By Dianne Anderson

Where to go, what to eat, and where to sleep is always the question for thousands that make up the unhoused roaming community of Long Beach where solutions are not fast or easy, but small gains seem to be taking shape.

At last week’s announcement of the 2024 Homeless Point in Time Count, Mayor Rex Richardson spoke of progress with structural changes implemented since the pandemic when the city saw a 62% spike in homelessness from 2020 to 2022.

In January of this year, a 2.1% reduction from 3,376 unhoused, down from 3,447 people in 2023, represents the first reported overall decrease in homelessness since 2017.

Mayor Rex Richardson said the drop is encouraging, also noting a 50% reduction in youth homelessness, and that the work in the city is a clear indication that they are on the right track.

He points to several specific strategies set by the city that focused on building capacity and prevention, working with Behavioral Health, increased funding and resources, along with new programs and faster overall response to the humanitarian crisis.

Also, a lot of hard work and collaboration.

“The work didn’t end with the emergency. That was really about pulling ourselves together and working with a degree of focus and urgency so we looked at everything from expanding safe parking to clean up requests to mental health support and expanding, localizing mental health capacity,” he said in last week’s announcement.

Dr. Alison King, director of the Department of Health and Human Services, commended the efforts of city staff and departments involved. She addressed the extent of local work since the city’s proclamation of the emergency, which ran from January last year until February 29 this year.

She said policies and programs for immediate assistance laid the groundwork for positive long-term outcomes.

Inter-departmental efforts during the emergency led to increased outreach, including two new mobile access centers, a text information line to provide information on services to people experiencing homelessness.

She said the purchase of a year-round shelter provided 85 beds with increased access to warm beds at the MultiService Center during the cold rainy winter with full utilization of the emergency housing vouchers.

“Some of that work on the road to becoming permanently housed can be a long one and every contact homeless service staff and people experiencing homelessness presents an opportunity to move that person towards housing stability,”  she said.

Homeless Advocate Sylvester “Duke” Givens said that some of the unhoused he’s served aren’t around anymore, probably because he points them to the local rescue mission for services. But he said it is hard to tell to what extent the overall city homelessness has eased up.

There is a nonstop influx from the Blue Line. He helps people in all districts in the city.

“I just see people come and go.  They’re in encampments and they’re not in encampments. Wherever there’s a need we just help out. We clean up and help anybody that we possibly can,” said Givens, CEO of Care Closet LBC.

From a personal perspective, getting the unhoused into homes is a great goal, but he said maybe 10% stick with the process from start to finish. Many do not like the intensive paperwork because of mental illness, or other substance abuse problems, and return to their old environments.

Givens said it’s a Pandora’s box of mental health, alcoholism, and drug addictions, which are often interconnected. They go back to the familiar community.

“Substance abuse, they know they can go there and get that, it’s a brutal fact of life we’re experiencing in this season,” he said. “That’s why we’re our brother’s keepers and doing what we do as a nonprofit to help these individuals.”

Through his program, he feeds about 100 unhoused a day, and has cleaned up over one million pounds of trash. His goal is to get individuals to show up for themselves each day, volunteer, and coordinate, which helps build resilience as the unhoused become responsible for the unhoused.

Everyone is welcome in his nonprofit. They can get their resumes, and driver’s licenses, and launch back into society, but he feels the community at large must also become more service-oriented.

“Now, it’s just me against them against us, us against everyone. It can’t be that way,” he said. “As long as they have respect, they’re finding hope and greatness that God created in these individuals.”

Most groups in the latest PIT count seem to be making headway, but of all the groups, the Black community is stagnant.

Besides Latinx at 35%, Blacks represented the second highest level of homelessness at over 32% of homeless in Long Beach, dramatically disproportionately represented compared to their numbers in the general population of Long Beach.

Jennifer Rice Epstein said the drop in overall homelessness is attributed to more outreach, more shelter options and services last year than in prior years, including maximized rental assistance.

She noted possible reasons why the numbers aren’t reflecting as positively in the Black community. One is in the reporting of race.

For the first time, the city offered an option on their survey that allowed people to select more than one race.

“This led to a huge jump in people who identified as multiracial. It is possible that some of our Black residents are multiracial and selected this option. There is some very encouraging news regarding racial demographics for people enrolled in permanent housing programs,” said Rice Epstein, spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services.

From the city’s dashboard, she said the demographic chart reflects that the city’s Black residents also graduated to housing and self-sufficiency more than other races.

“We do have some programs to support Black residents experiencing homelessness specifically, including telehealth counseling and mental health services in partnership with the Black Health Equity Program,” she said in an email.

Coming up, other temporary housing projects and programs are in the works to help stabilize the homeless.

“We are excited about increasing shelter beds even more in the coming year, including 78 units at 5950 Long Beach Blvd., a youth shelter with 12 beds, and the development of 33 new modular units (tiny homes). We also have a number of affordable housing units in various stages of development,” she said.

To see the 2024 Point in Time Count, see  https://bit.ly/3JXyIqt

For homeless resources, see https://www.longbeach.gov/homelessness/