Long Beach's "Everyone In" Initiative Awarded Distinction from APA
This past June, Long Beach was given several awards by the American Planning Association (APA) for its exceptional achievements in regional development. The APA, regarded nationwide as being one of the premier urban planning networking forums in the country, bestowed distinctions to Long Beach in community enrichment areas such as wetland restoration, urban design, and youth engagement. This is the City’s sixth consecutive year receiving such recognition, which praised the aggregate of Long Beach’s completed works for “demonstrating outstanding planning work that serves to create more livable, vibrant, and inclusive communities.”
The “Everyone In” Initiative, a program spearheaded by Long Beach Councilmember Rex Richardson, received the Award of Excellence in Economic Planning and Development. “Everyone In” was launched in late 2017, its continuing vitality owing to the joint efforts of LISC LA and Long Beach Councilman Rex Richardson to build a local economy that that was all-encompassing and all-empowering. As such, the initiative was furnished with a recent injection of monetary resources and nonprofit personnel. “Everyone In” is a program that strives to be inclusive, fostering a healthy relationship between institutions that provide services and the people that use them. Simply put, it sets out to deliver economic opportunity to ideally all members of the Long Beach community, from all income levels and cultural backgrounds. This mindset stands in direct response to an ever-widening gulf of systemic income inequality.
A study by the Greenlining Institute and National Community Reinvestment Coalition found “persistent exclusion of low to moderate income families and people of color form the housing market”: African-Americans make up 14% of the City’s population, but yet only received 7% of mortgage loans; Latinos, who make up 41% of the population, received only 22% of loans.
As it stands, homeownership is only the first in a laundry list of socioeconomic issues affecting Long Beach. The City has also faced bureaucratic gridlock in approving development for affordable housing and financial counseling centers, among other services. In addition, though Long Beach is home to about 470,000 people (of about 200,000 being Hispanic) and possesses nationally reputed colleges and lower-grade school districts, Hispanic residents constitute the largest segment of population living in poverty.
The long-term goal of the City’s Economic Development Department is to create a financial synergy between the different members of the City’s economic ecosystem, one that is driven by small business proliferation, more efficient property development, and a reliable supply of skilled and employable workers. Unfortunately, none of these characteristics can properly manifest without community solutions rooted in equitable access to capital, employment opportunity, and financial counseling services.
Before they could tackle these problems, LISC LA and city workers needed a better understanding of Long Beach’s street-level fiscal dynamics. Phase 1 of “Everyone In” was geared towards collaborative assessment, bringing in economic policy experts from the Long Beach Department of Economic Development, the Office of Equity, and USC’s Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) to generate a comprehensive report on the best policies for economic inclusion and equity promotion. The partners also increased community engagement by organizing dialogues between community members, local business entities, elected officials, and potential philanthropic partners to synthesize approaches prioritizing equity in Long Beach’s future economy.
Armed with this new data, LISC LA and the City planned and implemented several economic inclusion projects throughout 2018, including the Economic Inclusion Listening Tour, Equitable Growth Profile of Long Beach, Kiva Long Beach Loan Program, and Youth Banking and Financial Literacy Education. While the projects addressed a variety of issues, ranging from small business funding to youth outreach, all were united in the common goal to have the City’s health and economic infrastructure provide services with Long Beach’s most underserved populations in mind.
LISC LA congratulates Long Beach on its substantial and impactful work in urban development, and is honored to be a part of this long-running effort to make Long Beach’s economy one that works for each and every one of its citizens.
