People's State of the Long Beach City 2014

The People's State of the City was held tonight at Stephens Middle School Auditorium. In all, about 500 people attended. The forum was created by about fifteen community organizations that united four years ago under the banner Long Beach Rising. The forum itself was created to give the people of Long Beach an opportunity to respond to the Mayor's State of the City address which occurred earlier in January.

The theme of the night was "Halfway there and a long way to go." Much of the focus of the meeting was income inequality and how it tends to center itself in certain City Council districts over others. While the seven official topics of the night were: jobs, housing, poverty, immigration, education, the environment and community safety most of the meeting focused on poverty, jobs and housing disparities. Much of that disparity was shown through statistical maps to fall disproportionately on the west side of Cherry Avenue.

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Long Beach is a tale of two cities: One east of Cherry; one to the west.

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According to the slides presented about 130,000 Long Beach residents cannot afford their rent. About 20,000 Long Beach residents live in overcrowded homes. And of 63% of renters who reported issues to housing authorities, less than one third saw any corrective action. The grass roots organization that created Long Beach Rising is fighting to end some of the disparities by working to create an escrow account that will be enacted when disagreements between renters and property owners occur. In addition to that, they are fighting for a higher minimum wage, against the widening of the 710 and to protect the rights of women working in the hospitality industry.

Also highlighted was the concept of wage theft. In one example a Port Trucker who earned $975 in salary was showing also receiving $962 in deductions. The result was $12 in take home pay, which is clearly not enough to live off. However, to be absolutely fair, it would have been more helpful if the slide clearly showed what all the deductions were. Another practice they highlighted in the hospitality industry was making workers often work 14 hour days and clock in more than an hour after arriving at work.

The personal sense from the event was it was mixed. It clearly had the participation of the Long Beach residents. But virtually nobody who was being criticized, except for LBUSD, was in attendance. This means, everyone who was being characterized as the biggest issue including the hospitality industry, property owners or the low paying businesses were not there to answer, listen to the concerns or offer solutions. 

And I think in the end, if we want a better community we will have to bring everyone in that community to the table to talk.