Long Beach has seen a small step forward in its fight against homelessness, after declaring a state of emergency on Jan. 10, 2023. The city’s 2024 Homeless Point in Time count found 3,376 people experiencing homelessness in January — a slight drop from 3,447 the year before.
Still, city officials said Tuesday, Feb. 11, that they’re walking away from plans to build a 33-unit tiny home shelter. The city will return a $5.6 million state grant that would have funded the project.
Long Beach was awarded more than $5.6 million in grant funding for the project on June 28, 2022, but the effort quickly hit roadblocks. As planning and site design progressed, city staff uncovered a number of costly challenges — including the need for a case management office, complicated utility hookups, and poor soil conditions that would have required removal before installing the modular shelters. By April 2024, officials estimated those issues would have added nearly $7.5 million to the total cost.
If Long Beach had moved forward with the project at the proposed site, each unit would have cost about $400,000, officials said. On July 31, 2024, city staff took a new proposal to the Long Beach City College Board of Trustees, suggesting they explore whether the units could be placed at the Pacific Coast Campus instead.
On November 2024, LBCC staff told the city the project wouldn’t be feasible due to design challenges and the complex approval process tied to introducing on-campus housing for the first time under state permitting rules. The California Department of General Services’ Division of the State Architect oversees land use, permitting, design and construction for community colleges and other state-owned or leased properties.
Mayor Rex Richardson and City Manager Tom Modica spoke about the amount of red tape and permitting restrictions during a Long Beach City Council meeting.
“Over the past four years, we’ve added 446 permanent beds, we have 180 motel rooms, and 120 more beds are currently under construction,” City Manager Tom Modica said. “We wanted to try tiny homes. We worked at three different sites and put a lot of effort into it, but ultimately, it’s not a cost-effective model. We still have the tiny homes and will be looking at all the different options so we can continue that work.”
“We’ve tried a number of ways to add interim housing and shelter in our city,” Mayor Rex Richardson said. “We explored tiny homes and received state funding, and we recognize and appreciate that support. But we often have more flexibility when we can control the funding with our local dollars.”
City officials promised that 33 shelter units were designed and are currently in storage awaiting deployment. They are looking to partner with local nonprofits churches and other foundations as the homeless population is still a major problem.
According to the City of Long Beach’s 2024 Homeless Point in Time count, 72% of the 3,376 people experiencing homelessness were unsheltered, while just 27.3% were staying in places like cars or tents.
There’s still a lot of work to do. The Council for Community and Economic Research ranks the Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim metro area as one of the most expensive in the country, with a cost of living that’s 48.8% above the national average.
City officials acknowledged that homelessness is a complex issue, but said returning the grant gives them more flexibility moving forward — without restrictions like the 15-year covenant that was required by the state.
“It’s great because now we have the homes, and we have much more flexibility without those strict parameters,” Mayor Rex Richardson said.
If you’d like to get involved or share your ideas to help with the Long Beach City Council’s efforts to address homelessness, you can find more information at longbeach.gov .
