Long Beach Mayor Suggests Older Motels for Housing Homeless

One of Mayor, Robert Garcia’s top priorities is to reduce homelessness and ensure all Long Beach residents have a home. A source of future transitional housing he is suggesting is to make use of older motels in the city.

Many motels are unofficially used as transitional or temporary housing for the homeless, but they don’t have social services and other supports that help people stay off the streets permanently.

Some motels are well managed whilst others are not, which creates a public safety concern and generates calls for services that are taxing the public safety system. For this reason, the City of Long Beach proposed and initiated Senate Bill 450, a motel conversation bill that would streamline the conversion of some motels into transitional and quality supportive housing. Senator Tom Umber authored the legislation on behalf of the city.