Written Comments in Lieu of Public Comments at City Council meeting Jan 7 2020 Agenda item: 20-0019 2020 Affordable Housing Assessment
Long Beach City Council
Stacy Mungo (5th
Dist) district5@longbeach.gov, stacy.mungo@longbeach.gov
The Mayor mayor@longbeach.gov
City Manager CityManager@longbeach.gov,
Tom.Modica@longbeach.gov
City Clerk CityClerk@longbeach.gov
Date submitted: January 5,
2020
Re: Written
Comments in Lieu of Public Comments at City Council meeting
Meeting
Date: Jan 7, 2020
Agenda
item: 20-0019 2020 Affordable Housing
Assessment
Dear City Council and Mayor:
Due to the fact that my time
is valuable and public comments were limited to 90 seconds by the council in
August 2019 I am submitting my written comments below regarding the above
matter to be inserted into the written record as if made in person at the
meeting.
This proposed tax and related
ballot measure is totally unacceptable. Property taxes go up yearly, as do the
direct assessments and the “voted indebtedness” and on top of that Proposition
13 may soon be abolished in the state.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has put
$500 million into his January 2020 budget proposal to shore up financially
struggling board and care homes. https://ktla.com/2019/12/31/500m-from-gov-newsoms-ca-budget-could-keep-l-a-s-most-vulnerable-from-becoming-homeless/
Homeless issues are issues
that are statewide and the budget pain needs to be shared by all statewide. We can’t
have a tax just on property tax in one city. As this is a statewide issue this
needs to be paid for by everyone in the state. NOT just property owners.
Otherwise this is sure to pass as renters will see this as no cost to them. Use
“other people’s money” to solve my perceived problems.
We also have the county wide
measure HHH passed in Nov 2016 and now the expenditure of that money is already
being scrutinized as likely wasted. https://laist.com/2019/10/08/prop_hhh_homeless_housing_audit.php
County officials also
estimated the average property tax rate required to repay these HHH bonds to be
$9.64 per $100,000 in assessed property value It is not clear at all what
percentage of those HHH funds are provided to Long beach each year (for Long
Beach to spend as it wishes) or what percentage of those finds are spent on or
in Long beach each year with respect to the homeless.
LA City also passed its own
separate Measure H in March 2016 (authorizing a 0.25 percent county sales tax
for 10 years in order to fund homeless services and prevention.) just before
HHH was passed. Again same effect.
There is no accounting of all
the NGO, Federal, State and county money currently spent or directed to the
city of LB that
impact homeless, drug addicted etc. There is also no accounting as to what Long Beach’s current
level of spending it on these and related issues. This needs to be clearly
presented to taxpayers. No mention of it in the memo from Councilmember Rex
Richardson, or any staff report. And Im sure it will not mentioned clearly in
the ballot measure as government entities do all they can to obfuscate the real
costs to taxpayers in these bond measures.
We can’t force people to take
free housing. Even when we do they can’t stay in it. See LA Times article https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-29/street-within-broadway-place-homeless-los-angeles
This is really not a housing issue. It’s
a crime/bail issue (helped along with things like proposition 47). It’s a
mental illness problem. (see proposition 63) It’s lack of healthcare. It s drug
problem. It’s a human nature problem. Some people clearly like living on the
river bed and other places as they have all been offered help and housing by
the city numerous times and refused it (that’s why I’m told the city “won’t” “move”
them from their tents). Why? They don’t want to follow rules. This just goes on
and on. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/09/12/why-california-keeps-making-homelessness-worse/#60a587825a61 A tax or bond in Long Beach will do NOTHING but make existing
fixed income homeowners more unable to stay in their homes or perform upgrades
to their homes.
Half our (general fund) budget
now is for police. Half!! So that roughly $557 million dollars each year is
really spent on homeless when you think about it. So we need to put more onus
on the police to dial in this problem.
As I recall LB was not even
part of the Supreme court amicus challenge to Martin v. City of Boise, 902 F.
3d 1031 - Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit 2018. https://www.lbreport.com/news/sept19/martin2.htm
Either way it does not matter. You are
over extending the holding of the case and using it to defend non police action
in all circumstances. You are also using it as an excuse to build very costly
free homes for homeless people. https://www.lbreport.com/news/dec19/boiseprice.htm
The law that was attacked by
the ACLU in Boise
was an “anti camping” law. That is all it addressed. The holding was narrow.
Its states in full:
“Our holding is a narrow one.
… "we in no way dictate to the City that it must provide sufficient
shelter for the homeless, or allow anyone who wishes to sit, lie, or sleep on
the streets... at any time and at any place." Id. at 1138. We hold only that "so long
as there is a greater number of homeless individuals in [a jurisdiction] than
the number of available beds [in shelters]," the jurisdiction cannot
prosecute homeless individuals for "involuntarily sitting, lying, and
sleeping in public.” Martin v. City of Boise, 902 F. 3d 1031,
1049.
It does not say "no
trespassing" signs cannot be enforced in areas where humans should not be
like in the Eldorado nature center or under bridges crossing the river where we
have public safety issues. Re do the signs like Lakewood did here at Carson St.
and SG River https://photos.app.goo.gl/dgZaJc7cN2ACRvSB7 The Boise case does not say you cant arrest
or cite or move people due to other crimes like drugs or theft. Its
specifically says you can. Also the informal policy of leaving people in posted
“no trespassing” areas if they don’t want to go to an available bed is a failed
policy. How can that ever work? What constitutes a "bed" under case
law? A 500k home or a tent in a lot? No trespassing means NO trespassing by
ANYONE homeless or not. This is why the fires were started by the homeless in
the nature center. No trespassing laws were NOT enforced with predictable
results.
Since Long
Beach failed to get the Boise
case taken up by Supreme court just create a new case with news fact that the
ACLU can loose!. Start rousting people in trespassing areas and let the ACLU
sue again then you can revisit the limited ruling in the Boise case. Stop being so passive. We will
never have enough beds in LA county to solve this problem. Ever.
Look at how Utah
avoided running afoul of the Boise
case: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-22/homeless-salt-lake-city-utah-shelter
This is a bottomless pit.
It’s a regional and statewide issue. The more money LB gives out the more homeless
will come to Long Beach.
This is documented. Its that simple. In the years since Measure HHH and H have
passed homelessness has increased. I think you have a cause and effect problem.
But if your goal is to add more city employees to the payroll (Richardson’s
memo says at p. 3: “It would also likely require significant additional
investment in staffing and programs to effectively manage the resulting
expanded affordable housing program”) and reward NGO campaign contributors them
by all means add more taxes onto the backs for struggling homeowners. The
exodus from CA is starting to become apparent and is going accelerate for the
next 20 years. That’s for sure. The middle class will be gone. It will be
elites, high income people, overpaid government workers and homeless or zero
income (read not paying taxes) people.
Speaking of homelessness and
NGO’s Katie Hill the U.S. Representative for California's 25th congressional district
from January to November 2019, was the former executive director of People
Assisting the Homeless (PATH). Word on the street is that Hill was making 150k
a year at PATH where she made the contacts to get her seat. PATH pays 52% of
the (tax) money it gets as payroll. This is at the heart of the problem with
homeless funding. Its an emorphoes problem with many causes and many solutions.
Exactly the kind of problem where money is thrown at it wil very little
success. Just look at PATH as an example. https://www.guidestar.org/profile/95-3950196
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Hill_(politician)
I am also attaching a copy of
the entire thread (226 comments as of today) on this subject from nextdoor.com
regarding this issue and as you can see all of the comments were negative. The
direct link to the thread (login required) is https://nextdoor.com/news_feed/?post=133260938&comment=325958381
Please vote against adding
this Affordable Housing Assessment to the ballot.
Signed:
5th District
Property Owner
Registered Voter
Taxpayer
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