Is Downtown unsafe? Let’s talk about it

You’re not the only one who’s feeling whiplash from the City Council’s recent boasting about the success of its homelessness response to the urgent calls for more to be done that replaced it at the council’s most recent meeting. 

To be clear, crime in Downtown and across the city is perpetuated by all walks of people, housed or unhoused, but, today, we’re talking about the discussion at this week’s City Council meeting that came in response to a viral video of a homeless man assaulting a woman near the Lafayette Building in the East Village. 

Those calls for more to be done came Tuesday, days after the attack, despite at least one member of the City Council being notified about it roughly two hours after it happened Friday, according to emails forwarded to our office. 

Councilmember Mary Zendejas’ motion, which was eerily similar to what Mayor Rex Richardson advocated for in his weekly Tuesday morning livestream and again during the council meeting, called for an “enhanced and renewed focus” on Downtown for both the unhoused and existing public safety issues. 

A lot of the motion was riddled with the type of bureaucratic speak that could make non-City Hall sickos’ eyes roll into the back of their heads, and honestly, I wasn’t quite sure what it all meant, so I reached out to both Richardson and Zendejas to ask a simple question.

What do you want to see happen? 

Does this mean more police in the Downtown area? That’s certainly one way to go about trying to improve public safety. However, there was an epic struggle between council members in June to avoid even discussing the idea of looking at ways to crack down on encampments and homeless residents using public space in illegal ways. I wrote about it here. 

Could it mean more REACH teams? Those are the unarmed city employees who do homeless outreach throughout the city, but they are currently limited to just a few units. And they don’t provide round-the-clock services like the Police Department can. 

Richardson’s office notified me that he was going to defer to Zendejas even after I pointed out that her motion was basically his motion. Zendejas eventually sent a statement that mostly did not answer my question but she did say, “We cannot afford to lose the narrative on the perception of it being unsafe.”

If you’ve even taken a cursory look at social media recently, you might say that ship has sailed. You can’t scroll through Reddit or other sites without seeing videos of naked people wandering the streets, pictures of car windows bashed out just feet from the Downtown police station and what seems like an endless stream of businesses reporting that they’ve been broken into, some for the eighth time. 

Social media is where the video of the assault was circulating before we reported it and the local television news crews picked up on it, spreading it all across the Southland. But the perception of safety in Downtown has been an issue for some time now.

A year ago we published a story about business owners and residents who said they felt compelled to carry pepper spray around town. 

Ten months before that, Councilmember Cindy Allen was chased by a man with knives, and she said she didn’t feel safe walking from her Downtown condo to City Hall. The city even temporarily closed its Downtown library over safety concerns. 

This is all complicated by the fact that Long Beach is limited in what it can do in response to mental health and substance abuse and could have to rely on the county to provide resources to address those problems. It’s an issue we’ve explored in depth.

And while members of the council have pushed back on stricter enforcement of existing laws prohibiting encampments (or adopting new ones) in favor of a housing-first solution, that solution may not be coming soon enough. 

Large projects that the city has pointed to as opportunities to expand the city’s ability to house people are behind schedule. The “tiny home” village it initially hoped to open by the end of this year is now in need of a new location. The 78-room motel the city bought for $16.6 million to transform into temporary housing may not open until next summer, according to a city official I spoke with this week. 

Making Downtown safer is not just about solving homelessness. It’s going to require vacant storefronts to find tenants, apartment buildings currently being built to be leased up and an “enhanced and renewed focus” on public safety.

Whatever that means.

Otherwise, control of “the narrative” is going to stay out of the City Council’s reach. 

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS WEEK:

It required calling a special Thursday afternoon meeting, but you will officially be asked to decide the future minimum wages of hotel workers in the city this March. The wage increase would push the minimum wage of hotel workers to $29.50 by 2028 and allow for cost-of-living adjustments in 2029 and beyond. Similar ballot measures are being proposed across the region but Anaheim voters already shot down the increases there. While Long Beach didn’t carry out an economic study of its own, it did cite one completed for Anaheim, which said that the wage increases could eventually lead to a downturn in hotel tax revenue. Long Beach wasn’t able to find a firm that could complete an analysis here because the City Council insisted on putting the issue on the March ballot instead of November, something Councilmember Kristina Duggan said amounted to a $1.3 million cost for the city. If you’re interested in becoming an argument writer for this issue, click here. 

PAY ATTENTION TO THIS NEXT WEEK:

The City Council’s Public Safety Committee is meeting Tuesday afternoon at the Michelle Obama Library where it will discuss enforcement policies that other cities have taken regarding the use of public spaces. This conversation could provide some insight into what other cities are doing to combat encampments and other illegal uses of public space and potentially lead to a policy recommendation to the full council. If you want to have your voice heard on the issue, the meeting is scheduled for 3 p.m. The Michelle Obama Library is at 5870 Atlantic Ave.