TITLE
Recommendation to direct City Manager to work with the Department of Health and Human Services to provide an update on progress of the City’s REACH Teams, explore the feasibility of expanding the program in FY 2023, and report back to City Council and the Public Safety Committee within 60 days.
DISCUSSION
Long Beach’s homelessness crisis lies at the intersection of so many issues that have impacted the City for the last 20-30 years - housing, public safety, and mental health. In order to uplift our 2,000 residents who experience homelessness, and the many more who move in and out of stable housing, this crisis needs to be addressed with an eye towards all three of these issues.
For many cities across the country, the May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police Department Officer Derek Chauvin showed that there was a reckoning to be had with the way public safety was approached at the municipal level. Long Beach rose to these challenges by creating the Framework for Racial Equity and Reconciliation, which was released after extensive community engagement and supported by the full City Council on June 23rd of that same year.
This framework laid out an approach to outreach to residents experiencing homelessness that takes into account concerns regarding public safety, mental health and substance abuse, as well as the principal goal of getting unhoused residents into permanent housing. Under Goal #3 in the report, “Redesign police approach to community safety”, the first strategy listed was to, “Explore non-police alternatives to law enforcement emergency response.” The strategy called out three potential actions in line with this goal:1
1. Create non-police, civilian emergency response teams to respond to non-violent calls for service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Explore existing best practice models of civilian emergency response teams.
2. Create an alternate phone number and dispatch system for non-violent emergency calls for service, ...
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