Robert Fox: Friend of Gentrification — The Wrong Candidate to Solve our Housing and Homelessness Crises Jordan Wynne Follow Feb 27 · 7 min read

As a Second District resident, I have deep concerns moving into the upcoming local election for the Second District council chair. We have some deep issues in Long Beach and within our district that need immediate attention. For many voters in the Second, the housing and homelessness crises are the top issues as they head to the polls this week.

58,700 people, or 12% of the city’s population, pay 90% or more of their household income to housing costs. Housing prices have skyrocketed in Long Beach. 52% percent of people experiencing homelessness were experiencing it for the first time, with housing unaffordability being the critical driver into homelessness. We see these folks — our former neighbors — on the streets of our district. Homelessness has been the top issue across the city for a few years, as it has become more visible citywide.

For the past several years, I have worked in non-profits focused on housing and homelessness solutions in Long Beach. I now sit on the City’s Continuum of Care Board, which helps manage our City’s Homeless Services program. I have an intimate view of our city’s homelessness problem, regularly interacting with individuals experiencing homelessness who are seeking more than just a shelter for the night. They need help getting back into a permanent home — and unfortunately, Long Beach doesn’t have anything available. These are seniors, students, working families, people with multiple college degrees — every story is different.

In my eyes, the ideal candidate who will be able to solve these issues adequately is one that understands the full picture when it comes to homelessness, and is willing to seek long-term solutions to end the housing and homelessness crisis. It is someone who will advocate to prevent working families from falling into homelessness, invest in affordable and supportive housing, and protect tenants of all ages from being pushed out of their homes and onto the streets. They should have a background of community service that is devoted to the residents of the Second District at large.

Robert Fox is not that candidate.

It took me a while to summarize how I feel about Fox’s campaign in the Second District, but I think it is framed best by discussing Fox’s history in Long Beach, and why I don’t trust him to act as a good Councilmember. Many who are unfamiliar with Fox and his background may see his mailers and signs and believe in his message at face value, so I hope this op-ed gives a little context as to what makes him such a bad choice for District 2. In this case, Fox’s past actions speak louder than his campaign’s words.

Fox is a multimillionaire realtor who is licensed to sell properties in California and Hawaii. In an interview on November 4, 2018, The Post reported that Robert Fox owned 15 buildings between here and Honolulu. When announcing his campaign in June of last year, Fox proudly stated to the Post: “I don’t need to do this…I have a home in Honolulu. I could blow town and go to Honolulu and have a great time.” How generous. Instead of heading to his vacation home in Hawaii gained off of his real estate earnings, Fox has been hard at work keeping housing prices high and gentrifying the local community.

According to the same Post article, Fox “takes pride in helping gentrify Alamitos Beach.” Gentrification is the act of pushing working class families and people of color from a formerly devalued and “undesirable” neighborhood and “transforming” the neighborhood into a white, college educated, upper class neighborhood. This involves the displacement of a diverse group of working families, students, and seniors in favor of a homogenized upper class neighborhood — primarily due to sharp increases in rents and no-cause evictions.

The results of this gentrification are clear. In Long Beach, our black population has diminished to half the size of what it was since the turn of millennium. Rents have risen 28% over the past 10 years, thousands of families have been displaced, and the vast majority of new housing developments in Long Beach have been luxury condos and apartments. Historically and financially, it is not in the interest of Robert Fox to advocate for more affordable housing in the City of Long Beach. His campaign’s stance on affordable housing is weak, inarticulate, and is at odds with his being a millionaire, realtor, and gentrifier of District 2.

In fact, Robert Fox has in recent years been an active opponent to housing policies that would help aid our housing crisis in Long Beach. Fox played a large part in opposing increased housing density in the City’s Land Use Element (LUE). While some of our city’s more conservative NIMBYs have praised him for such advocacy, the disastrous impacts have resulted in dangerously sparse creation of affordable and moderate income housing, resulting in thousands of residents being squeezed by housing costs and the housing market overall being vastly restricted in its developments.

On the flip side of that same coin, Fox was a vocal opponent to the creation of tenant protections in the City of Long Beach. In January of 2018, he bragged online that he brokered a deal with Mayor Robert Garcia to get him to publicly oppose tenant protections in exchange for Fox not running for mayor. The lack of tenant protections in Long Beach saw households facing hundreds of dollars of rent increases at a time — the more extreme cases seeing a doubling of their rent. Other families faced no-cause evictions that they had no legal basis to contest — event if they had been living there for decades. Fox sided with corporate landlords and developers, looking to keep housing prices high — it is beneficial to his business, anyways. When contesting such policies, Fox suggested the city should be investing in housing construction and density — the same things he opposed in the LUE and city Housing Element.

To show you just how far he is willing to go to keep housing prices high, Fox has even gone to the lengths of working with right wing radicals and Trump supporters to block tenant protections from becoming a reality. The radical right wing group “Better Housing For Long Beach” used this misnomer to push the platforms of corporate housing entities under the guise of community support. During the 2018 ballot petition campaign for local tenant protections, paid BHLB goons would stalk and harass canvassers. Often times their executive director, Joani Weir, would show up to assist them, and harass canvassers. These people were open about their support for Donald Trump, and were heard harassing Hispanic tenants and organizers, telling them to “go back to where they came from.” At council meetings, Fox would regularly give hugs and share laughs with Weir, satisfied that their pocketbooks were staying safe against protecting the residents of Long Beach.

All this provides stark contrast to Fox’s slogan of “restoring the voice of the people.” Time and time again, Fox has put his own interests and profit before those of the residents of Long Beach. As a low middle class renter who has only recently had the opportunity to move out, I do not feel like Fox represents my needs, or the needs of those who have less than I.

Take for instance Fox’s plan to end homelessness. His mailer attempts to discredit the City’s methodology for counting its residents experiencing homelessness, and suggests a myriad of short term solutions to homelessness like the expansion of shelter programs (though he immediately shames the City’s latest attempt to create a new year round shelter). His web page reduces the nuances of homelessness in othering terms, pushing a service-based model of short term solutions to deal with the “underlying issues” of drugs and mental illness. As the 2019 Homeless Count shows, Fox is ill informed around the statistics surrounding houseless residents — primarily, that most are newly homeless and looking for a quick leg up back into secure housing. And with 12% of the city’s population living one paycheck away from homelessness, this mentality is out of touch with the harsh reality of the crisis.

Forthe’s Second District Candidate Questionnaire shows just how out of touch Fox’s views on homelessness are, and reiterates the history of housing injustices that led him to his current views and standpoints. He explains his staunch opposition to tenant protection laws, rants about the new North Long Beach shelter in a way that is not informed about how our city’s Continuum of Care is run, and an inherent disbelief and misunderstanding of the methodologies of the Long Beach Homeless Count. His answers are sensationalist and out of touch with the reality of the situation — which is not out of character for Fox. This article also describes how during the LUE process, “…he hijacked a LUE workshop from city officials, fomenting a donnybrook filled with ‘half-truths and outright misrepresentations,’ according to a letter from the Willmore City Heritage Association president, who was in attendance.”

Absent from this platform are proven long term solutions to homelessness — most notably, supportive housing and affordable housing development — that would get people off the streets for good. And there is nothing to suggest that Fox would be an advocate for this kind of housing.

As you head to the polls this week, I encourage you to steer clear of Fox and to instead vote for a candidate that has a history of doing good work that benefits our community and puts people over profits. We need someone that has a history of doing work that benefits the community and helps it flourish — not someone who has a history of gentrification, anti-tenant stances, and the willingness to assist Trump supporters. We deserve a Second District that benefits us all, not just the wealthy few.