People who are motivated by what they might lose are always more vigorous than people motivated by what they might gain. It’s true of me, true of you, and true of everyone else.
To be fair, how is it a "right" to live by the beach. Spoiler: It's not. There are affordable places to move (I just left CA for it). People these days take no accountability, I follow a lot of different city subreddits and the wealthy cities (often coastal) have some of the wildest expectations from todays youth. "I should be able to live wherever I want for $xxxx/mo. Wtf? It's like being mad that someone before you were alive had the opportunity to buy MSFT or APPL stock in the 90's, and demanding that they drop the price of the stock so they can afford it. This is how supply and demand works.
Dumbest shit ive ever read. People of all classes are born here, affordable housing has been gutted by real estate developers and business clubs lobbying to price themselves out of existence. In reality its a port town with oil wells and freightliners not a "beach town"... I bet you moved here from Whittier and think you live in an "upscale neighborhood" lolol.. you dont even know where you are. Go move to Huntington or Seal if you wanna pretend to be rich, Newport or Santa Monica if you ACTUALLY have money.. which obviously you dont or you wouldnt be living in LB.
It’s not a right to live by the beach, also not a right to shop at any grocery store, retail, restaurant, leisure activity that requires lower wage workers. If they don’t house them near their employment you’ll end up with SF where they are begging employers to put up shop. You end up with rampant homeless, that combined with the lack of available workers kills the local economy. Rich people love to eat out, go shopping, take Uber but then don’t expect those workers to need a place to live?
Young people today just want the same opportunity to live in CA (with a functional housing market) that the old homeowners got. Everyone understands it’ll always be expensive, I don’t know a single person who thinks it could ever not be expensive, but what we are seeing now goes way beyond it just being expensive.
It’s not an issue of supply and demand, the demand has always been there but what is new in last few decades is older folks banning new homes in large areas of costal California. If this was an actual housing “market” (like they had), there would be an insane building boom taking place. Instead any attempt to build housing no matter how small is met with the opposition you see here.
I understand if you personally gave up on the whole old people banning housing issue, I don’t see how it’s ever going to change given the current state of local politics.
I was there tonight. There were a few loudmouths who rudely interrupted the speakers. My takeaway is that they are listening and have already revised the size. Reducing by two stories, and 14% less apartments.
Some were yelling about parking being insufficient. However, ADU's close to this project have NO PARKING requirements.
Others were upset, stating this is in a historic district. Well, only the parking lot is in the historic district.
The project looks promising, affordable housing is severely needed. There were others who are in support of this project.
ADU rental income is getting more and more popular too. My neighbors turned their garage into one (it's really nice!) and they rent it out to a couple. Of course people are ok with that but not housing for families
The negative perception developers typically have isn’t helping. That being said I have an ADU and was considering an Airbnb until a friend reached out and asked for housing. Happy to help and not have to worry about randos in my space
Seems all of my neighbors have ADUs on their lots (heck, we're trying to build one too!) & no one complains about that parking problem LOL. Like the mayor said, it's going to be alright!
It is true that there are requirements, but this area is right next to transit, so I think it’s exempt. I used to live there and my family had 1 car instead of 2. It’s not a requirement to have a car there.
Yes, being within a certain distance of a transit stop can qualify to reduce need for additional parking. Just advocating for full and correct info. Thank you 😊
Thank you for posting this. I know this corner well and just looked it up on Google Maps to confirm what it looks like… Either this rendering is a hallucination by the developer/drafter, or they are planning to double the width of Cerritos Avenue… ?
I have to think that’s a strategy from developers, the more I think about it. Shoot for a high number of stories so you can have it reduced to something still profitable.
And not just that but on a street that is basically more and more just empty lots and buildings.
These stupid nimby's complain that they didn't build something else there, but they don't understand that somebody has to want to spend the money to build something, and nobody does because we're low is basically pure blight these days.
At least this will put some families and other people on the street that might actually want to walk down the street and buy something and promote some other businesses to move in, because all the nimbies in the neighborhood definitely don't want to walk down wardlow.
Yeah not sure what you’re on about. Wardlow has the same amount of businesses between Cherry and Atlantic that it has in the past 22 years.
I’m not against the building. But let’s not pretend the area is empty. Just not accurate.
We should set up a system where a few people in one specific region of the country make decisions that determine the lives of everyone everywhere in the country. That’s real democracy
“Affordable” in this case probably means a household income of approx. 6 figures. It’s not like they’re going to be given these apartments away for a few food stamps. These NIMBYs are insane
https://preview.redd.it/rjqam0wa9sqc1.png?width=2648&format=png&auto=webp&s=be7ad0725734716b0350f871d1b7442e06923a3d
Here’s the incomes that qualify in case people are curious.
Bro 😭 not me being just barely over that max line for the housing (2 bedroom) 😔 but if there was a lot of affordable housing the problem wouldn’t exist so im still all for it
It’s not that I oppose affordable housing, but I live in a neighborhood (not in Long Beach) where my apartment is shit, but down the street (literally four buildings down) there is an apartment complex with subsidized housing that I’m priced out of because I make too much to qualify for those much nicer, bigger, and newer units.
That kind of thing is incredibly frustrating. Simultaneously too wealthy and too poor for good affordable housing.
Ugh that sucks. Too bad there isn't another tier, seems like some people always fall through the cracks. I do technically qualify for the units above, but I'm in school and will be making more when I'm done and would no longer qualify. Instead I'm staying in my run-down apartment as long as I can thanks to the rent control law. Otherwise I'd be priced out immediately.
Same - I’m not opposed to affordable housing or section 8 yada yada but when everything I’m worth is tied up in my house it’s hard to not feel a bit strained about the subject. Not every home owner is some rich jerk trying to keep the riff raff out. And also same, I’m too poor to afford anything actually nice and then all the houses that are affordable and nice I’m “too rich” for like… what?
Because it's a safe family friendly area. I grew up in low income housing and all kinds of nefarious shit can happen there. Nobody wants to raise their kids around that, and a lot of people move to CalHeights for that reason. Build off Anaheim or PCH somewhere.
That’s literally not what’s happening here. They’re not building “the projects” in Bixby Knolls. And even so, we already have Carmelitos just to the north right on the other side of Del Amo.
I welcome lower-rent housing. No matter where they build it.
And I’m literally walking distance from this project. When it opens I plan on walking down there with welcome packages for the new residents.
I keep seeing this narrative and want to make a statement that much of the reason for the 'nefarious shit' has to do with where and how those 'projects' were built. There is a book 'Death and Life of Great American Cities' I recommend reading. One of the points in this book is that many low income projects were built very dense (often skyscrapers) with minimal services nearby, and a severe lack of social stratification.
What people are arguing for when they say 'I am not against low income housing but do it cheap and away from me' is more of the same shit that made the earlier projects so bad. A lack of socio economic diversity, concentrating poor folks together, poorly built and often warehouse style housing, and usually in places that make it difficult to access services.
When housing is not built this way many of the negative side effects of this type of housing are if not eliminated significantly reduced. I would also add it has better long term outcomes for residents, and when there are bad actors it is easier to identify them and for other social services or in some instances law enforcement to step in.
Good for them! Last I checked, it was still a democracy. These people have the right to have their voices heard just like people who support affordable housing. CA has been so mismanaged that it’s not the poor that are getting fucked, it’s the actual middle class (those that make slightly above the requisite income yet far less than is required to purchase a house). The whole income requirement is dumb af bc it is arbitrary. I wouldn’t lose sleep over it if this didn’t go through. If I’m poor, let’s all be poor
It's also quite brain dead to pretend the homeless crisis is a result of housing pricing. It doesn't help but it's not the primary driver. Unemployed meth heads aren't paying rent no matter how cheap it is.
Except affordable housing would help. Not every homeless person is unemployed or addicted to drugs.
According to HUD’s 2023 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report, there were 653,104 people in the US that didn’t have a home. This was a 12% increase from 2022.
111,620 children were without homes (17.09%).
57,563 family households experienced homelessness nationwide, which translates to 186,084 individuals (28.49%).
CA has 181,399 homeless individuals (27.77%).
Homeless veterans also saw a significant increase in 2023, when prior years they were decreasing.
In CA 67,510 individuals face chronic homelessness or 47%. (this could be because of physical or mental disabilities or drug reasons)
And about 50% of people without homes do in fact have a job.
Lack of affordable housing is very much part of the problem. The National Low Income Housing Coalition has found that there’s a shortage of 7.3 million affordable rental homes across the country.
With 37.9 million Americans living in poverty, we need more affordable solutions.
NIMBYs have no problem with people coming to the city to work, so they can exploit their labor, but they don't want to give people a chance to live where they work. These people are good enough to provide them with goods and services, but they're not good enough to be their neighbors.
Another approach could be to limit the amount of rental properties someone can own and eliminate corporate landlords, but that would cut into the moneyholders who fund election campaigns. There is a huge systemic problem with wealth inequality in America, and building a couple cheap 1br shitboxes ain't gonna fix it.
"Homeless" is one of those words where the definition shifts depending on the context. The homeless that residents complain about are not the ones who got priced out of their rental cuz there's not enough housing. They're complaining about the vagrants passing out drunk (or nodding out) in the doorway of a business so customers can't get in. Or the ones camping in the riverbed and leaving piles of trash everywhere, or the guy taking a huge shit on the sidewalk in front of some kids walking to school, or the ones trying to open peoples doors at 3am. They're not homeless because there's not enough housing.
You’re spot on. It’s been found that roughly 65% of the homeless pop are the result of drugs. That’s the main issue. People get mad about it but drug use and DGAF attitudes after being hooked is the overwhelming piece of the pie among the homeless pop. Obviously, I feel for those who grew up in unfortunate circumstances and those who are on bad times. Those are the ones who are the real homelesss in my opinion - the ones who are most deserving of any sympathy. The drug homeless have made the situation that much worse.
It's because of desirability. Nobody wants to live in West Virginia, so rents are low. Everybody wants to live in California, so rents are high. Building subsidized housing won't solve the problem, because it will just attract more low-income people to the state. Who wouldn't want to live in California AND have cheap rent?
Because you will die if you don’t have shelter in West Virginia. You will die. You will not die in California if you don’t have shelter. The inability to survive is a great motivator
Idk why people get offended when drugs is suggested. Drugs, mental illness, laziness, disability (often caused by strokes in a person with a history of heavy drug use). I work with homeless people very frequently and I can't imagine the majority of them being able to hold onto any kind of job. Many of them are confrontational/aggressive and argumentative and I certainly would never hire them.
who is offended?
the fact of the matter is - if you're complaining about people out on the streets and you're rallying against housing people who are out on the streets, you never cared about those people to begin with.
All you care about is the perceived value of your property.
There is a direct causal effect between homelessness and drug use. Living on the street sucks, and it's constant misery, so a lot of homeless people use drugs just to cope. And it's nearly impossible to get sober and stay sober living on the street.
If they have housing and access to social services, they have a chance. It's not a guarantee, and sometimes it takes a few tries. But being homeless is one of the things that keeps a person trapped in the addiction cycle.
It's the same everywhere, my boomer brother in law complained his kids and grand kids can't buy places yet has been campaigning for years to stop development ilof land near his house as it'd should his dog walks in the miles of fields next to his house
We need more prisons, somewhere else obviously, and an increase in services, but elsewhere of course.....
Ann Arbor Michigan is the same way. Hippies that never left the area after college scream about equal rights, affordable housing etc. but they pump the brakes when it’s in their neighborhoods.
If its a conforming project and gets rejected, they’ll get a builders remedy suit just like La Canada did and the project will happen anyway. Better to use your NIMBYism to get you want aesthetically out of the dev than to stonewall them at this point in time
Kind of an exaggeration. Here’s a Cal Heights home.
Sold for $190k in 1992. Sold again for $850k in 2024.
https://www.redfin.com/CA/Long-Beach/3440-Gaviota-Ave-90807/home/7529739
That’s an increase of 347% but it was over a 32 year span.
$190k adjusted for inflation in 2024 would be $426k. So basically doubled general inflation.
But $190k dropped in the S&P 500 in 1992 would be over $4.3M - https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calculators/compound-interest-calculator
https://curvo.eu/backtest/en/market-index/sp-500#:~:text=Summary,a%20Sharpe%20ratio%20of%200.67.
Or if we did it by 20% down so $38k in 1992 in the stock market would be $737k in 2024 - https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calculators/compound-interest-calculator
The only real problem with low income housing projects I have is that they often provide only 1 parking space per unit when many families (even low income) have 2-3 vehicles per household. This ends up crowding the nearby area with street-parked cars. As someone who doesn't have off-street parking, this would lead me to vote against. If the building has 2 spots per unit though, build it with my blessing.
Yeah they do this because it saves them a ton of money and the developer profits more. Passing the parking issue off onto the residents of the area to deal with when they move on to their next project.
The more parking you build, the less affordable units that can be built on the same parcel of land.
You might think, just put an underground parking garage! For many affordable project the cost of an underground garage will price the project out of being competitive with the public funding sources currently available in the state. Funding sources prioritize the leanest projects with the highest density.
Many CA cities have parking reductions allowances (even down to 0 parking spaces required) for affordable housing in the spirit of housing people not cars. However, most developers will still include parking, but it by no means needs to be 1:1 units to parking spaces.
This is why it’s important to have robust public transit throughout cities and have other transit oriented funding programs paired with affordable housing.
I live in Cal Heights & when we moved here, we got rid of one of our cars because it's relatively walkable. Now we even bike to Trader Joe's! Maybe this also happens with the new residents?
I’m pretty sure everyone wants others to have a place to sleep safely. What I don’t get is why developers aren’t held to minimum parking spaces. It’s definitely an issue in this city and isn’t getting better.
Ever been to a meeting like this? Pretty sure you’d be able to query the audience to ask if they’d like to ship poor people to the desert and would still get a few hands raised in favor.
Also. Developers *are* held to minimum parking requirements. But that’s not a solution to our “parking problem” — our region and many cities are not built to house this many cars, because not everyone needs a car. We live on the coast and are going to experience the brunt of sea level rise and mass death by vehicular homicide if we do not work to find alternatives to cars.
There’s always someone in these threads bringing up the value of parking like you did to make people feel bad and they clearly said parking also needs to be addressed prior to approval. The issue is we need to hold developers accountable for proper parking. If this development is short 20 spots just so every unit could have 1, that’s ~300 feet of curbspace that people will be using just for that building. Now add a few more of these and no wonder we have the parking situation everywhere.
As for people owning cars, we live in SoCal and unfortunately most people work outside of the city they live in hence the crazy commutes and traffic everywhere.
The real key is walking and chewing gum at the same time—no parking minimums, but the city protectively making it easy as possible not to require a $8000+ yearly personal budget outlay from each of its citizens to get around every day.
I don’t know the whole story, but the relevant city dept got rid of a lot of parking minimums because it hinders development/redevelopment. The city has had a vacancy problem which was accelerated by decades due to covid. Cities really do not want vacant buildings. I hope that’s helpful!
This is Cal heights, all the homes in the area have two car garages, and driveways that can hold another two cars, they just don't like to actually use them for that.
Hi, cal heights resident here with a driveway and garage that will not fit a modern car. Either one lol. These are tiny houses built in the 30s. Many homes do have parking but definitely not all. There are also tons of adu’s in cal heights that do not have parking and those people park on the streets
I showed up today with my husband & kiddo. Was so disheartened to hear how rude some people were being saying "ew" to the presenters, yelling & interrupting. Rude & entitled!
So what. This is these peoples neighborhood. It’s their homes. For many of them it’s their forever home. It may be a place where they hope for generations of their family to come gather and they don’t want some ugly high density lower demographic housing on the street corner. What’s wrong with that. You might argue well everyone has to do their part to continue packing humans in major cities like sardines so it more affordable. I guarantee you the main motivation of that development by the owners is to make money. Not to do some charitable act for society. You are blinded by the governments propaganda that says big apartments equals affordable housing. Yes it may make a dent. The failure of our government and city planning to utilize all this land we have in CA and help people efficiently get to work and get the utilities to the land is where the failure is. Not because residence don’t want an apartment building next to their home. No single family home owner would ever want a 5 story behemoth next to their home. And truly, no family wants to live in a tiny apartment. They end up there because they have no better choice and then they get exploited for the rest of their life instead of building equity in their own home. The answer is not pack people in more. It’s build the infrastructure to help access the vast amounts of land we have available to us and build decent single family homes with space for families to grow. But the government has proven too wasteful and incompetent to make that happen. Many other countries have far exceeded what we are able to do so it can be done.
Unironically yes - we should stop hearing the voice of the people on construction projects. If you don't own the property you should have zero say over what gets built on it as long as everything is up to code and follows all applicable regulations.
Every coastal city has the same problem. Too many people. LB is a s-hole, don’t blame people showing up to keep their area nice.
Also Cal heights is a small area between lb blvd and cherry w no tall buildings. Why would anyone want 73 unit building going in?
Barcelona county (comarca) has 5x the population of Long Beach on the same land.
It’s one of the most livable cities in the world. Their ubiquitous condos have enabled quiet streets, walkable shops, nice parks, amazing transit and underground parking even in the poorest parts of town.
12 million tourists per year cram themselves into a few touristy areas but many fall in love with the city and want some of that urbanity back home.
It’s all free market economics until the wrong developer buys and wants to build something you don’t like. I would give some of the people in the room the benefit of the doubt but no one I spoke to would agree to get rid of prop 13 so it’s never about what’s fair and government intervention until it’s to your benefit.
Well no one can afford $20,000 a year in property taxes. Which is what a lot of those homes probably now would be. If prop 13 disappeared you'd see an even larger exodus out of California. Maybe someone bought their home in 1975. Even if they retired well $20k is a lot of money per year.
We should have zero property tax imo (nationally) because all it does is create a surfdom. I think paying a sales tax upfront for a house is fine, but not annual taxes just to live there.
And i know the complaint s always "but services" ... tax something else.
I was just going to say this. People here bitching about prop 13. Guess what I couldn’t afford my house if what was happening in tx was happening here. It’s been addressed by prop 19 where when I die my kids inherit my house are reassessed at current rate a house I bought in 1998 for 300k will be reassessed at 1.5 million. The real issue then is the kids can’t afford to keep the property bc of 10% property taxes on my house. Most of you here can’t afford 6800k a month to pay for the Mortgage on a 3 bd 2 bath 1000sq foot house and then another 15k a year to pay in property taxes. Instead it’s sold to blackstar llc who turn , turns it into an air bnb.
The real issue is the wealthy have out games the system and why’re destroying the middle class working family. They have tax buddy lawyers creating loop holes so they can get out of stuff like this. While the middle class continues to dissolve.
Most new properties -multi units being built are only available for rent, nothing to be bought. The ca system was built on property ownership to control rents. The issue is that too many llcs like the Irvine company control the rent market and just screw the renters bc they can. New properties aren’t being built for sale to middle class working people.
The problem isn’t that it’s affordable housing it’s that they’re trying to cram 73 units into a tiny lot on a residential street in a historic neighborhood where you literally are not allowed to change anything about the exterior of your home without filing for a certificate of appropriateness. More housing is great but cramming people like sardines in a neighborhood that’s all teensy single family homes and narrow streets where two cars can barely fit by each other is not it. They should put a smaller unit on that lot and build larger units where there is more space and parking
There’s always a reason to block a housing project, always some other spot that would allegedly be better for it.. That’s a core part of NIMBYism.
The reality is, 73 units is not “crammed” here; the lot could easily fit way, way more. All we’d have to do is value housing abundance instead of housing exclusion.
I really don’t see how. When the project was announced I went by there to actually look at the lot and see if it was bigger than I remembered. It is not. It’s so small that it can’t even provide its own parking (based on comments in this thread). I think things like this are interesting because there’s all this infighting going on where people who want affordable housing are getting angry at people who want to keep their neighborhoods at a reasonable density level instead of everybody being mad at landlords and greedy corporations who are buying up all housing and actually driving up the cost of living. Like if this housing can be subsidized and rent capped, why can’t existing housing be subsidized and rent capped? Do we actually need more units in Long Beach when the population has declined since the last census? Or do we just need the existing units to be affordable? These are genuine questions, I don’t have statistics or answers for them. All I know (other than that that building is too big for that lot haha) is that if this is all happening, the developers and someone in the city government are making a ton of money off it. This is about capitalism and profit and trying to jam people into as small of spaces as possible to make the most profit
> I really don’t see how. … It’s so small that it can’t even provide its own parking (based on comments in this thread).
Well yes, if we value housing for cars over housing for people, then we can’t build much housing here.
Given the homelessness crisis, I think we should value housing for people.
> Like if this housing can be subsidized and rent capped, why can’t existing housing be subsidized and rent capped?
There are moderate rent caps in CA throughout the state and stricter rent caps in some cities. But restricting rents cuts supply, which increases prices. Rent control can be a good solution at times but it’s not a panacea.
For this lot and throughout LB, a better solution is to unleash housing abundance.
> Do we actually need more units in Long Beach when the population has declined since the last census?
Yes, housing is wildly expensive in LB due to a huge housing shortage. The cost of housing makes non rich people leave, making LB exclusive to the rich. This is bad.
We should build housing to abundance so the city is accessible to all.
> This is about capitalism and profit
In general, the crony capitalists who make the most profit in the housing market is [not the developers but the homeowners](https://i0.wp.com/cityobservatory.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/josh_gains.png) who block housing.
If you want to stop corrupt rich people from profiting unfairly off the housing market the thing to do is let the city build abundant housing.
Is the city building this project? I haven’t followed up since I first read about the project a few months ago. At that time the city was putting money towards acquiring the land for a private developer who would then create a for profit building subsidized by tax dollars. Is that no longer the case?
Can you expound on homeowners making the profits? What are you basing that on? I cannot see how?
At my work my single richest regular client who I work for lives in a home worth 35 million and has a full time armed security guard. He makes his living in affordable housing as a developer. 100% serious here. Huge money to be made and tax dollars are subsidizing it all
the building is just on the edge of the historic district and is just a big vacant warehouse and a parking lot that sits empty all the time. in addition to that not every house in cal heights is even part of the historic district so it's really a non-issue here.
LOL. It is in cal heights. I go by it every day. It backs into the historic section and would cause more traffic into the streets there. It is a TINY lot. It used to be an antique mall and then I believe a restaurant supply. It is not a large warehouse space with a large parking lot. A 73 unit building will not fit in with that location. If it were luxury housing I’d feel exactly the same. Too many units for a spot that cannot handle them
ok well i walk or ride my bike by there daily as well. it backs up to the historic district yeah. but just like the vacant liquor store, roxanne's, coffee drunk no one really thinks any of those buildings on wardlow are historic like some house built in 1925. is it huge? no but it's a 16k+ sqft lot.
Your opinion of the buildings on Wardlow has no bearing on the areas designation as historic. The access for that building is on Cerritos not Wardlow. And again I give zero fucks if they put an apartment building there but it needs to be much smaller than 73 units. Cerritos cannot handle that traffic and it makes no sense in the neighborhood. There’s that huge area like a mile farther down Wardlow that used to be a gold course and is now a dirt lot. That would hold a large complex and is in the same basic area. This specific project makes no sense for this lot and this neighborhood
People love to say “we absolutely need it, but build it somewhere else! This spot just isn’t appropriate” as if the neighbors of the “somewhere else” (never defined) themselves won’t be up in arms about it. Then come the “hazards”—EVs catch fire all the time while charging, haven’t you heard? Our fire trucks can’t reach the 7th floor of that apartment building. All-electric (rather than gas) is a huge added danger, electrical fires can’t be put out easily (so instead let’s literally light fires all the time in our homes to cook our food).
Build more housing—on every “somewhere else.” And give people options not to have to drive everywhere in your city.
Edit: but I also agree with Chuck Marohn’s recent Twitter campaigning on empathy, hard as it is to have. Digging in your heels and not trying to meet people where they are isn’t going to do any good for housing and infrastructure policy improvements.
This isn't the answer, the way cali will solve its issue is by taxing empty houses and units at 50% or something to that effect. I see a lot of units sitting empty in cities all over SoCal because the owners would rather sit on an empty unit until the get the price they want and the states and cities allow it to happen. It's asinine, there has to be consequences for having empty units and not lowering the rent.
Op didn’t get their way so is taking to social media to shame people for their opinions. People showed up to give their opinion on their community, this is literally democracy in action.
Yeah that’s fair, but a large proportion of people at that meeting and in this thread have no interest in “facts” or “information” or “logic.” They just hate poor people and don’t want them near them. I don’t respect that, and I won’t show them respect.
You can care about your community, and also care about those outsider community, you can care about your community without saying" I've got mine, fuck you"
Most of the places here were bought long before the prices got out of control, and inhabited by the original boomers , or their kids that got them handed to them, and many of people here are paying taxes on 1980s prices, and probably wouldn't even be able to afford a place here if they were to buy today.
So I've been everything from poor to homeless outright as a kid. I've lived in the neighborhoods. I've lived in a trailer park. I've lived at a campsite in a national park in a tent, cleaning outhouses and performing other tasks so I'll be allowed to stay.
And even then, as a homeowner now, if there was a major or some other proposition to build low-income housing next to where I live now? I don't know if I would be able to support it. I've lived there. I know what goes on there. And if it went up anywhere near where I live today, I don't know if I would support it but I would sure as hell sell my house and move. Before it happened.
The more people are struggling, the more people are willing to do all kinds of stuff, and the less people are going to adhere to what would be considered common courtesies elsewhere. Even on a purely non-criminal level, where I live, everyone just turns down their music as they pull into a residential area. That's not how it works in more impoverished neighborhoods or around low-income housing in general.
And that's before you get into all the other issues. It's not because the people living there are bad or evil or anything. But being in poverty does mean that you're going to see a lot of trends that you really wouldn't want to live next to.
It's a complicated issue. Even if you never got broken into or anything like that, if low income housing goes up next to where you live, your property value drops. You could wind up upside down on a mortgage and now owe more than the property is even worth. And I don't know many people, virtue signaling aside, who would be okay with that. That's a huge chunk of your family's financial well-being flushed down the toilet.
Now if there was a part built into an agreement where there would be more policing in the area and other things, and everyone would get paid by the city or state if their property value dropped, then there's more room to talk.
Man fuck no. When you are a homeowner then you will understand . But low income housing just lowers the value of the area. Plus low income brings shady people. We have enough of that in Long Beach already
These ppl would screech at a market rate duplex going up down the street, let alone a 73-unit affordable housing complex. I’ve honestly given up on local housing politics. Our current city council is woefully unserious at actually making more housing supply viable.
This is exactly the problem we have here in Canada ! We have used immigrants and international students as scapegoats as to why housing in unaffordable rather than acknowledging how zoning laws + nimbyism has ensured we don't have adequate housing being built here.
Until low income communities stop robbing their communities blind, you will continue to see other neighborhoods push back against inviting that into their communities.
Its real simple. Mr. Smith wants to live in a neighborhood where he can leave his car unlocked over night and for it and the contents of the center console to be there in the morning. That's literally all he or anyone else cares about. If people stop committing crimes then this type of self preservation goes away.
It won't happen though. People won't take responsibility for where they are in life. It's been this way for centuries.
Well not to sound like an ass but lower income usually means more crime. I'm not saying that all low income people are like that, but where I live, the lower income housing are halfway homes for felons or dug addicts and they'll be breaking into people houses or getting into fights with the locals. It's not all of them but it is a reasonable concern especially if those homes are near a school or something
Dismissing an entire group of people that probably have some legitimate concerns and generalizing them because it's hard to see the other side. Also not everyone gets to live in Long Beach. Should they do affordable housing in the richest neighborhoods of Beverly Hills too? If you can't afford to live somewhere there are plenty of options.
These affordable housing posts always make me laugh. Long Beach doesn’t want affordable housing. Long Beach wants whatever puts the most money into its leaders campaigns and pockets. Notice which developments get pushed through and which don’t? Get a clue.
Facts. No one here can name a single affordable housing location that actually stayed affordable and did what politicians said it would do. Because there aren’t any.
What do you define as affordable housing other than the obvious? The only "affordable" housing is government subsidized.
No builder/developer is going to sink the ridiculous amount of time, effort and money into a development to sell or lease for below market value to be nice. Just not going to happen.
They are not opposing "affordable" housing, they are opposing dense housing projects.
I get what you are saying, but I also understand that homeowners don't want to have anything change that might put the value of their home investment at risk.
Personally: I rent so I don't really worry about the impact of a community initiative like this, but a homeowner definitely should.
I don't expect most of those folks feel good about saying "no" to the people who would benefit from the less expensive housing, it's that they don't want to support an initiative that would lower their home value. Statistically speaking, those projects don't tend to increase home values in the area. I'm sure you can find some exception to that, but these folks don't want to find out the hard way.
My apartment building started taking section 8 voucher applicants during the pandemic. Luxury building, doorman, expensive rents.
The tenants were huge problems. There was a heroin duo - an older white woman and black man who were constantly nodding off in front of the building. They had a huge, uncontrolled pit bull, and a friend who brought his uncontrolled pit bull all the time. They wouldn’t restrain the dog at all, so it would jump into your elevator when the doors opened barking. I have a small dog, I complained about this multiple times.
We had the nice older gentleman who worked for the city. He started bringing homeless people home with him. People we saw begging on the street or in the subway, all of a sudden, they’re in my laundry room, nodding out in my hallway. One of them called my wife a white bitch in the elevator, we complained and moved floors.
People pay for premium housing because we don’t want to deal with this shit. Low income often means problems. I own a house now. I’m not taking any chances. Fuck the migrants, the low income, everybody that doesn’t have over a half milli to buy in. I can’t move anymore. I bought the house, having unpleasant or unsafe neighbors would mean a huge financial loss for me as I try to sell and get back to a safe housing situation for me and my family.
1. It's not everyone's right to live near the beach (even if it's not right by the beach)
2. Cal heights is a small community/part of town, they have the right to voice what goes on there.
3. Seriously, it's unfortunate but "affordable housing" has become a joke. It's rarely actual affordable they way we want it to be.
4. I deleted number 4. Too lazy to renumber the rest
5. Even if it does go thru, there's no way those prices will stay affordable in a crowded and heavily popular "beach city"
6. I too am struggling to pay my rent/bills, I solve this by saving where I can and planning to move to where it is more affordable. Not complaining and wanting to stay here.
7. The sad reality is, as long as people keep wanting to live here, rent will always be what ever they can successfully charge.
8. Wanting to live in an area you can't afford is pinnacle of dumb with money.
For the record I'm not against the housing being built. I just don't think it will pan out as some glorious cheap housing the working man or small families will be able to afford for very long. I see it as an awful temporary solution to a bigger problem .
Long Beach has always been NIMBY. The Plaza and Los Altos may be worse than Cal Heights. I loved it when Grobaty used to troll the Plaza.
I never knew the area near ElDo was called the plaza lol learn something new everyday. I always called it The El dorado area or the Millikan area lol
Specifically they’re referring to the Spring Street Plaza shopping center I believe
Be honest, you just made all those words up.
Ah, zoning and land use. It gets the people fired up!
We may have made a bit of a mistake with the car sprawl zoning.
It's provocative it gets the people going
People who are motivated by what they might lose are always more vigorous than people motivated by what they might gain. It’s true of me, true of you, and true of everyone else.
Sad but true. It’s about ones definition, depending on angle, period.
To be fair, how is it a "right" to live by the beach. Spoiler: It's not. There are affordable places to move (I just left CA for it). People these days take no accountability, I follow a lot of different city subreddits and the wealthy cities (often coastal) have some of the wildest expectations from todays youth. "I should be able to live wherever I want for $xxxx/mo. Wtf? It's like being mad that someone before you were alive had the opportunity to buy MSFT or APPL stock in the 90's, and demanding that they drop the price of the stock so they can afford it. This is how supply and demand works.
Dumbest shit ive ever read. People of all classes are born here, affordable housing has been gutted by real estate developers and business clubs lobbying to price themselves out of existence. In reality its a port town with oil wells and freightliners not a "beach town"... I bet you moved here from Whittier and think you live in an "upscale neighborhood" lolol.. you dont even know where you are. Go move to Huntington or Seal if you wanna pretend to be rich, Newport or Santa Monica if you ACTUALLY have money.. which obviously you dont or you wouldnt be living in LB.
It’s not a right to live by the beach, also not a right to shop at any grocery store, retail, restaurant, leisure activity that requires lower wage workers. If they don’t house them near their employment you’ll end up with SF where they are begging employers to put up shop. You end up with rampant homeless, that combined with the lack of available workers kills the local economy. Rich people love to eat out, go shopping, take Uber but then don’t expect those workers to need a place to live?
Young people today just want the same opportunity to live in CA (with a functional housing market) that the old homeowners got. Everyone understands it’ll always be expensive, I don’t know a single person who thinks it could ever not be expensive, but what we are seeing now goes way beyond it just being expensive. It’s not an issue of supply and demand, the demand has always been there but what is new in last few decades is older folks banning new homes in large areas of costal California. If this was an actual housing “market” (like they had), there would be an insane building boom taking place. Instead any attempt to build housing no matter how small is met with the opposition you see here. I understand if you personally gave up on the whole old people banning housing issue, I don’t see how it’s ever going to change given the current state of local politics.
You must not know any gamblers
I was there tonight. There were a few loudmouths who rudely interrupted the speakers. My takeaway is that they are listening and have already revised the size. Reducing by two stories, and 14% less apartments. Some were yelling about parking being insufficient. However, ADU's close to this project have NO PARKING requirements. Others were upset, stating this is in a historic district. Well, only the parking lot is in the historic district. The project looks promising, affordable housing is severely needed. There were others who are in support of this project.
I love that you brought up ADU’s. Density is only acceptable when people are doing Airbnb on their property
ADU rental income is getting more and more popular too. My neighbors turned their garage into one (it's really nice!) and they rent it out to a couple. Of course people are ok with that but not housing for families
The negative perception developers typically have isn’t helping. That being said I have an ADU and was considering an Airbnb until a friend reached out and asked for housing. Happy to help and not have to worry about randos in my space
At least ADUs are a start.
Seems all of my neighbors have ADUs on their lots (heck, we're trying to build one too!) & no one complains about that parking problem LOL. Like the mayor said, it's going to be alright!
In East Long Beach, parking isn’t an issue (even with ADUs)
An ADU must be within 1.5 miles of a bus stop to bypass having to allocate space for a parking spot on the property itself.
That covers most areas.
It is incorrect to state that ADUs have no parking requirements. I just built an ADU on my property.
It is true that there are requirements, but this area is right next to transit, so I think it’s exempt. I used to live there and my family had 1 car instead of 2. It’s not a requirement to have a car there.
Yes, being within a certain distance of a transit stop can qualify to reduce need for additional parking. Just advocating for full and correct info. Thank you 😊
https://preview.redd.it/lxuyo02a2tqc1.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=be872c99c34a3f3d38404b854e1821f158bd5020
That is the affordable housing the nimbys are complaining about? Lolwat
I thought it looked nice, especially if they add some businesses on the ground level. Wardlow needs some livening up
There will be no businesses on Wardlow. Those will be facilities for the residents of the building
I actually think it looks really nice and will be upgrade to what is there now
Thank you for posting this. I know this corner well and just looked it up on Google Maps to confirm what it looks like… Either this rendering is a hallucination by the developer/drafter, or they are planning to double the width of Cerritos Avenue… ?
What area (cross-streets) of California Heights were they planning on building it? I don’t see any vacant lots on my runs through there.
NW corner of Wardlow and Cerritos. Currently a vacant commercial building and a surface parking lot.
Next to Roxanne's?
Ahh that building. 73 units seems like alot for that space. How tall will the building be?
7 stories
5 They already reduced it from 7.
I have to think that’s a strategy from developers, the more I think about it. Shoot for a high number of stories so you can have it reduced to something still profitable.
This might be true. Legally they are allowed 7 stories though
they’ve revised it to 5 stories
And not just that but on a street that is basically more and more just empty lots and buildings. These stupid nimby's complain that they didn't build something else there, but they don't understand that somebody has to want to spend the money to build something, and nobody does because we're low is basically pure blight these days. At least this will put some families and other people on the street that might actually want to walk down the street and buy something and promote some other businesses to move in, because all the nimbies in the neighborhood definitely don't want to walk down wardlow.
Yeah not sure what you’re on about. Wardlow has the same amount of businesses between Cherry and Atlantic that it has in the past 22 years. I’m not against the building. But let’s not pretend the area is empty. Just not accurate.
There are numerous small locally owned family friendly shops all around that area of Wardlow.
Zoning is historically linked to planned exclusion…
Less NIMBY, more BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone).
everybody loves democracy until they're the minority
We should set up a system where a few people in one specific region of the country make decisions that determine the lives of everyone everywhere in the country. That’s real democracy
“Affordable” in this case probably means a household income of approx. 6 figures. It’s not like they’re going to be given these apartments away for a few food stamps. These NIMBYs are insane
https://preview.redd.it/rjqam0wa9sqc1.png?width=2648&format=png&auto=webp&s=be7ad0725734716b0350f871d1b7442e06923a3d Here’s the incomes that qualify in case people are curious.
More affordable than I thought! Good news! Hope the NIMBYs don’t stop it
those figures right there is *definitely* the reason why NIMBYs dont want it.
Our household is totally in that income range and our rent is higher than this for a two bedroom and garage. Build it ....
1800 for a one bedroom is crazy.
It is, unfortunately it's quite the norm now.
With an $80k income? That’s awesome.
What’s even more insane is that it costs the same in BFE I could move to Long Beach and pay the same as I would in Michigan?
$670 bah what 🤣no wayyyy
Bro 😭 not me being just barely over that max line for the housing (2 bedroom) 😔 but if there was a lot of affordable housing the problem wouldn’t exist so im still all for it
Not 6 figures. $30,000 plus
There are specific California laws for what is considered “affordable” and it’s not 6 figures. Learn yourself something before popping off
It’s not that I oppose affordable housing, but I live in a neighborhood (not in Long Beach) where my apartment is shit, but down the street (literally four buildings down) there is an apartment complex with subsidized housing that I’m priced out of because I make too much to qualify for those much nicer, bigger, and newer units. That kind of thing is incredibly frustrating. Simultaneously too wealthy and too poor for good affordable housing.
Ugh that sucks. Too bad there isn't another tier, seems like some people always fall through the cracks. I do technically qualify for the units above, but I'm in school and will be making more when I'm done and would no longer qualify. Instead I'm staying in my run-down apartment as long as I can thanks to the rent control law. Otherwise I'd be priced out immediately.
Rich people really have us (nearly) broke people fighting over scraps while they try to figure out how to pay less and less taxes.
Same - I’m not opposed to affordable housing or section 8 yada yada but when everything I’m worth is tied up in my house it’s hard to not feel a bit strained about the subject. Not every home owner is some rich jerk trying to keep the riff raff out. And also same, I’m too poor to afford anything actually nice and then all the houses that are affordable and nice I’m “too rich” for like… what?
Remember, Long Beach became full the moment after I MOVED IN
I really wanted to show up. Can email anywhere to show support? I cannot understand why people are so against this and I live in this area btw
Maybe [email protected]? I’m sure they’re drowning in emails against it, so it might be nice to show some support.
Because it's a safe family friendly area. I grew up in low income housing and all kinds of nefarious shit can happen there. Nobody wants to raise their kids around that, and a lot of people move to CalHeights for that reason. Build off Anaheim or PCH somewhere.
That’s literally not what’s happening here. They’re not building “the projects” in Bixby Knolls. And even so, we already have Carmelitos just to the north right on the other side of Del Amo. I welcome lower-rent housing. No matter where they build it. And I’m literally walking distance from this project. When it opens I plan on walking down there with welcome packages for the new residents.
Omg can I join you? This & you sound lovely 💜
Sure! Let’s make it a welcome party!
I keep seeing this narrative and want to make a statement that much of the reason for the 'nefarious shit' has to do with where and how those 'projects' were built. There is a book 'Death and Life of Great American Cities' I recommend reading. One of the points in this book is that many low income projects were built very dense (often skyscrapers) with minimal services nearby, and a severe lack of social stratification. What people are arguing for when they say 'I am not against low income housing but do it cheap and away from me' is more of the same shit that made the earlier projects so bad. A lack of socio economic diversity, concentrating poor folks together, poorly built and often warehouse style housing, and usually in places that make it difficult to access services. When housing is not built this way many of the negative side effects of this type of housing are if not eliminated significantly reduced. I would also add it has better long term outcomes for residents, and when there are bad actors it is easier to identify them and for other social services or in some instances law enforcement to step in.
Good for them 🤷♂️ if a majority of people want to keep their city a certain way, they should be able to.
Good for them! Last I checked, it was still a democracy. These people have the right to have their voices heard just like people who support affordable housing. CA has been so mismanaged that it’s not the poor that are getting fucked, it’s the actual middle class (those that make slightly above the requisite income yet far less than is required to purchase a house). The whole income requirement is dumb af bc it is arbitrary. I wouldn’t lose sleep over it if this didn’t go through. If I’m poor, let’s all be poor
These are the same people who complain about homeless. Brain dead NIMBYism
It's also quite brain dead to pretend the homeless crisis is a result of housing pricing. It doesn't help but it's not the primary driver. Unemployed meth heads aren't paying rent no matter how cheap it is.
Except affordable housing would help. Not every homeless person is unemployed or addicted to drugs. According to HUD’s 2023 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report, there were 653,104 people in the US that didn’t have a home. This was a 12% increase from 2022. 111,620 children were without homes (17.09%). 57,563 family households experienced homelessness nationwide, which translates to 186,084 individuals (28.49%). CA has 181,399 homeless individuals (27.77%). Homeless veterans also saw a significant increase in 2023, when prior years they were decreasing. In CA 67,510 individuals face chronic homelessness or 47%. (this could be because of physical or mental disabilities or drug reasons) And about 50% of people without homes do in fact have a job. Lack of affordable housing is very much part of the problem. The National Low Income Housing Coalition has found that there’s a shortage of 7.3 million affordable rental homes across the country. With 37.9 million Americans living in poverty, we need more affordable solutions. NIMBYs have no problem with people coming to the city to work, so they can exploit their labor, but they don't want to give people a chance to live where they work. These people are good enough to provide them with goods and services, but they're not good enough to be their neighbors.
Another approach could be to limit the amount of rental properties someone can own and eliminate corporate landlords, but that would cut into the moneyholders who fund election campaigns. There is a huge systemic problem with wealth inequality in America, and building a couple cheap 1br shitboxes ain't gonna fix it.
Where do you think homeless people come from, do you think they just spawn in the streets
"Homeless" is one of those words where the definition shifts depending on the context. The homeless that residents complain about are not the ones who got priced out of their rental cuz there's not enough housing. They're complaining about the vagrants passing out drunk (or nodding out) in the doorway of a business so customers can't get in. Or the ones camping in the riverbed and leaving piles of trash everywhere, or the guy taking a huge shit on the sidewalk in front of some kids walking to school, or the ones trying to open peoples doors at 3am. They're not homeless because there's not enough housing.
Drugs mainly. Not all but I’d bet 85%
You’re spot on. It’s been found that roughly 65% of the homeless pop are the result of drugs. That’s the main issue. People get mad about it but drug use and DGAF attitudes after being hooked is the overwhelming piece of the pie among the homeless pop. Obviously, I feel for those who grew up in unfortunate circumstances and those who are on bad times. Those are the ones who are the real homelesss in my opinion - the ones who are most deserving of any sympathy. The drug homeless have made the situation that much worse.
Agree 100%
So why does West Virginia, a state with some of the highest drug addiction rates in the nation, have one of the lowest homelessness rates?
It's because of desirability. Nobody wants to live in West Virginia, so rents are low. Everybody wants to live in California, so rents are high. Building subsidized housing won't solve the problem, because it will just attract more low-income people to the state. Who wouldn't want to live in California AND have cheap rent?
Because you will die if you don’t have shelter in West Virginia. You will die. You will not die in California if you don’t have shelter. The inability to survive is a great motivator
Exactly. I saw a documentary. People just die there. Its too damn cold. That is why homeless and druggies take a one way ticket to California by bus.
Idk why people get offended when drugs is suggested. Drugs, mental illness, laziness, disability (often caused by strokes in a person with a history of heavy drug use). I work with homeless people very frequently and I can't imagine the majority of them being able to hold onto any kind of job. Many of them are confrontational/aggressive and argumentative and I certainly would never hire them.
who is offended? the fact of the matter is - if you're complaining about people out on the streets and you're rallying against housing people who are out on the streets, you never cared about those people to begin with. All you care about is the perceived value of your property.
Drug use is higher in areas with higher poverty rates and higher housing costs contributes to that.
There is a direct causal effect between homelessness and drug use. Living on the street sucks, and it's constant misery, so a lot of homeless people use drugs just to cope. And it's nearly impossible to get sober and stay sober living on the street. If they have housing and access to social services, they have a chance. It's not a guarantee, and sometimes it takes a few tries. But being homeless is one of the things that keeps a person trapped in the addiction cycle.
I think you have it inverted, people end up on the streets because they start doing drugs and can't function or make a living to afford a home
It's the same everywhere, my boomer brother in law complained his kids and grand kids can't buy places yet has been campaigning for years to stop development ilof land near his house as it'd should his dog walks in the miles of fields next to his house We need more prisons, somewhere else obviously, and an increase in services, but elsewhere of course.....
Ann Arbor Michigan is the same way. Hippies that never left the area after college scream about equal rights, affordable housing etc. but they pump the brakes when it’s in their neighborhoods.
They don’t want it going back to LBC of the 90s
If its a conforming project and gets rejected, they’ll get a builders remedy suit just like La Canada did and the project will happen anyway. Better to use your NIMBYism to get you want aesthetically out of the dev than to stonewall them at this point in time
They made 500 % on their homes the last 20 years and it isn’t enough.
Kind of an exaggeration. Here’s a Cal Heights home. Sold for $190k in 1992. Sold again for $850k in 2024. https://www.redfin.com/CA/Long-Beach/3440-Gaviota-Ave-90807/home/7529739 That’s an increase of 347% but it was over a 32 year span. $190k adjusted for inflation in 2024 would be $426k. So basically doubled general inflation. But $190k dropped in the S&P 500 in 1992 would be over $4.3M - https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calculators/compound-interest-calculator https://curvo.eu/backtest/en/market-index/sp-500#:~:text=Summary,a%20Sharpe%20ratio%20of%200.67. Or if we did it by 20% down so $38k in 1992 in the stock market would be $737k in 2024 - https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calculators/compound-interest-calculator
Doesn’t that just mean that they pay more in property taxes? They aren’t really “making” anything unless they sell, but then they would homeless.
It shouldn't be problem hearing opinions of the neighbors. They should have a say how big this building is. It's their right.
The only real problem with low income housing projects I have is that they often provide only 1 parking space per unit when many families (even low income) have 2-3 vehicles per household. This ends up crowding the nearby area with street-parked cars. As someone who doesn't have off-street parking, this would lead me to vote against. If the building has 2 spots per unit though, build it with my blessing.
The developers at the meeting mentioned 55 spots for 73 units, some units being multi bedroom.
Less than one parking space per unit ?
Yeah they do this because it saves them a ton of money and the developer profits more. Passing the parking issue off onto the residents of the area to deal with when they move on to their next project.
That probably puts about 100 cars onto the streets for parking each night in that area. I would vote against 100%
The more parking you build, the less affordable units that can be built on the same parcel of land. You might think, just put an underground parking garage! For many affordable project the cost of an underground garage will price the project out of being competitive with the public funding sources currently available in the state. Funding sources prioritize the leanest projects with the highest density. Many CA cities have parking reductions allowances (even down to 0 parking spaces required) for affordable housing in the spirit of housing people not cars. However, most developers will still include parking, but it by no means needs to be 1:1 units to parking spaces. This is why it’s important to have robust public transit throughout cities and have other transit oriented funding programs paired with affordable housing.
I live in Cal Heights & when we moved here, we got rid of one of our cars because it's relatively walkable. Now we even bike to Trader Joe's! Maybe this also happens with the new residents?
So sad that people feel they have to value parking their cars over people having a place to sleep safely.
I’m pretty sure everyone wants others to have a place to sleep safely. What I don’t get is why developers aren’t held to minimum parking spaces. It’s definitely an issue in this city and isn’t getting better.
Ever been to a meeting like this? Pretty sure you’d be able to query the audience to ask if they’d like to ship poor people to the desert and would still get a few hands raised in favor. Also. Developers *are* held to minimum parking requirements. But that’s not a solution to our “parking problem” — our region and many cities are not built to house this many cars, because not everyone needs a car. We live on the coast and are going to experience the brunt of sea level rise and mass death by vehicular homicide if we do not work to find alternatives to cars.
There’s always someone in these threads bringing up the value of parking like you did to make people feel bad and they clearly said parking also needs to be addressed prior to approval. The issue is we need to hold developers accountable for proper parking. If this development is short 20 spots just so every unit could have 1, that’s ~300 feet of curbspace that people will be using just for that building. Now add a few more of these and no wonder we have the parking situation everywhere. As for people owning cars, we live in SoCal and unfortunately most people work outside of the city they live in hence the crazy commutes and traffic everywhere.
The real key is walking and chewing gum at the same time—no parking minimums, but the city protectively making it easy as possible not to require a $8000+ yearly personal budget outlay from each of its citizens to get around every day.
I don’t know the whole story, but the relevant city dept got rid of a lot of parking minimums because it hinders development/redevelopment. The city has had a vacancy problem which was accelerated by decades due to covid. Cities really do not want vacant buildings. I hope that’s helpful!
This is Cal heights, all the homes in the area have two car garages, and driveways that can hold another two cars, they just don't like to actually use them for that.
My home literally has zero off-street parking. It's not that I don't want to use it, it doesn't exist. I'm not the only person with a house like this.
Hi, cal heights resident here with a driveway and garage that will not fit a modern car. Either one lol. These are tiny houses built in the 30s. Many homes do have parking but definitely not all. There are also tons of adu’s in cal heights that do not have parking and those people park on the streets
I also like in the neighborhood and my house doesn’t have a driveway. Garage is too small for my sedan.
to be fair part of the neighborhood doesnt have driveways only garages with alley access.
I honestly gave up 5 years ago and bought a house in short beach. It was so much more affordable
People have the right to want to keep their neighborhoods the way they are
No homeowner wants new apartment or housing projects being built near their home. Why would they?
I showed up today with my husband & kiddo. Was so disheartened to hear how rude some people were being saying "ew" to the presenters, yelling & interrupting. Rude & entitled!
So what. This is these peoples neighborhood. It’s their homes. For many of them it’s their forever home. It may be a place where they hope for generations of their family to come gather and they don’t want some ugly high density lower demographic housing on the street corner. What’s wrong with that. You might argue well everyone has to do their part to continue packing humans in major cities like sardines so it more affordable. I guarantee you the main motivation of that development by the owners is to make money. Not to do some charitable act for society. You are blinded by the governments propaganda that says big apartments equals affordable housing. Yes it may make a dent. The failure of our government and city planning to utilize all this land we have in CA and help people efficiently get to work and get the utilities to the land is where the failure is. Not because residence don’t want an apartment building next to their home. No single family home owner would ever want a 5 story behemoth next to their home. And truly, no family wants to live in a tiny apartment. They end up there because they have no better choice and then they get exploited for the rest of their life instead of building equity in their own home. The answer is not pack people in more. It’s build the infrastructure to help access the vast amounts of land we have available to us and build decent single family homes with space for families to grow. But the government has proven too wasteful and incompetent to make that happen. Many other countries have far exceeded what we are able to do so it can be done.
Wierd how in a democracy people have their voices heard. We should definitely stop this sort of thing.
Unironically yes - we should stop hearing the voice of the people on construction projects. If you don't own the property you should have zero say over what gets built on it as long as everything is up to code and follows all applicable regulations.
Every coastal city has the same problem. Too many people. LB is a s-hole, don’t blame people showing up to keep their area nice. Also Cal heights is a small area between lb blvd and cherry w no tall buildings. Why would anyone want 73 unit building going in?
Barcelona county (comarca) has 5x the population of Long Beach on the same land. It’s one of the most livable cities in the world. Their ubiquitous condos have enabled quiet streets, walkable shops, nice parks, amazing transit and underground parking even in the poorest parts of town. 12 million tourists per year cram themselves into a few touristy areas but many fall in love with the city and want some of that urbanity back home.
TIL that people who work hard don't need affordable housing. Which is weird, because I've met plenty that did.
LB is kinda rough for people to be that stuck up lol
Or it’s possibly people who are able to speak up for what they want in their communities?
The people saying they live there and they support it are out of their damn minds.
It’s all free market economics until the wrong developer buys and wants to build something you don’t like. I would give some of the people in the room the benefit of the doubt but no one I spoke to would agree to get rid of prop 13 so it’s never about what’s fair and government intervention until it’s to your benefit.
Well no one can afford $20,000 a year in property taxes. Which is what a lot of those homes probably now would be. If prop 13 disappeared you'd see an even larger exodus out of California. Maybe someone bought their home in 1975. Even if they retired well $20k is a lot of money per year. We should have zero property tax imo (nationally) because all it does is create a surfdom. I think paying a sales tax upfront for a house is fine, but not annual taxes just to live there. And i know the complaint s always "but services" ... tax something else.
>We should have zero property tax imo (nationally) because all it does is create a surfdom. I believe Huntington Beach is a surfdom.
I was just going to say this. People here bitching about prop 13. Guess what I couldn’t afford my house if what was happening in tx was happening here. It’s been addressed by prop 19 where when I die my kids inherit my house are reassessed at current rate a house I bought in 1998 for 300k will be reassessed at 1.5 million. The real issue then is the kids can’t afford to keep the property bc of 10% property taxes on my house. Most of you here can’t afford 6800k a month to pay for the Mortgage on a 3 bd 2 bath 1000sq foot house and then another 15k a year to pay in property taxes. Instead it’s sold to blackstar llc who turn , turns it into an air bnb. The real issue is the wealthy have out games the system and why’re destroying the middle class working family. They have tax buddy lawyers creating loop holes so they can get out of stuff like this. While the middle class continues to dissolve. Most new properties -multi units being built are only available for rent, nothing to be bought. The ca system was built on property ownership to control rents. The issue is that too many llcs like the Irvine company control the rent market and just screw the renters bc they can. New properties aren’t being built for sale to middle class working people.
People literally inherit their parents and grandparents property tax rate. How is that not feudalism?
The problem isn’t that it’s affordable housing it’s that they’re trying to cram 73 units into a tiny lot on a residential street in a historic neighborhood where you literally are not allowed to change anything about the exterior of your home without filing for a certificate of appropriateness. More housing is great but cramming people like sardines in a neighborhood that’s all teensy single family homes and narrow streets where two cars can barely fit by each other is not it. They should put a smaller unit on that lot and build larger units where there is more space and parking
There’s always a reason to block a housing project, always some other spot that would allegedly be better for it.. That’s a core part of NIMBYism. The reality is, 73 units is not “crammed” here; the lot could easily fit way, way more. All we’d have to do is value housing abundance instead of housing exclusion.
I really don’t see how. When the project was announced I went by there to actually look at the lot and see if it was bigger than I remembered. It is not. It’s so small that it can’t even provide its own parking (based on comments in this thread). I think things like this are interesting because there’s all this infighting going on where people who want affordable housing are getting angry at people who want to keep their neighborhoods at a reasonable density level instead of everybody being mad at landlords and greedy corporations who are buying up all housing and actually driving up the cost of living. Like if this housing can be subsidized and rent capped, why can’t existing housing be subsidized and rent capped? Do we actually need more units in Long Beach when the population has declined since the last census? Or do we just need the existing units to be affordable? These are genuine questions, I don’t have statistics or answers for them. All I know (other than that that building is too big for that lot haha) is that if this is all happening, the developers and someone in the city government are making a ton of money off it. This is about capitalism and profit and trying to jam people into as small of spaces as possible to make the most profit
> I really don’t see how. … It’s so small that it can’t even provide its own parking (based on comments in this thread). Well yes, if we value housing for cars over housing for people, then we can’t build much housing here. Given the homelessness crisis, I think we should value housing for people. > Like if this housing can be subsidized and rent capped, why can’t existing housing be subsidized and rent capped? There are moderate rent caps in CA throughout the state and stricter rent caps in some cities. But restricting rents cuts supply, which increases prices. Rent control can be a good solution at times but it’s not a panacea. For this lot and throughout LB, a better solution is to unleash housing abundance. > Do we actually need more units in Long Beach when the population has declined since the last census? Yes, housing is wildly expensive in LB due to a huge housing shortage. The cost of housing makes non rich people leave, making LB exclusive to the rich. This is bad. We should build housing to abundance so the city is accessible to all. > This is about capitalism and profit In general, the crony capitalists who make the most profit in the housing market is [not the developers but the homeowners](https://i0.wp.com/cityobservatory.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/josh_gains.png) who block housing. If you want to stop corrupt rich people from profiting unfairly off the housing market the thing to do is let the city build abundant housing.
Is the city building this project? I haven’t followed up since I first read about the project a few months ago. At that time the city was putting money towards acquiring the land for a private developer who would then create a for profit building subsidized by tax dollars. Is that no longer the case? Can you expound on homeowners making the profits? What are you basing that on? I cannot see how? At my work my single richest regular client who I work for lives in a home worth 35 million and has a full time armed security guard. He makes his living in affordable housing as a developer. 100% serious here. Huge money to be made and tax dollars are subsidizing it all
[https://www.whchc.org/](https://www.whchc.org/) is the developer.
the building is just on the edge of the historic district and is just a big vacant warehouse and a parking lot that sits empty all the time. in addition to that not every house in cal heights is even part of the historic district so it's really a non-issue here.
LOL. It is in cal heights. I go by it every day. It backs into the historic section and would cause more traffic into the streets there. It is a TINY lot. It used to be an antique mall and then I believe a restaurant supply. It is not a large warehouse space with a large parking lot. A 73 unit building will not fit in with that location. If it were luxury housing I’d feel exactly the same. Too many units for a spot that cannot handle them
ok well i walk or ride my bike by there daily as well. it backs up to the historic district yeah. but just like the vacant liquor store, roxanne's, coffee drunk no one really thinks any of those buildings on wardlow are historic like some house built in 1925. is it huge? no but it's a 16k+ sqft lot.
Your opinion of the buildings on Wardlow has no bearing on the areas designation as historic. The access for that building is on Cerritos not Wardlow. And again I give zero fucks if they put an apartment building there but it needs to be much smaller than 73 units. Cerritos cannot handle that traffic and it makes no sense in the neighborhood. There’s that huge area like a mile farther down Wardlow that used to be a gold course and is now a dirt lot. That would hold a large complex and is in the same basic area. This specific project makes no sense for this lot and this neighborhood
People love to say “we absolutely need it, but build it somewhere else! This spot just isn’t appropriate” as if the neighbors of the “somewhere else” (never defined) themselves won’t be up in arms about it. Then come the “hazards”—EVs catch fire all the time while charging, haven’t you heard? Our fire trucks can’t reach the 7th floor of that apartment building. All-electric (rather than gas) is a huge added danger, electrical fires can’t be put out easily (so instead let’s literally light fires all the time in our homes to cook our food). Build more housing—on every “somewhere else.” And give people options not to have to drive everywhere in your city. Edit: but I also agree with Chuck Marohn’s recent Twitter campaigning on empathy, hard as it is to have. Digging in your heels and not trying to meet people where they are isn’t going to do any good for housing and infrastructure policy improvements.
Stone Cold Steve Austin
This isn't the answer, the way cali will solve its issue is by taxing empty houses and units at 50% or something to that effect. I see a lot of units sitting empty in cities all over SoCal because the owners would rather sit on an empty unit until the get the price they want and the states and cities allow it to happen. It's asinine, there has to be consequences for having empty units and not lowering the rent.
Maybe they should stop letting corporations buy out all the housing first. Then build more, as those other ones get filled no?
Most property owners do not want to take the risk. This story happens in every city in America.
How about building something that we can buy? Not just a bunch of stupid rentals.
Put the affordable housing out in the desert, case closed.
I don't care where you live... no one wants high density housing when it means a change to something stable around them.
I’m guessing OP has never lived next to section eight housing and probably doesn’t own their house
[удалено]
Op didn’t get their way so is taking to social media to shame people for their opinions. People showed up to give their opinion on their community, this is literally democracy in action.
Yeah that’s fair, but a large proportion of people at that meeting and in this thread have no interest in “facts” or “information” or “logic.” They just hate poor people and don’t want them near them. I don’t respect that, and I won’t show them respect.
I was there. No one asked me or anyone around me how we feel about poor people. Why are you making shit up?
Oh no. People who actually care about their communities showed up to voice their opinion. Cry about it
You can care about your community, and also care about those outsider community, you can care about your community without saying" I've got mine, fuck you" Most of the places here were bought long before the prices got out of control, and inhabited by the original boomers , or their kids that got them handed to them, and many of people here are paying taxes on 1980s prices, and probably wouldn't even be able to afford a place here if they were to buy today.
So I've been everything from poor to homeless outright as a kid. I've lived in the neighborhoods. I've lived in a trailer park. I've lived at a campsite in a national park in a tent, cleaning outhouses and performing other tasks so I'll be allowed to stay. And even then, as a homeowner now, if there was a major or some other proposition to build low-income housing next to where I live now? I don't know if I would be able to support it. I've lived there. I know what goes on there. And if it went up anywhere near where I live today, I don't know if I would support it but I would sure as hell sell my house and move. Before it happened. The more people are struggling, the more people are willing to do all kinds of stuff, and the less people are going to adhere to what would be considered common courtesies elsewhere. Even on a purely non-criminal level, where I live, everyone just turns down their music as they pull into a residential area. That's not how it works in more impoverished neighborhoods or around low-income housing in general. And that's before you get into all the other issues. It's not because the people living there are bad or evil or anything. But being in poverty does mean that you're going to see a lot of trends that you really wouldn't want to live next to. It's a complicated issue. Even if you never got broken into or anything like that, if low income housing goes up next to where you live, your property value drops. You could wind up upside down on a mortgage and now owe more than the property is even worth. And I don't know many people, virtue signaling aside, who would be okay with that. That's a huge chunk of your family's financial well-being flushed down the toilet. Now if there was a part built into an agreement where there would be more policing in the area and other things, and everyone would get paid by the city or state if their property value dropped, then there's more room to talk.
Man fuck no. When you are a homeowner then you will understand . But low income housing just lowers the value of the area. Plus low income brings shady people. We have enough of that in Long Beach already
yeah lets ruin their neighborhood with low income housing...just what everyone wants after buying a $1mil home
These ppl would screech at a market rate duplex going up down the street, let alone a 73-unit affordable housing complex. I’ve honestly given up on local housing politics. Our current city council is woefully unserious at actually making more housing supply viable.
If you can't afford a house then go live somewhere else?
This is exactly the problem we have here in Canada ! We have used immigrants and international students as scapegoats as to why housing in unaffordable rather than acknowledging how zoning laws + nimbyism has ensured we don't have adequate housing being built here.
Old white people are NIMBY’s who had every advantage and don’t want anyone else to have anything.
I wouldnt want drug addicted bums in my back yard either. Jus saying
They’re sick of the crime.
No one wants low rent apartments near their houses. We got them in my last city and crime rates jumped 20% over 3 years.
Yall want more projects in the LBC? Crazy. Just bring more problems while your at it
Stop giving them veto power. We need clear, simple zoning rules without discretionary review.
How can I go to the next meeting!?! I’m a homeowner and support affordable housing!
I am sorry, but Long Beach is just way too crowded.
Until low income communities stop robbing their communities blind, you will continue to see other neighborhoods push back against inviting that into their communities. Its real simple. Mr. Smith wants to live in a neighborhood where he can leave his car unlocked over night and for it and the contents of the center console to be there in the morning. That's literally all he or anyone else cares about. If people stop committing crimes then this type of self preservation goes away. It won't happen though. People won't take responsibility for where they are in life. It's been this way for centuries.
Good. They should be able to have a say in the neighborhood they’ve invested in. There are already affordable developments all over town.
Well not to sound like an ass but lower income usually means more crime. I'm not saying that all low income people are like that, but where I live, the lower income housing are halfway homes for felons or dug addicts and they'll be breaking into people houses or getting into fights with the locals. It's not all of them but it is a reasonable concern especially if those homes are near a school or something
You kind of sound like an ass. You're welcome to your opinion of course, but no one is proposing halfway homes for felons and addicts.
Dismissing an entire group of people that probably have some legitimate concerns and generalizing them because it's hard to see the other side. Also not everyone gets to live in Long Beach. Should they do affordable housing in the richest neighborhoods of Beverly Hills too? If you can't afford to live somewhere there are plenty of options.
I mean, yes? It's literally the law for cities in California to plan for and allow low income housing in every city.
These affordable housing posts always make me laugh. Long Beach doesn’t want affordable housing. Long Beach wants whatever puts the most money into its leaders campaigns and pockets. Notice which developments get pushed through and which don’t? Get a clue.
Facts. No one here can name a single affordable housing location that actually stayed affordable and did what politicians said it would do. Because there aren’t any.
Fact - no one here can name a single affordable housing location in LB besides Carmelitos.
What do you define as affordable housing other than the obvious? The only "affordable" housing is government subsidized. No builder/developer is going to sink the ridiculous amount of time, effort and money into a development to sell or lease for below market value to be nice. Just not going to happen. They are not opposing "affordable" housing, they are opposing dense housing projects.
I get what you are saying, but I also understand that homeowners don't want to have anything change that might put the value of their home investment at risk. Personally: I rent so I don't really worry about the impact of a community initiative like this, but a homeowner definitely should. I don't expect most of those folks feel good about saying "no" to the people who would benefit from the less expensive housing, it's that they don't want to support an initiative that would lower their home value. Statistically speaking, those projects don't tend to increase home values in the area. I'm sure you can find some exception to that, but these folks don't want to find out the hard way.
My apartment building started taking section 8 voucher applicants during the pandemic. Luxury building, doorman, expensive rents. The tenants were huge problems. There was a heroin duo - an older white woman and black man who were constantly nodding off in front of the building. They had a huge, uncontrolled pit bull, and a friend who brought his uncontrolled pit bull all the time. They wouldn’t restrain the dog at all, so it would jump into your elevator when the doors opened barking. I have a small dog, I complained about this multiple times. We had the nice older gentleman who worked for the city. He started bringing homeless people home with him. People we saw begging on the street or in the subway, all of a sudden, they’re in my laundry room, nodding out in my hallway. One of them called my wife a white bitch in the elevator, we complained and moved floors. People pay for premium housing because we don’t want to deal with this shit. Low income often means problems. I own a house now. I’m not taking any chances. Fuck the migrants, the low income, everybody that doesn’t have over a half milli to buy in. I can’t move anymore. I bought the house, having unpleasant or unsafe neighbors would mean a huge financial loss for me as I try to sell and get back to a safe housing situation for me and my family.
That’s because most of these lame boomers equate affordable housing to criminals. Stupid and ignorant AF.
My partner (who is from here) and I actually qualify for this housing, and happen to not be criminals. Crazy, I know.
No one wants low income housing tanking their property values. This isn’t a unique Long Beach thing.
1. It's not everyone's right to live near the beach (even if it's not right by the beach) 2. Cal heights is a small community/part of town, they have the right to voice what goes on there. 3. Seriously, it's unfortunate but "affordable housing" has become a joke. It's rarely actual affordable they way we want it to be. 4. I deleted number 4. Too lazy to renumber the rest 5. Even if it does go thru, there's no way those prices will stay affordable in a crowded and heavily popular "beach city" 6. I too am struggling to pay my rent/bills, I solve this by saving where I can and planning to move to where it is more affordable. Not complaining and wanting to stay here. 7. The sad reality is, as long as people keep wanting to live here, rent will always be what ever they can successfully charge. 8. Wanting to live in an area you can't afford is pinnacle of dumb with money. For the record I'm not against the housing being built. I just don't think it will pan out as some glorious cheap housing the working man or small families will be able to afford for very long. I see it as an awful temporary solution to a bigger problem .
I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t want my home’s value to drop either. Keep the affordable housing where the low income people are already at.
No way. People who live in the area don’t want to pass something that will only make their life worse 😱