One of it is Mercy Housing. And I have actually a few more that's going up and that's that's going to be targeting low income seniors. So I love to see how based off of the housing element plan that was created, how it can be looked at throughout the whole city, which is what this item requests. On the income range of the seniors that you know it'll be available for because I do like to see and support housing for seniors throughout the whole city and how you could certainly build more. Thank you. Support the item.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Allen.
Speaker 5: I yes. I also think this is a great item. Councilwoman Pryce and I will be supporting this. I know that our second District Senior Commission representative, Alan Goldstein, has shared that more affordable housing is going to be really important in the growing elder abuse problems. I did want to ask Councilwoman Pryce if she would consider I got this question from one of my residents, which I thought was good. Can you look at how we can ease the senior housing navigation system? I'm hearing that each senior has to apply at each building rather than going through a central system. So that could be something.
Speaker 1: We could look.
Speaker 4: Into. Absolutely. I think that's a really good idea, too. I just wasn't aware that that's a hurdle, but absolutely anything we can do to help.
Speaker 5: Okay. And then one more Councilwoman Pryce also. Do you think that that you would consider also. Including the senior commission and the development of this report.
Speaker 4: Another excellent idea. Yes, absolutely. Maybe they can. I don't I absolutely want to do that. I don't know mechanically how that would happen. Would City Manager then work with the Commission to solicit input? I'm open to what however we want to do it.
Speaker 10: I think typically with a commission like that, we this is more of a request for information. We've done a number of presentations in the past on affordable housing. So we can kind of bring those together, show which ones are the senior projects, and then we would present that. And then we can give that to the senior commission probably after we do the two from four. And if they have certain recommendations that they would want to fold or forward on meeting, then we would do that and forward that on as well. So we can do it in a two step so we don't have to slow down the presentation of the report.
Speaker 4: I totally open to that. I think that's a great idea. Okay.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce.
Speaker 5: And then also, this is for the city manager.
Speaker 1: Do the housing developments qualify.
Speaker 5: For density bonuses?
Speaker 10: Yes, there are certainly density bonuses that have to do with affordable housing, that state law. And so we can provide a little bit of information on that that's not restricted just to seniors, but certainly affordable housing projects.
Speaker 5: ROTHERT okay. That's all my questions. A great item, and I'll be supporting it.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Zendejas.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce and Councilmember Al Alisyn for this item. I'm really excited about it. As you know, I'm very passionate about the senior community here in our city and also the disability community here in our city. So I really think that this is a timely item to bring forward and we really do need to know more about what we have here in our city. And one of the things that I would like to see are ask Councilmember Price, if you would consider to me be even just in parentheses, include of people with disabilities . The reason that I ask that is that, one, a lot of times people with disabilities are forgotten about and not really thought of. But at the same time, people with disabilities have a lot of the same income issues that seniors do, and a lot of seniors also have disabilities. So I don't know if that's something that you might be may consider adding in to this.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. And I thank you because you've brought that issue to light for a lot of us. We've talked about things like things that we take for granted, like elevators, for example, in housing projects. And so. Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think the most important thing is for our city team that looks at this issue to figure out what incentives can be made available for additional housing. And you're absolutely right. Many of our seniors have either, you know, well, they're all differently abled, but if they do have a specific disability, they have that additional hurdle in addition to affordability that that we don't think about. So absolutely. Yes, I'm happy to include that in the report and anything else anybody wants. I think, you know, this is a city wide report. We all like we all have seniors in our district. So. Yes.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you. And the reason that I say that is because me being a person living with a disability, I lived in a place that was not accessible to me for ten years because I could not find a place that was accessible and affordable because the places that I was finding were either they were accessible, but I could not afford them or they were affordable, but I could not access them with my wheelchair. So I really appreciate and thank you again.
Speaker 0: All right. Thank you. And that satisfies the council comment at my support as well. I think it's a great item to request the support and all the amendments have made it even even better. You know that as long as I've worked in the city of Long Beach, I've always known that senior housing projects are always welcome in the community. I can think of, you know, great projects like the Senior Arts Colony. Every affordable housing tour makes a stop at the Senior Arts Colony or Ramona Senior Housing up in the ninth District that took an old, dilapidated bank that had vacated and turned into a great project that added 61 units of affordable housing. And I know we have an aging population. Councilman also made a great point about the homeless count. We can't take off an eye off the eye, off the ball despite how well we've done on particularly this particular group. So thank you so much. Is there any public comment on item 22?
Speaker 1: If there are any members of the public that would like to speak on item 22 in person, please stand up at the podium in Zoom. Please use the raise hand feature or dial star nine. Now we have one in Zoom.
Speaker 5: Sorry. This is item 21.
Speaker 0: Terry Quinlan, your housing.
Speaker 2: Thank you again. This is Terry Quinn and thank you, Susie Prize for bringing this to the city's attention. And please incorporate mobile home parks because they already exist. I did look up and found out that there are 2000 parks in the city of Long Beach and so they are affordable housing units. And I hope that you will consider that as part of your discovery as well. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Mr. Kim.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Vice Mayor. Son, I can't face successor president. One of the greatest things about the sixth district is that, proportionally speaking, we house the most seniors. Check the facts. One of the things one of the things that I would love Development Services Department to put in this report. If we just put in Friendly's in there as a citizen, I would love. For one to see that in the data cluster. I have already looked at it, but just for the sake of the public. Uh, where are the, the the density, the proportionally speaking citywide of where are the seniors running? The second part is that because if we really want to be serious about housing our elderly population, we need to figure out a way to mandate the covenant housing for perpetuity because that I my personal experience of engaging with private equity people, there's two ways of how they look at senior housing. Um, they look at it as pre because a lot of buildings there's three you can look you can also put that in the report there's three buildings that are on their way out in terms of covenant housing. The covenant is about to be up. So they look for buildings like that to buy them and they kick out all the old people. I mean, we saw that happen here, um, on Ocean with the Breakers. Um, there's bigger buildings. I think the Lutheran one is one of them, where people are salivating, waiting to buy the building so they can kick out all the seniors. That's one thing. And then the second thing is that, you know, because of our transit hub fixation with density and everything is that they want to develop in the transit hubs, the housing. Uh, but it doesn't have the strenuous covenant of the past. So that's yesteryear. It's 47 years or more. These people are developing in transit hubs like the Arts Council colony. That was just reference people. You can look at how long that one is. People are developing those buildings with the mindset of will take federal money for a couple of decades right will alleviate are either bond restrictions or loan restrictions and then we'll we refinance by the time we refinance. We no longer legally have to do senior housing anymore. I think we can kick out all the old people and do really want to do, which is basically get a tax free luxury unit apartment building in the transit hub. So I just think that these are the kind of things that need to be in the report because it's very actively being done right now by entities nationwide like Blackstone, you know, and Linamar and a couple of other ones. So just things that that we can throw out because if we really want to house our seniors, we have to do it forever, not just for a slight amount of time. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. All right. That satisfies public comment. Let's cast their votes.
Speaker 1: Councilwoman Zendejas.
Speaker 13: Right.
Speaker 4: Councilman Allen. All right, Councilman Price.
Speaker 1: Councilman Suber.
Speaker 6: Not I.
Speaker 1: Councilwoman Mongo. Hi. Councilman Ciro, i. Councilmember Urunga.
Speaker 3: I.
Speaker 1: Councilman Austin.
Speaker 7: All right.
Speaker 1: Vice Mayor Richardson. Motion carries nine zero.
Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Development Services Department to provide a report back to the City Council within 60 days on the status of senior housing in Long Beach; and

Include updates on existing senior housing stock, proposed senior projects, senior projects under construction, opportunities for future investment in senior housing, incentives for developers to include senior housing in their projects, and potential sources of funding to support future senior housing in Long Beach.