By The steady increase of homeless people in Long Beach has been a persistent issue for almost a decade. In 2023, the city council called for a state of emergency as numbers increased by 4.58% from 2022.
According to Long Beach’s volunteer annual homeless count, 145 homeless young adults (18-24) and 48 minors were reported in 2023. This was an increase of 5.8% for young adults from 2022 but a 29% decrease in minors.
Since the state of emergency, the city of Long Beach has enacted several programs to attempt to mediate. City officials announced the end of the emergency, citing a 2.1% decrease in the homeless population, accounting for 71 fewer individuals experiencing homelessness.
Jennifer Rice-Epstein, the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services public affairs officer, stated in a press release that the homeless population had decreased after the state of emergency was announced.
“We brought together the department heads and some key players from literally every department in the city to figure out how they can be a part of the solution [to homelessness],” Rice-Epstein said. “Let’s look at where we can cut red tape and make the process easier to make people housed again.”
City officials also focused on the mental health of individuals experiencing homelessness.
In 2023, the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services launched a program where a crisis intervention specialist, public health nurse and a peer navigator provide case management assistance on 911 calls where a mental health crisis may occur.
The press release announced program expansions, including adding mental health clinicians, increasing mental health services to five days a week with the Black Health Equity Program, partnering with LA County Health Services for health support and offering telehealth counseling beyond business hours.
“We have started having therapists do therapy sessions with people experiencing homelessness and really trying to take a trauma-informed approach with figuring out the more we can help with root causes,” Rice-Epstein said.
While any decrease in homelessness represents progress, as of Jan. 25, 2024, there are still 3,376 homeless people, a higher population count than both 2020 and 2022.
Several factors contribute to the drastic increase in the homeless population in 2023.
In January 2023, the reported unemployment rate for Long Beach was at 5.10%, compared to the reported national average of 4.2% in California.
While the unemployment rate has fluctuated since then, as of October 2024, the rate for Long Beach is 6% and has not been this high since February 2022.
The rate of unemployment and homelessness in Long Beach follows a similar trend in 2022, an all-time high. Graphic Credit: Jaylyn Preslicka
By comparing the 2022 unemployment data of 6.8% in Long Beach to the 3,296 homeless people reported during the same year to this January, there was only a 1% decrease in unemployment and a 2.42% increase in homelessness.
The city has expanded its affordable housing, offering 670 units with priority to older adults, veterans and those who have previously experienced homelessness.
There are 78 units of temporary housing, a permanent youth-housing center for young adults 18-24 and 33 new modular non-congregate shelter units in the works. While all of these housing solutions are in the works, none of them are completed.
Additionally, a Guaranteed Income Pilot Program offers residents $500 monthly for 12 months.
“With the homeless emergency announcement, we were looking at our program data on the first cohort for COVID recovery and saw that there was a lot of housing insecurity we were seeing from the baseline survey,” Special Projects Officer Courtney Chatterson said. “We proposed an emergency response to expand to a second cohort as a homeless prevention measure.”
This program differs from federal income stipends because the money can be used for any purpose.
Chatterson reported significant improvements in the lives of the program’s first cohort, including better food security, improved mental health, reduced debt and the ability to afford essentials.
“People were able to pay for these things,” Chatterson said. “In the interviews with participants, we saw them spending money on their kids. They were excited to get their kids new clothes or pay for extracurricular activities or educational things.”
Chatterson noted that the second cohort will most likely have similar results to the first.
Resources are works in progress and while many have helped a considerable number of people, the population circulates. Rice-Epstein said this is more than just what resources are available; it is a general economic issue.
“You have this revolving door, and it’s not that you have the same people becoming homeless all the time,” Rice-Epstein said.”We get a lot of people into permanent housing every year and find long-term solutions, but it’s expensive here, and there’s always more people falling into homelessness.”
Data on homelessness for 2025 will be collected this January, and information on the effectiveness of programs from the past year will be publicly available.
