I’m very concerned about the approved upzonings to the traffic circle area. I believe that area could be pivotal to future city, county, and state political plans in two different ways.

1) Per state law, if housing for low or moderate income residents is demolished in the coastal area, replacement housing must be provided within three miles of the coastal zone. The traffic circle falls well within that distance. Moderate income is defined as making up to 120% of the area’s median income. That sounds like pretty generous guidelines to me and could cover a lot of people (for instance most retired people because the criteria is income and not net worth) who would need to be provided replacement housing. It also covers the county so housing could be demolished up the coast, for example Wilmington and San Pedro, and high density developments in our traffic circle area could be used for replacement housing. I’ve copied relevant codes here:

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65590. (a) In addition to the requirements of Article 10.6 (commencing with Section 65580), the provisions and requirements of this section shall apply within the coastal zone as defined and delineated in Division 20 (commencing with Section 30000) of the Public Resources Code. Each respective local government shall comply with the requirements of this section in that portion of its jurisdiction which is located within the coastal zone.(b) The conversion or demolition of existing residential dwelling units occupied by persons and families of low or moderate income, as defined in Section 50093 of the Health and Safety Code, shall not be authorized unless provision has been made for the replacement of those dwelling units with units for persons and families of low or moderate income. Replacement dwelling units shall be located within the same city or county as the dwelling units proposed to be converted or demolished. The replacement dwelling units shall be located on the site of the converted or demolished structure or elsewhere within the coastal zone if feasible, or, if location on the site or elsewhere within the coastal zone is not feasible, they shall be located within three miles of the coastal zone.
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       HSC Code 50093
       50093.

       “Persons and families of low or moderate income” means persons and families whose income does not exceed 120 percent of area median income, adjusted for family size by the department in accordance with adjustment factors adopted and amended from time to time by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development pursuant to Section 8 of the United States Housing Act of 1937.

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2)  I’m concerned that the Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) proposed project area will include the traffic circle area. TCC is a new state program which will receive cap and trade auction money so every time there’s an auction, there’s more money for TCC. There are two types of grants – planning and innovation. Innovation grants are the big money grants. I put in a records request on the TCC program and from the records I received it’s evident Long Beach was working on applying for an innovation grant. However, Long Beach has withheld some of the records. Included in the records withheld may be further information on the five square mile zone they were planning, and may plan in the future, for the grant area. Following is the requirement for what the zone must include:

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At least fifty-one (51) percent of the geographic area of the proposed Project Area must overlap with Census Tracts within the top 5 percent of disadvantaged communities, per CalEnviroScreen 3.0.18  The remaining fortynine (49) percent or less of the geographic area of the proposed Project Area must overlap either with a disadvantaged community (top 25 percent CalEnviroScreen 3.0) or a low-income community as defined by AB 1550. Applicants may propose a Project Area boundary that does not align with Census Tract boundaries.
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For the second part of the requirements (the remaining 49 percent of the area) the traffic circle area south of PCH could be included in that because the census tract’s western boundary is Redondo and there is a designated low-income area which has its eastern boundary at Loma Ave., a few blocks east of Redondo. So the traffic circle census tract does overlap with a low-income community and therefore the tract can be included in the TCC zone if the rest of the proposed zone, whatever it might be, meets the rest of the requirements. I’m not sure about the traffic circle area north of PCH because I haven’t located maps exacting enough and the tract boundaries are unusual. I don’t know what was considered for the proposed TCC zone because the city of Long Beach has decided to withhold records. From what I’ve read in the guidelines and I saw a mention of it in the records I did receive, there is no required shape; it just can’t exceed five square miles and it must be contiguous and in one city.

I asked the City Attorney for the reason for why they withheld records and the responding letter is at the end of this blog entry. I don’t think the reason they’ve provided is adequate or legal from what I’ve researched, although I’m not an attorney.

A new LUE is needed to qualify for the TCC innovation grant and the deadlines for applying were all in November and December 2017 and it’s possible Amy Bodek’s unusual determination to get the LUE on the October 3, 2017 city council meeting may have been because of this. By the way, TCC does include funding for building housing developments and there’s a lot of money available in addition to these grants from other sources. It’s important to keep in mind that Long Beach missed the first round of TCC innovation grants because of not passing the LUE but there will be future rounds.

Perhaps the plan is to get money from TCC to fund building high density housing developments for low and moderate income people in order to complete the gentrification of the coastal area of Los Angeles County and central Long Beach and/or wherever the TCC project area may be located. Just a possibility but why is the city withholding informative records?

I’m also thinking that the “powers that be” who are pushing this agenda want to get as many permits issued before the results of the 2020 U.S. Census Bureau which will show that all the state’s population projections used to justify the remaking of our city, county, and state have been way over inflated. And buildings are very long term and close to permanent.

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