Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. That concludes the public comment. Let's go into item 15. During the homeownership item than the April 28.
Speaker 2: Communication from Vice Mayor Richardson, Councilwoman Mango Councilmember Aranda and Councilman Austin. Recommendation to request City Manager to evaluate the feasibility of providing increased pathways to homeownership to low and moderate income individuals.
Speaker 1: Vice Mayor.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So this item, this proposal tonight, we want to elevate the conversation about expanding opportunity for homeownership opportunity here in the city of Long Beach. Homeownership remains one of the best opportunities and best ways to build intergenerational generational wealth and to close the racial wealth gap. I grew up a renter in a rental household. When I was 25, I became a homeowner. And I understand the dynamics and the benefits of of such. And when people are in their homes, they tend to be more financially stable. Their children perform better in schools, their communities are healthier. I know that there's a conversation and a lot of discussion around the lack of housing availability and opportunities for renters and things like that. But I wanted to elevate this this topic of homeownership to bring it more forefront into the larger conversation about housing in our city. Historically, families of color and low income communities have systemically been locked out of opportunities that homeownership provides this goal. This dates back to before any of us were in a policy position to create public policy from things like covenants and other systemic issues. Currently in Long Beach, black and Latino families own their homes at half the rate of other households. The trends of this low of low homeownership rates in communities of color have roots to America's long, long history of housing discrimination. On December 11th, as part of the Everyone in Economic Inclusion Initiative, my office in partnership with Local Initiative Support Corporation can convene the first of a series of roundtable discussions with a multidisciplinary group or think tank to take a deep dove into the issue of home ownership in our city. At the roundtable, we heard a presentation from the Green Leaning Institute, who recently, along with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, analyzed the latest homeownership trends and mortgage data which examined statewide figures, as well as lending patterns in Long Beach, Fresno and Oakland. The think tank was able to dig into these findings, provide some feedback and make some great recommendations that I'd like to forward on to the city council tonight. Access access to some degree of wealth is critical to every family's economic security. Wealth functions as a financial financial safety net that enables families to deal with unexpected expenses, disruptions of income without accumulating large amounts of debt. And we know that intergenerational wealth transfers of wealth can play a pivotal role in helping to finance college education. Higher education, provide downpayment assistance for your first home for family members, first home for second home, or offer startup capital for launching a small business which is a part of many folks American the American dream here. Because communities of color have less wealth today, black and Latino adults are far less likely than younger than other young people from other races to receive large sums or any money at all from a family member to help make a large investment in their future, like support for their college education or assistance with their first home. The result is that the racial wealth gap continues to perpetuate from generation to generation with profound implications to the economic, security and mobility of future generations is the national conversation. But there's a lot to do with what we can do locally to address this. Currently, black households only only hold about 6% of the wealth compared to other households, which amounts to a total wealth gap of $104,000. And Latino and Latino households only own 8% of the wealth of other groups, which equates to a gap of $102,000, according to the Green Lighting Institute study of Long Beach home lending practices, recent research researchers found persistent exclusion of low to moderate income families and people of color from Long Beach's housing homeownership market, for example, African-Americans make up almost 14% of the population in Long Beach, but they receive about 7% of home loan purchases, so about half of what their representation is in terms of population. The same goes for Latino populations. Latinos make up 41% of the population here in Long Beach, but receive about 22% of the loans. And Asians make up 13% of the population, but receive 10% of the loans. This is compared to other groups who make up 30% of the population but receive 47% of the home loans. Furthermore, home mortgage data shows that while mortgages are being purchased in low to moderate income neighborhoods, they're not necessarily being being purchased by low to moderate income individuals at 6%. So. So what that tells us is more than a quarter of all homes went to low. More than a quarter of all mortgages went into low to moderate income neighborhoods, but only 6% went to low to moderate income people. So put simply, higher higher income individuals are buying homes and working class neighborhoods at dramatically higher rates than working class residents who are often. In Black, Latino or Asian. Now, you know, there's a lot to sort of explain and how that works. When I first purchased my home in North Long Beach when I was 25, I was a low and moderate income individual. When I acquired my second home in North Long Beach, I was not a low to moderate income individual. So what? It doesn't necessarily tell you what those stories are, but what it does tell you is that that opportunity that I had when I was 25 is is not necessarily there for others to break into that to break into the home or homeownership game. In addition, a down payment affordability check. In addition down down payment affordability challenges remain the top one of the top reasons why low to moderate income individuals are not purchasing homes at the rate of their of their counterparts, according to Zillow's 2017 Housing Aspiration Report, which surveyed renters in the greater Los Angeles region. While while mortgage payments are more affordable on average, monthly rent paid then monthly rent payments. Renters are struggling to buy a home due to down payment barriers. So on average, mortgages are cheaper than rent in average. Nearly 70% of renters cited down payments as the single greatest barrier to homeownership. Coming up with a down payment is more of a barrier to homeownership than debt, job security or qualifying for an actual mortgage. Finally, one of the most surprising findings from the green lighting report was that the largest lender in Long Beach is not a bank. And seven out of the top ten mortgage lenders providing mortgages to our residents are non-banks. What's the difference? Traditional financial institutions like banks and credit unions don't just make loans. They take deposits, they offer savings and checking accounts. They offer ATM services, other family supporting services. Non-bank lenders don't offer those service services. They're also not regulated the same way as banks, but not that's not necessarily a bad thing. We're seeing a rise in non-bank lenders, largely because of in the post foreclosure crisis, the regulatory environment changed from a risk management regime to a zero tolerance and 100% compliance regime. So it's more difficult for banks to generate these loans. And so the non-bank lenders have stepped up to provide opportunities to low to moderate income individuals. They're the ones servicing VA loans. They're the ones servicing FHA loans. And so the pullback from lending from banks continues to, you know, to provide an overall decline in homeownership, because people with slightly risky credit profiles are significantly underserved by banks who might have a branch in your neighborhood. So consumers with marginal credit scores or unverifiable income or traditionally are almost completely out of the market now. And now that we have identified large presence of non-bank lenders in our community, I believe that we have an opportunity to engage non-bank lenders. The way that we engage banks, we meet with banks. We typically have a community based conversation, something about conversations, about investment in the community banks. We don't have any mechanism to really engage non-bank lenders when the data shows us that seven of the top ten, which also includes number one, number three, number four, number five of the people doing business in our city are non-bank lenders. They know they're not they're not on our commissions. We're not engaging them. And this is a major part of our local economy, a major segment that we need to engage on on a more significant level here at a city level. Long Beach can design policy solution solutions to expand pathways to homeownership for our most underserved communities. Given that down payments, are those the most significant barrier to buy? Your home in our city needs to do better and do it do more to pull together resources in order to help families make that leap into homeownership. I recognize that during the loss of redevelopment, you know, the 20% set aside, we don't have the financial resources to engage in the way that we did with down payment assistance. And I acknowledge that. So to bridge the gap, we can work with bank non-bank lenders, provide more downpayment assistance or to work with work with them to craft special programs, a special outreach tool to sort of close the gap. Cities all around California are finding innovative ways to do this, innovative ways to offer down payment assistance without necessarily writing a direct check from the city's coffers by tapping into, you know, things like Bonds. Private partnered with private and nonprofit agencies to provide that capital. For example, Los Angeles or Los Angeles offers a low to moderate income down payment assistance program, partnered in part by neighborhood housing services with L.A. County. So the county provides the resources. The city does the on on. So the city is sort of the servicer of that, and they are a partner that is interested in doing more with us here in Long Beach, the city of Santa Ana, and called Culver City. They pull together resources by utilizing CDBG and in tapping into the Wish program, which is funded by the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco. So I propose that we research down payment assistance programs offered by private and not. Providence institutions and find a way to streamline it with our city's efforts. In addition to helping long these residents secure the means for purchasing homes, we need to do more to help help people prepare for responsibilities and challenges of homeownership. Establishing a HUD certified homebuying counseling education center in Long Beach will bring significant benefits and valuable benefits to aspiring homeowners. Homebuyer education and counseling can provide powerful support for prospective and current home ownerships homeowners, too, as they assess their options to become homeowners. The evidence suggests that homebuyer education counseling can can help. It can assist aspiring homeowners, expand their housing searches and enjoy more options. And it allows them to help avoid risky mortgage mortgages, lower their housing costs, improve their credit scores, save more, and keep their residual income, avoid delinquency and foreclosure. So finally, we know that laws and supply and demand in the marketplace dictate when housing demand plays out. We know that when housing demand outpaces supply, then the prices go up. So while down payment assistance program housing education is absolutely needed, we with a limited housing supply and stagnant wages, our residents are struggling and still struggling to find a home. So we should look at alternative forms of ownership, like community land trusts, cooperative homeownership models. There was a lot of conversation at the think tank about this, for example, in Austin, Texas, and New York City. They're partnering with nonprofit housing organizations to create permanently affordable homeownership opportunities for low income neighborhoods. And so a land trust is where a nonprofit acquires the parcel of land and sells that land or pieces of that land to homeowners or developers. So your source is sort of a co-op. You're owning a piece of it if you didn't have to have the capital get into an entire property yourself. So there's currently 225 community land trusts across the United States representing 20,000 rental units and 15,000 home ownership units. And I know our cities taking the company, you know, having a conversation about establishing an EDC, well, CBDCS and EDC in Los Angeles and all across the county, they they up they participate in trusts as well. So when so, you know, cities like Washington, D.C. have begun have began implementing innovative alternatives to homeownership with a tenant opportunity purchase act. So something else we can look at that gives tenants the rights to purchase property where they reside. If the landlord or landlord wants to sell the property here in Long Beach, we have an opportunity. We have a responsibility to further examine the feasibility and provide the opportunity to our residents, expand our opportunity to residents to really buy into the homeownership concept. So with that, I thank thank you for your time. And those are my comments. And I make and I move support for the item.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilman Austin.
Speaker 11: Well, thank you, Mr. Vice President. Vice Mayor, I think you said it all.
Speaker 1: You thought it was the State of the Union 30 minutes.
Speaker 9: And.
Speaker 11: Then you said it all. And I also want to thank I was looking through this item. I want to thank LISC and the Green Lantern Institute for providing a lot of the data here. You've obviously, obviously brought forward a very thought provoking item, one that needs our attention. I think financial literacy is extremely important in all communities. We should be more engaged in doing more to assist residents in our city and our workforce as well, and becoming more financially literate so that they can build wealth for their families. And of course, homeownership is something that we've been talking about quite a bit. There's been a big conversation around housing here in the city of Long Beach. Homeownership should be part of that conversation. And certainly when folks invest into their neighborhood, they do have skin in the game and in the community and they make for great neighbors . And so I fully support this item and look forward to getting back something from a city manager's office.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Let me go to a public comment and I'll come back to the to the members of the council. Please come forward. Keep your comments.
Speaker 5: We when I started this. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak before you. My name is Brenda Rodriguez and I represent Affordable Housing Clearinghouse, one of the nonprofits that's listed in this report. And I'm here because I want to let you know that affordable housing clearing house has over 27 years of supporting the affordable housing needs of Southern California. And we stand here today. I stand here today on behalf of our board of directors ready to assist the city of Long Beach in establishing the HUD Counseling Center. Affordable Housing Clearinghouse is a HUD certified nonprofit agency. We provide housing advocacy. Homeownership opportunities, and we also own affordable rental units here in the city of Long Beach. So we were vested in the city of Long Beach, and we want to help those families that are low to moderate income, not just on one on one counseling, but also in budgeting their their finances and providing long term financial literacy, because these are some of the most important things that they need to accomplish in order to become low, long term homeowners. And if they're already living in the city of Long Beach, it's important for us to provide them with the tools and resources that they need to be successful homebuyers and avoid foreclosure or know where to go in cases of foreclosure. And so we're here to support each of your districts, and we're ready to sit at the table and let you know who our long term partners are. You already have businesses in the community that include HSBC, Wells Fargo, farmers and merchant banks. And so with the partnerships that we bring to the table, we can already start to have the dialog not only with yourselves representing your districts, but with the community members that you serve. And so again, my name is Brenda Rodriguez with Affordable Housing Clearing House, and I'm happy to entertain any questions and and have a dialog with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 8: Hi, everyone. Thank you for allowing to speak here today. My name is Benjamin Chow. I'm a community organizer with Housing Long Beach, and I'm also a constituent of the ninth District. I live right off of Cherry Avenue by the 91 Freeway. As an affordable housing advocate and a constituent. I would like to first express my appreciation for.
Speaker 1: Vice Mayor Rex Richardson's.
Speaker 8: Effort to address the affordable housing crisis we're facing in the city and also in our neighborhood. And I think it's important that low income members of our community have accessible pathways to homeownership and housing security. I also just want to point out that there are more actions that our district needs to take in order to uplift our residents and ensure housing security for all of our members. I want to point out that three out of five Long Beach residents rent and I know that you you had mentioned that you wanted to focus on housing. But I also think that renting is a very important part of this conversation. And for this reason alone, we need to include provisions for renters and the EV1 initiative. When my family immigrated to the U.S. 20 years ago, the only place, the only place that we could afford in Long Beach was a one bedroom apartment in North Long Beach. It was five of us fitting into this one, this one unit. And it was only after ten years of renting that my family was able to afford a down payment for the home that we live.
Speaker 9: In now in North Long Beach.
Speaker 8: However, that is not the case. And in those ten years, a lot has changed in North Long Beach. Home prices are going up in addition to mortgage rates. And it's becoming more difficult for renters to make that transition to homeownership. And without laws that protect tenants from unjust eviction, renters will still have difficulty on their path to homeownership. When my family was renting in Long Beach, we had to move around several different times because whenever we brought up an issue with our landlord, we were asked to.
Speaker 4: Vacate in 60 days.
Speaker 8: And so I think it's very important that we provide stability to our rental market as a crucial piece of making sure that our residents have a pathway to ownership.
Speaker 4: And I also appreciate that you've.
Speaker 8: Included community land trust and cooperative housing, but there are many more options that we need to consider. Also, since the housing bubble in 2008, a significant fraction of the homes in North Long Beach are being rented to us. So we have to take that into consideration. Again, I'm grateful for this initiative and believe that home ownership is important to our community, but we also need to make sure that renters are protected and secure as well. We need to make sure that we build more affordable housing as a part of this holistic, affordable housing plan in Long Beach. And we need to make sure that we have reasonable control on the rental market, including renter protections such as just cause eviction and rent control.
Speaker 9: Again, thank.
Speaker 1: You. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Speaker, please. And these are the last four speakers on this item. People on the line. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 6: Hi. My name is Status.
Speaker 5: I am a resident.
Speaker 8: Of Long Beach District eight. And also I work.
Speaker 5: For a bank. So I'm here as a residents.
Speaker 8: And also to show that banks are here to support.
Speaker 5: We partner with a lot of nonprofits, like Brenda earlier.
Speaker 8: Said, with affordable housing clearing house, with NHS of Los Angeles, with LISC. All of the names that were mentioned, and we do have a down payment assistance program that we give out. For example, we can give 7000 along with the wish program, 15,000 with this. Connie many of 60,000. So if you add up those money, it's up to $83,000 in downpayment assistance. Who is using it, as he said, someone who is not low income. So we have to really make sure that a low income, low to moderate income individuals are using it. And we're making our programs just available for low.
Speaker 5: To moderate income individuals. And I'm here to.
Speaker 8: Support a residents and as also a banker. So I'm here available. That's all I have to say. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 8: Hi, Jane Tamplin 623 Rose Avenue. I'm here as a resident and as a member who's been invited to participate in the Everybody in roundtable, where we've gotten a lot of information. A lot of that information is about barriers of our own residents unable to buy homes. And I think we all agree that a city of homeowners is a lot more preferable than a city of renters. There's more investment, there's more pride, there's more involvement. And as people are getting jobs here, they want to live here. And I think I support everything that's being done, everything I've been heard of, some of it, which is very new to me and I'm very excited about. And I just wanted to come forward and ask for your support also. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Through the last two speakers.
Speaker 5: Yes. Good evening. My name is Zita Daniele and I'm the national director of Community Lending and Strategic Partnerships with New American Funding. We were listing in your outline, and I want to thank Councilman Richardson for inviting us and telling us about this event today, because I want to first and foremost say that New American is excited to be here. We have two branches here in the Long Beach area, but that's not to say, even though it appears as based upon the numbers, we are one of the most active lenders here in the area and we are nonbank mortgage lending company that there's not more that we can do. We want to do more. Being able to sit around the table with you and discuss the needs and how, for example, we can encourage and excite low and moderate income families about becoming homeownership, I think is the first step. I can tell you just kind of looking at the outline for today. You know, I know Brenda very well in the work that her organization, Affordable Clearinghouse, does. I know the work that L.A. Family Housing does and L.A. NHS does because I'm on both of their boards. So I think you've chosen and identified some wonderful partners partnering with Lewis, for example, to host that that green lining that that roundtable, I think was also instrumental in. I should, as a point of disclosure, say that I'm on their advisory board. So I say all that to say you are partnering with the right people. I'm so glad that I could be here today because we want to say and I want to say on behalf of my president, my CEO and our CEO, as well as our branches and our staff throughout the area, that we want to be a part of the decision. We want to be a part of exciting, low and lower income families because whether it takes them one year or whether it takes them two years, we want to let them know that there is a lender there to support them. And we want to look at ways that we can leverage relationships with non business banks or business banks, I should say, to create more homeownership opportunities. I will also tell you that we embrace it is part of our philosophy at new American funding to leverage bond and down payment assistance programs wherever we can at the request of that family. We will intend to do more of that with you. And I thank you.
Speaker 8: For your time.
Speaker 1: Thank you. And our last speaker, please, on this topic.
Speaker 4: Let me first thank you guys so much for the opportunity. Also to the vice mayor Richardson for such an ambitious initiative. I'm very thankful for that. I happen to be a branch manager at New American Funding, which was the number one lender non-bank on your list. But today I don't come as that. Today I come as a friend. I happen to be the president of the Young Relatives Division of Los Angeles, which is a affiliate, the National Association of Estate Brokers, who happens to be for the last 70 years, a most decorated trade organization when it comes to fighting for advocacy for homeownership in America. And to implore you, I saw some of the data points, but I want to share with you one more that just got released two months ago from the Institute for Policy Studies called the Road to Zero Wealth. It looks at the racial inequality of wealth in America, and their data suggest if the wealth inequality is continue to move as it is right now, Hispanic households will need nearly 100 years to amass the same wealth that our white brothers and sisters do today in 2017. And even worse, if you're in a black household, you will need 228 years to amass the same wealth that our white brothers and sisters have today. When I look at the National Association of Homebuilders, who suggest if you're middle class, nearly 70% of the wealth is in the equity in your property, surpassing your retirement stocks and bonds savings accounts combined. It's how we send our kids to college, how start a business and give our kids their start in life. So when I look at this data and I look at the growing rates of Long Beach in terms of a black and brown community, our objective is clear. We simply want to be a part of a conversation that allows us to collaborate together. And when I think about it, right behind me, my young protest, please stand. These are real estate professionals working right here in the community. And what I can tell you. On the front line is that people desire to own a home. The credit capacity tends to be there, the income tends to be there, or we tend to fall short as on down payment assistance. In California alone, last year had nearly $25 million of unused money geared towards down payment assistance programs that went unused. But the ability to educate, to get the word to the community and to be a partner together is vital as we rebuild forward. Lastly, I'll leave you with this, that ultimately history is going to remember what we did today, and we want to be a part on the right side of history. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you, sir. BECK Thank you very much. Think back to the council. We're going to go to a vote. We are sorry. We have to, however, council comment. Councilman Pearce.
Speaker 6: Yes, thank you. I want to first just say congratulations again, Vice Mayor, for doing all the work on the front end, bringing people together, constituent stakeholders, making sure that we have the right lending organizations at the table. You mentioned a lot of fantastic things. A couple of things that I wanted to to raise up is, I think one of the challenges that people feel like when they learn about homeowner assistance programs as sometimes it sounds a little sketch, right? So I think as the city, what role can we play in educating and packaging a program that includes everybody at this table but that we're giving it that validation? Like you mentioned, there's a lot of there's a lot of organized organizations like you mentioned that we're not banks, right. That are out here in inner city doing this lending. How do we make sure that we are partnering with good partners and packaging and branding that and engaging our constituents in that to make sure that everybody knows about all the good work that the city is partnering on, as well as the good players at the table. And so I just really want to applaud you again for the work and say thank you so much. So I would just hope again on that note that we would find a way for us to put some city dollars to educating our base.
Speaker 5: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilwoman Price.
Speaker 5: Thank you. I want to echo all of that. This is a great item. I fully support it. And I want to thank all the folks who came out to speak so eloquently about the item. We, Vice Mayor Richardson, always does a really good job of inviting and introducing new groups of people to the council chamber. So for those of you who've never been here today or been here before today, I thought you did a really nice job of weaving in what you do as professionals every day to this item, because it makes us see what how a concept can become a reality through the professionals who are actually going to be out there doing the work. So thank you very much. And thank you, Vice Mayor.
Speaker 1: And finally, Councilman Andre.
Speaker 7: Yes, thank you. Thank you very much. Vice Mayor Richardson, I'm just glad you came on a night when we didn't have other things because we went into a long evening. But Mr. Khan, Vice Mayor Richardson did a great job because he know what he's talking about. And so I want to thank you for bringing this item forward, because homeownership is very critical in creating a generational wealth and transforming, you know, communities. And this that is a great first step in promoting homeownership, you know, homeownership for working families, because that is what everyone would like to have, is that, you know, house with the white picket fence, you would just need the picket fence right now because the house is incredible. We're going to get that. We will get that. Thank you again, councilman. Vice Mayor, my happiness with this.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Vice Mayor Richardson.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I just want to close out and thank everyone who has participated in everyone and so far the roundtables and everyone who showed up tonight and lended their support to figuring out this downpayment assistance issue. So thank you. And I encourage my council support.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. There's a motion and a second. Please cast your votes. And thank you all for for coming tonight as well. And Vice Mayor Richardson, thank you for putting this on the agenda. And votes are cast.
Speaker 2: Motion carries.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Okay, great. Thank you all very much. We appreciate it. Moving on. Thank you. Madam Quirk, if you can, please, next to item 13.
Recommendation to request City Manager to evaluate the feasibility of providing increased pathways to homeownership to low and moderate-income individuals by implementing the following:

·	Work with partners such as the Neighborhood Housing Services of Los Angeles County and the Affordable Housing Clearinghouse to establish a HUD Certified Homebuyer Counseling Center in Long Beach;

·	Explore the rise of non-bank lenders in Long Beach by establishing a dialogue with the top seven non-bank lenders in Long Beach to develop a path to a community benefits participation plan;

·	Retool the City's soft second mortgage programs by leveraging and partnering with private sector institutions;

·	Evaluate the feasibility of alternative forms of homeownership supply such as community land trusts, and other cooperative homeownership models.