Speaker 0: Thank you. And now I'm going to turn this over to Vice Mayor Richardson. I'm going to go and get ready for the state of the city. So I will see you all later tonight. And Vice Mayor Richardson, if you want to do just the few items that are left with a lot.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot. Go ahead. The number three, please.
Speaker 1: Report from Development Services recommendation to approve proposed programs and budget for the third round of emergency grant funds from the CARES Act and Community Development BLOCK Grant. Coronavirus Allocation Citywide.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. This is town America. So we have an exciting presentation for you tonight. It won't be long, but we do want to go over the recommendations for the third round of CDBG funding. A lot of these items are things that council has given direction to us over the past year that when additional funding became available, could we fund these things? So we're happy to fulfill that commitment. We also do have one change on the floor that we would like you to consider, and we'll talk about that when we get to that item a little bit different than the staff report, given some new information. So I will turn it over to Oscar and Patrick to go through the report.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Tom. Mayor, members of the city council, we are pleased to provide you this proposal for programs for the third round of CDBG COVID three allocation. Patrick here is here to give you a brief presentation of.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Oscar. Vice Mayor and Council. The Federal Cares Act includes three rounds of Cares Act CDBG funds. Under CB1, the city received $3.6 million. The funds were used to provide emergency rental assistance to lower income households through our Long Beach Cares Rental Assistance Program. CV two was allocated to states and the city did not receive any funding. HUD has released a CV three and the city was awarded $4.5 million in funding. Sorry about that. The primary purpose of CDBG Cares Act funds is to prevent, prepare for and respond to COVID 19. Staff is recommending several programs or activities to be implemented with CB three funds. Based on previous direction from the Council, as Tom mentioned, as required by how these programs were posted on the city's website for public comment and no comments were received. Activity. One allocates $1,392,600 for the acquisition of the Best Western Hotel, located at 1725 Long Beach Boulevard. The state's project Homekey program provided most of the funding for this acquisition, and it will provide interim housing for people experiencing homelessness. Now, this is where the changes that Tom mentioned under activity two, we were going to propose to provide additional rental assistance for residents experiencing impacts from COVID 19. But we recently found out that. Congress adopted after Congress adopted the second COVID relief bill. It included $25 billion for emergency rental assistance, and the city will likely get about $15 million of those funds for rental assistance. Given that large allocation of funding, staff would like to revise its recommendation to eliminate Activity two and move this 645,000 to Activity three commercial rental assistance. If that's acceptable to the council, we ask that you include that in any motion that's made tonight. So for activity three, we're allocating it. Allocate $1,000,000 for a new commercial rental assistance program or 1 million 645 638 if the council accepts staff's amendment. The program provides up to $4,000 in rental assistance for businesses located in city egg eligible areas that have been forced to close due to the health order. We will. If approved, the Department will be partnering with the National Development Council who will be responsible for accepting electronic applications and will confirm applicant eligibility for the program. Activity four allocates 550,000 for an artist assistance program. The department will partner with the Long Beach Arts Council to provide $3,000 grants to lower income artists impacted by COVID 19. The Arts Council will receive about $100,000 to implement the program, and 450,000 will be provided for grants to 150 qualified artists. Activity five allocates 40,000 to provide additional funding to the Fair Housing Foundation to handle an increased volume of residents needing assistance with rent repayment, with rent payment and eviction issues. Activity. Six allocates 40,000 to advertise and promote right to counsel services provided through the Stay Housed L.A. County program, which provides free legal assistance and virtual education to households facing eviction. And the the city council approved $250,000 that will be provided to help fund that L.A. County program previously. Activity seven allocates funding for administrative costs. At the beginning of my presentation, I mentioned that the city had received a cv1 allocation of $3.6 million for the Cares L.B. Cares Rental Assistance Program. Instead of setting aside the full 20% administrative budget of 723,000 for that program, staff only set aside 600,000. That was a mistake, as we have already spent nearly $800,000 to administer the program. It's critical that we set aside the full 20% for this CB three grant in order to cover our administrative expenses and backfill what we spent on CB one. The programs are very labor intensive and they work beyond completion. That concludes my presentation. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank you. So thank you for the presentation. I certainly won't receive funding. I want to. I don't have the cue system, so I'm going to take voice cues. Their emotions will approve. Look on.
Speaker 1: This. The sun has a motion to a approve with the recommendation of Sky.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I hear the motion is there are second.
Speaker 1: Row, second, second.
Speaker 2: Okay. I heard I heard sorrow first. And just because everybody I know other people chimed in, I just couldn't hear who what. So I heard the they I heard sorrow as anybody want to speak that emotion or we got to go.
Speaker 1: I, I do want to, um, uh, I do want to just ask a question if that's okay. This is counselor.
Speaker 2: Okay. You recognized before? Yes.
Speaker 1: I just, um, you know, I appreciate the additional funding that's come through to make the modification for residential housing. I just want to make sure that, you know, when it does get distributed, that it does. I just want to make sure it's distributed throughout these designated CDBG areas throughout the city. So I just want to make sure they're not clustered in specific areas and that we're just conscious of moving it around. Is there a way to to to see that that that's being done or proposed to being done?
Speaker 4: So, Councilmember, this is Tom. Are you talking about the commercial assistance or the additional rental assistance that would come in the future.
Speaker 1: For both of them, just for commercial and for housing assistance?
Speaker 4: Okay. Um, so I can talk a little bit to that. So we have had some good success with the Tenant Assistance Program. We have a map that we shared with council. It is income qualified, but it really was spread throughout the community. We certainly saw areas of need that had slightly higher concentrations, but we did not have it all completely concentrated in one area. We have we expect the same thing for the commercial. Those have to be located in CDBG areas. So those can't be in anywhere. That's not CDBG designated, but roughly half of our city is designated. We can work with the staff and the and HUD to see if there's a way we can do similar to our equity criteria to make sure that we don't have all over concentrations in certain areas. That said, when we bring back the rental assistance program, you know, we're just learning about that. We're just getting the dollars. We don't even have a final amount yet. We will bring you back a program. Given that amount of resources, we'd like to look at some models where we look at the entire city, but also perhaps look at some focused areas where we're seeing some real challenges. So we would bring that back to the council for you to give some input on.
Speaker 1: Great. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: All right. Thank you. Any other further counsel to the company? All right. So let's is there any public comment on this item?
Speaker 1: There is no public comment on this item.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Let's have the roll call.
Speaker 1: District one. Archive District two II District three. High District four.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: District five.
Speaker 2: Councilmember Mongeau can't unmute, but she texts that she's an AI. She's texting this quote.
Speaker 1: District six i. District seven.
Speaker 2: By.
Speaker 1: District eight.
Speaker 2: II.
Speaker 1: District nine.
Speaker 2: I.
Speaker 1: Motion carries.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Let's let's here we have, I think, three speakers cued up for public comment. Let's hear them now.
Recommendation to approve proposed programs and budget for the third round of emergency grant funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), Community Development Block Grant Coronavirus (CDBG CV-3) allocation; 

Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all necessary documents with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and other entities necessary to receive these funds, and execute agreements necessary to implement and comply with related federal regulations; and

Increase appropriations in the Community Development Grant Fund Group in the Development Services Department by $4,585,285, offset by grant revenue.  (Citywide)