Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson on Prioritizing Affordable Housing & Economic Opportunity

Mayor Richardson, in addition to your Long Beach responsibilities,  you're now Board Chairman of the new LA County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency (LACAHSA). Bring our readers up to date on LACAHSA’s county-wide responsibilities and agenda? 

Rex Richardson: The last time we spoke, I was President of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). It was during the last Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) cycle, which determined that there was a need for approximately 1.4 million units of housing to be built in the SCAG region by 2029, which is more than three times anything we've ever done in that same time window and shows there is significant progress that needs to be made on housing production. 

After serving as President of SCAG, I became the Mayor of Long Beach and our city was allocated a large share—26,000 units entitled between now and 2029. In cities, we don't really build housing; we set the conditions. We can incentivize, but there just simply are not enough carrots to build so many units of affordable housing across Long Beach, so we needed dedicated sources of revenue to boost housing production. 

There are 88 cities in LA County. Each city needs to produce housing, but having 88 different strategies for housing production is no real strategy at all. There's actually no agency responsible for helping all 88 jurisdictions and LA County to meet the housing needs now required by the State. 

That's where LACAHSA comes in. Long Beach has been advocating for the creation of this county-wide agency. I personally supported it, the City of Long Beach supported the legislation of Sydney Kamlager-Dove. And the entire region feels the social responsibility of being part of this agency whose mission is to find solutions to the regional housing crisis, boost production and preservation, and keep people in their homes. Again, there is simply no other agency responsible for doing this in LA County. 

LACAHSA is modeled after the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority which does similar work, but it is still different. LACAHSA is not a finance agency; it's a solutions agency. Innovation is built into the spirit of LACAHSA. 

Lots of low-hanging fruit on housing has been built, and now real innovation is needed to scale housing production across the region. 

This year we have done important foundation work establishing a diverse board with representation from across the county. We are now hiring our interim Executive Director. We are looking for a leader who can walk and talk differently from the traditional government archetype, who is able to fully engage with the private sector and development community. 

We also need to ensure protection into the housing production deals and contracts to ensure people can stay in their homes. We also need to develop a five-year strategy for how to boost housing production in tangible ways and deliver results. 

Mayor, LACAHSA touts itself as “accountable enough to cut through red tape, so it can do more than ever before.” At least, that's what's on the website. Can you elaborate for our readers how LACAHSA is going to cut through the red tape?

The new structure of the LACAHSA board adds more transparency and accountability to the conversation around housing production and accountability. There are 21 voting members, with representation from all across our county, and also includes SCAG, which is specifically casting an eye for housing production and planning. No other agency that has representation from Councils of Government, big cities, small cities, the County, and the City of Los Angeles together in one place focused on housing production that works across the region. 

How is LACAHSA funded? 

Like every new agency, we started off with no funding. We just had a volunteer spirit. We then engaged with philanthropic organizations, like the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Hilton Foundation, and United Way who have helped us find our footing, and get us to where we are today. Additionally, structural funding to boost housing production could be made possible through Measure A, which is a ballot measure to repeal and replace Measure H. 

Measure A, rather than focusing only on homeless services and outreach, addresses housing production and residential mental health. About $450 million will be used to sustain this agency, with more than $300 million a year going directly into housing production subsidies. The people involved in this are tenants rights groups and city leaders, all who are doing this work on their own time. No one's being paid. We hope to position this agency to be able to boost housing production across the 88 jurisdictions.

Mayor, allow us a tough question: the LA Times has reported on the collapse of Step Up on Second, a LA based nonprofit affordable housing developer. Is the current affordable housing model flawed?  Do we have the affordable housing production models to achieve the results the region needs and you advocate? 

In Long Beach we believe in affordable housing. It's working. Just last year, we broke almost every record on housing, more than 3,000 housing units and almost 700 affordable units entitled in that year. Both of those are records of our city, and our building permits continue to grow. We have more than 1,000 units permitted last year. So, we see it works. 

But I will tell you, the cities of Long Beach and Los Angeles can't produce all the affordable housing for the region of 10 million people across 88 cities. When you look at the patchwork of planning documents, housing elements, and the capacity within cities to actually facilitate housing production, it’s very disparate. That's where this agency can come in and really help find models that work. 

Now there are many ways to produce affordable housing. There's the tool that most use, the LIHTC (Low Income Housing Tax Credit) model, which, to its credit, has produced the majority of affordable housing that's out there. But there are other models as well. People are looking at ways to bring down costs on private housing to make it naturally occurring affordable housing. Those are things we should look at as well, because the price point idea is to bring the price point for construction down and pass that cost along.  

An agency like LACAHSA can engage not only with affordable housing developers on subsidies to close gaps but also to find ways to bring costs down. There are models that simply build smaller units that can be offered at a lower rate—that are more affordable, naturally. And there are other financing mechanisms that are less expensive, frankly, that bring the private equity sector into the housing market. This is an agency that needs to be able to understand private equity and the private sector to get capital off the sidelines and get them engaged here in LA County. 

That was one of the spirits of why we chose Ryan Johnson to be LACAHSA’s interim CEO.  Ryan has helped to acquire more than $4 billion of affordable housing in his career. He fully understands the private market and that we need more than one tool and more than one solution across these 88 jurisdictions to drive down affordability. Housing production in general helps to drive down affordability when you simply build more housing, but we also know that there's a big gap on low income, very low income, and moderate income housing, which is expensive to build and why we can't put our heads in the sand. We have to figure out ways to step up and produce very low income affordable housing for working families as well. So, I think the models that are there are proven examples of delivering results in Long Beach, but there are other models that we have to explore, and there's innovation that we have to drive that is necessary in this crisis

In your recent State of the City address, you spoke of your Grow Long Beach initiative, and in the past of the economic promise of “Opportunity Beach.” Elaborate on both.

The concept of Grow Long Beach is that Long Beach is at an inflection point. A century ago, in 1923, Long Beach was the fastest growing city of America largely because of oil production. We were experiencing an oil boom, and our population was growing. We needed more healthcare services—that's why we just celebrated 100 years at St Mary's Hospital. We needed more mobility—we just celebrated our airport. We celebrated 100 years of Farmers & Merchants Bank on Pine Avenue. So that was a big moment for us in 1923. 

Here we are, 100 years later, and we're acknowledging that although it's been a significant part of our past, oil is not going to play that much of a significant role in our future, and that is driving us to redesign and reimagine our economy to be more sustainable.

 Here's what I mean, Long Beach, if you think about our beautiful coastline, like the Queen Mary and the Pike, the Queen Mary was acquired by with oil money. The Aquarium of the Pacific, a lot of that finance came from the Tidelands Fund, largely driven by oil. Earlier this year, we had a storm that caused flooding and extreme weather events. We had one incident where 19 sailors went out to test their skills in the storm, and their mast broke, and they ended up stranded on the breakwater, and we had to have a Swiftwater rescue team of lifeguards swim out and save them. Now, those services of those lifeguards are funded exclusively, 100% with oil money. So, in a moment where you see extreme weather events driven by climate change, our solution to that has largely been driven by oil. It hasn’t changed. In order to generate new revenue to provide services like lifeguards, firefighters, police officers, we have to change our economy and our city. That's what Grow Long Beach is about. 

The strategy, really, is based on data. We looked at our five industries that have the most potential for growth, revenue generation, and job creation in Long Beach. The first is advanced manufacturing and aerospace. We're one of the fastest growing space clusters in America. With companies like Vast Space, which is building the first private space station, is in Long Beach. They made a goal to be at 700 jobs in five years, and they're already at 600 jobs in one year, right? And we just announced Ford Motor Company coming to Long Beach. They're coming back to California with clean tech research and development where they're going to be in an ecosystem with engineers. And then we have companies doing advanced manufacturing, where someone from Long Beach City College can make $45 an hour welding in our local city. Now this is very different from what Long Beach has done. Before if you have space, you’d put up a warehouse where jobs are $15 an hour, and it doesn't create that many jobs. Well now, if we're going to put up a big box, we're going to fill it with 400-500 jobs with people who are able to own homes in our community. So that's one of the sectors. 

The others I’ll spend a little bit less time on but they're just as exciting. For example, hospitality. When large events or entertainment comes to the city, people stay in a hotel, they eat at a restaurant; it generates sustainable revenue. And because we passed Measure RW, where hospitality workers in Long Beach make $23.50 and a past $29.50 by the Olympics, it's inclusive. It makes sure that as we invest in tourism, we're lifting up our residents, and we're actually generating revenue sources that are clean.  So, hospitality is a big, a big focus. We're building more destination venues and investing in entertainment. We have the amphitheater that'll be open next year. We're bringing music and concerts back. We have this rich history of music and entertainment. I mean, Snoop Dogg was just in Paris carrying the torch. Well, those guys all have the roots of being discovered in Long Beach. And so we're going to be investing in arts, culture and music as a tourism strategy. 

The others: the Port is obviously important for us. Our port is the number two port in the United States yet the cleanest port in the United States and in the world. So there, as we invest in decarbonization, electrification and industries like hydrogen, not only does it create job opportunities, it creates revenue. When a truck comes off of oil and plugs up to charge a megawatt of power, we tax that. There’s a utilities users tax in the city, and it becomes a revenue source to the same services like police officers or firefighters who are currently supported by oil revenue. And so as our Port continues to transition, we see there are ways to be smart and strategic about leveraging our tax code without raising taxes, leveraging our tax code to be a more significant revenue driver. There are a lot of these opportunities in the port for growth.

 One of those projects in the port that's really exciting is Pier Wind. The concept here is to help the state of California achieve its goals to produce 25% of its power through wind. But they're going to need a deep water port for all the staging, integration, and manufacturing of the floating offshore turbines. We have a proposal in Long Beach to build this facility. That will create 8,000 to 10,000 union jobs and be a revenue generator. And there’s some real excitement and momentum. The climate bond in California actually sets aside almost $400 million to begin this process to support Pier Wind in California. 

The other two that I think I didn't mention, are education and healthcare, those are the industries that Grow Long Beach is focused on: aerospace, got tourism, the port, health care, and education.  We're showing some real promise on those. We're on track with this strategy of to have our general fund off of oil revenue directly by 2029, which is ahead of our climate action adaptation plan, but there's still more to do. There are orphan wells that have to be addressed. There's four man made oil islands— two of them are impacted by new state law 1137 so they fall within the 3,200 foot setbacks. They're not going to be able to continue to do extraction. So, we have to envision, what are the new uses for these oil islands? We're not going to tear them down. There's a whole ecosystem around those islands. So, how can we use them for tourism uses? How can we use them for something that fits in with the larger plan of how the Long Beach skyline and waterfront grows. To sum it up, Long Beach is in a real transition. The City is changing.  We're going from a largely oil-based economy to clean technology, and there's some real promise when you see companies like Vast and companies like Ford investing in Long Beach and our port continuing the embrace electrification and decarbonization. It makes me optimistic about our future. 

Please also elaborate on the promise of “Opportunity Beach”.

When I initially came into office, the concept was Opportunity Beach.  I needed a vehicle to really talk about how we take our big challenges in our city and create more opportunities for our residents to thrive. And so Opportunity Beach was my initial 100 day plan coming into office, where we engaged with youth, job opportunities, and labor. The way that manifested was mostly engagement.  Then our first budget was the Opportunity Beach budget, where we looked at reforming some key departments, expanding hiring in the city, placing a bigger emphasis on local and now that's taking another step. 

We actually have three measures on the ballot that really are called the Opportunity Beach Agenda, which includes modernizing our hiring in the city and our civil service processes to place a big focus on hiring our local residents and students.  This will create an exciting new preference program. If you live in Long Beach, you’d get a preference on city jobs. If you go to school, go to college, university, or graduated from a college, university within 10 miles of the city center, which includes Long Beach State, Long Beach City College, Compton College, Cal State Dominguez Hills, you get a preference on city jobs. If you're a part time worker, and you work for a certain amount of time and a permanent job opens, you get a preference on that job. By doing so we're reforming our processes, placing a bigger emphasis on local and on speeding up our hiring because who better to help us deal with the vacancies when every major city is dealing with hiring challenges, who best to fill the vacancies than people who live and have gone to school in our local community.

The other thing that's really special and important to me is that when someone gets a city job, that's an opportunity of a lifetime that could change their entire life. For example, a young person coming out of school today, they're dealing with more student debt and higher housing costs. Well, if you work in government, over the course of 10 years, your student debt is canceled, because it’s a union job, you make a living wage, you're able to afford housing, and you get a secure retirement if you work for the city for five years and vest in a pension. That solves a lot of problems for an entire generation of workers who have been opting out of public service. And so, we have to address that, otherwise governments will continue to have challenges with hiring. So that's something that we simply have to do. There's a measure on the ballot, Measure JB, which does just that—modernizes our hiring process and creates a single hiring department in the city and places this local preference. 

Your economic program resembles V.P. Harris’s Campaign theme. 

Well, what's Kamala's economic agenda called? 

Yes, She’s advancing an Opportunity Agenda. I called this out 18 months ago when I came into office. 

People want to see government work for them. They want to know that, number one, that government's looking out for them and people want to ask, what have you done for me lately?

Pivoting before closing, share what Long Beach is doing to prepare for the LA28 Olympic Games.

We'll be a major waterfront center for LA 28 Olympic and Paralympic center as well. This is a big challenge, but also a big opportunity, because Long Beach is a big city. We're larger than St Louis, Miami, New Orleans. So it’s an opportunity, in many ways, for us to come out of the shadow and show the world just how special this city is. We've announced, I believe, eight Olympic events and one Paralympic event. The entire slate of Paralympic events haven't been announced yet. There will be just as many events as Olympic events, and, and there's one additional Olympic event in discussion, the full schedule hasn't, hasn't come out yet, but people can look forward to Long Beach being a great experience on our waterfront. We know how to host large events. This year we're celebrating 50 years of Long Beach Grand Prix, where we get 200,000 people for 200 mile an hour race. 

 It's our third time being a venue for the Olympics in 1932 and 1984 and this time we’re hosting more events than both of those combined. And the world got a little preview of Long Beach when during the closing ceremonies, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dr Dre and Billy Eilish and Long Beach's own Snoop Dog closed out the closing ceremony with a beach party in Long Beach. So I think people are going to get a little bit of Long Beach flavor when the world comes and we look forward to opening our doors.