The views of Long Beachers objecting to the idea of a more urbanized city appear to be prevailing against those arguing for clusters of taller buildings, but an economist who analyzed the still-developing proposals contends constraining future development may push some residents out of the city and hinder Long Beach’s economic development.

“We’re talking about Long Beach residents, we’re talking about the children of Long Beach residents and their ability to find housing in a community that they love,” Beacon Economics’ Robert Kleinhenz said during a recent presentation on the topic. “We’re also talking about older members of the community being priced out.”

Whether he and others sway any minds before the City Council has its turn to take up the contentious issue remains to be seen. Over the last several months, public opposition to plans calling for greater density in places like the Traffic Circle area, at points along Bellflower Boulevard or the Wrigley neighborhood have prompted city officials to scale back their initial proposals.

Councilwoman Stacy Mungo, via her re-election campaign, announced this week that she will oppose any commercial buildings taller than two stories in the city’s 5th District. If the rest of the council defers to her position, that would kill an idea to allow five-story buildings on the site of Long Beach Towne Center.

“It makes no sense to turn our suburbs into city centers, or flip our well thought out and designed single family neighborhoods into apartments and high-rises, when such development is better suited and better served elsewhere,” she said in a statement.

These and other differing views are part of the debate over what City Hall should do while crafting the city’s Land Use Element. The document, which has not been overhauled since 1989, establishes fundamental rules governing matters like building heights and whether a given area can be developed with apartment buildings, work spaces or stores.

Housing demands versus political demands

Long Beach’s apartment rental rates have trended upward over the past six years, according to data from Costar. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment during the fourth quarter of 2017 stood at $1,407, compared with $1,153 in the first quarter of 2012.

Rents increased at rates at or near 6 percent, year-over-year, in late 2015 and early 2016. Rent increases have moderated lately, falling below 3 percent during the final months of 2017.

Renters live in some 60 percent of Long Beach’s occupied housing stock, according to 2016 American Community Survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau. RentCafe.com, a rental search site, reports that only six U.S. cities have greater renter-to-owner ratios; Newark, New Jersey, has the greatest proportion of renters.

Among Long Beach renters, 46 percent paid more than 35 percent of their incomes on rent, according to the survey.

Kleinhenz, who believes restricting housing supplies may push prices too high for people who already live here, is also of a mind that Long Beach planners have underestimated future housing needs.

Those projections say the city will need roughly 28,500 new housing units by 2040 in order to give new residents a place to live and to relieve overcrowding among existing households. They follow Southern California Associated Governments’ forecast of Long Beach needing some 7,000 new housing units to be built between 2014 and 2021 to provide room for new residents. The idea that many more units are necessary is based on the notion that people who already live in Long Beach require additional living space.

Beacon, however, provided two alternative projections. The one based on population growth forecasts ended up with a similar result, showing a need of nearly 26,500 units. When Beacon added job growth projections into their forecast, however, the potential need is much greater—more than 75,200 units.

“I know it is a shocking number,” Kleinhenz said. “We’re talking about the vitality of the local economy. It’s on a very steady growth path at the present time.”

Under that scenario, Long Beach would need about 55,400 new dwellings for people who may end up working here by 2040. Roughly 19,800 units would provide a means to alleviate overcrowding across the city.

Kleinhenz presented this analysis recently to directors of the Downtown Long Beach Alliance, a city-created organization formed to promote business activity in the city’s core. The Beacon Economics analysis is a relatively-late contribution to the debate surrounding city planners’ efforts to craft new regulations for what kinds of developments may or may not be allowed in any given part of the city.

The voices of people who are opposed to greater density, however, have dominated the conversation. After a series of meetings that gave hundreds of residents, many of whom live in the more suburban neighborhoods of East Long Beach, a chance to rail against city planners’ idea, members of the city’s Planning Commission acted to support for multiple revisions in line with opponents’ demands.

For example, commissioners favor a maximum height of four stories for future construction around the Traffic Circle, instead of the previously-proposed maximum of six stories. Planning commissioners’ preferred changes also call for keeping commercial designations for Sears and Kmart in East Long Beach shopping centers. City Hall’s proposals would have allowed mixes of retail and residential uses in those areas along Bellflower Boulevard.

Opponents to City Hall’s initial proposals have cited such concerns as increased traffic and their desire to maintain the character of neighborhoods that do not have tall buildings along their perimeters.

“They didn’t buy these houses to have somebody looking down their backyard,” said Robert Fox, a real estate broker and executive director of the Council of Neighborhood Organizations, or CONO, citing one objection to taller buildings.

Fox, who pulled papers for a possible mayoral run on the day before January’s filing deadline, decided against entering the campaign after a personal meeting with Mayor Robert Garcia. Although the two have both said no quid pro quo had taken place, the LB4D blog published an email from Fox sent after that meeting declaring the mayor agreed with Fox to oppose rent control and to delay the council’s consideration of the Land Use Element. A subsequent email to that blog declared that although Fox and Garcia agreed on certain issues, there was no deal related to this year’s elections.

Beacon’s data

For Kleinhenz and others at Beacon, however strict limits on high-density developments in Long Beach would be a mistake. Their report laments that although plans that were current as of January would allow new high-density residential development along roughly 575 acres of additional land citywide, the “lion’s share”—nearly 4,300 acres—of land available for new residential zoning would be limited to single-family homes.

Beacon’s projections assume Long Beach’s employment base will grow at a rate of 0.7 percent, which is the average rate recorded in the city between 1990 and 2016. That’s a slower rate than the 0.9 percent rate recorded for the United States as a whole during the same time frame.

Long Beach’s housing shortage is already pushing younger families elsewhere, according to Beacon’s analysis. The percentage of local households with children has shrunk nearly 3 percent from 2009 through 2016.

The DLBA’s governing board authorized an affiliated organization called the Long Beach Downtown Development Corp. to spend up to $80,000 on the Beacon report. That amount has not yet been spent, DLBA Chief Executive Kraig Kojian said.

Kojian also said the objective in spending the money was to provide an empirical method of looking at housing issues.

“The study is to try to remove the emotions out of the discussion,” he said.

Predicting the future

The City Council acted in May to endorse several strategies aimed at increasing the supply of workforce housing in the city. Those ideas include updating city law to favor granny flats, reducing parking requirements for developments near public transit, encouraging mixed-income housing and promoting a “density bonus” to developers who set aside some units at below-market rates.

Monday, Kojian predicted “there is no way to meet workforce housing objectives” without allowing for greater density.

Kojian also asked whether it’s right for downtown Long Beach to be the place where future population growth for the entire city, if not the surrounding area, will have to take place if new building does not happen elsewhere.

Fox also said he and like-minded Long Beachers wouldn’t object to building some 7,000, or even 10,000 new dwellings that may be needed for population growth, but doesn’t think the entire city has the kind of infrastructure or access to mass transit necessary for any influx of new residents.

That’s why he contended that downtown and land alongside Long Beach Boulevard within Midtown Specific Plan, which already have specific sets of planning rules allowing for 10-story and taller buildings, and are proximate to the Blue Line, are better suited for more density than east Long Beach.

“Let’s build the Emerald City,” Fox said of downtown.