When Long Beach city leaders declared a homelessness emergency in January 2023, they were blunt about how dire a situation the city was facing.
“Prior to the pandemic, we had a homeless crisis in our city, we had a housing crisis in our region, but the pandemic has exacerbated that crisis,” newly-minted Mayor Rex Richardson said at the time.
“And when you add on top of that skyrocketing housing costs, when you add on top of that inflation, when you add on top of that a mental health crisis that’s really manifested in our streets, we find ourselves in a state of emergency.”
A year later, the council is expected to end the state of emergency, likely before the end of the month. But – after spending more than $13 million, hiring more staff and launching a raft of programs – Long Beach only appears to have met some of the urgent goals it laid out as benchmarks for success.
Since the emergency was declared, Long Beach has added more shelters and moved people more quickly into housing, according to city data, but more people than ever are dying unsheltered on its streets, and it’s yet to be seen if the city has made progress on the most-watched metric: whether overall homelessness declined since last year when 3,447 people were without a permanent place to live .