Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson

Long Beach is the seventh-largest city in California and home to the nation's second-largest port, a booming "Space Beach" aerospace cluster, and more 2028 Olympic events than any city besides LA itself. Mayor Rex Richardson — the city's first Black mayor, just reelected outright in the primary with 57% of the vote — sits down to talk about how he got here: growing up between the Midwest and Long Beach, a first-generation college grad who slept on his family's couch, a labor organizer turned City Council member at 29. 

We dig into what makes Long Beach run differently from LA — a governance structure that forces collaboration between mayor, council, and city manager, and a city that runs its own police, fire, port, airport, utilities, and one of only three independent health departments in California. He's candid about the budget cuts coming this year, and why he thinks they set the city up for a surplus down the line. Then we go regional: his two years standing up and chairing LACAHSA, LA County's affordable housing agency, and his new seat on the LA Metro board — where his top priority is fixing what he calls an unfair balance of representation for Long Beach and the Gateway Cities. Plus his real answer on fare-free transit, and whether he's eyeing LA County's new elected CEO seat.

What's Next, Los Angeles? is produced and hosted by Mike Bonin, in partnership with LA Forward and with the support of the staff at the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles.

What's Next, Los Angeles? is produced and hosted by Mike Bonin, in partnership with LA Forward.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

He runs the second largest city in LA County, a diverse city that runs its own health department, its own school district, and its own airport. We talk with Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson on this episode of What's Next, Los Angeles. Hey everybody, this is Mike Vonin. Thank you for joining me. Welcome to the show. The name of this podcast is What's Next Los Angeles. But that doesn't mean just the city of Los Angeles. It also means the county of LA and all the cities in it. And today we're going to turn to the second largest city in the county, Long Beach, and talk with its mayor, Rex Richardson. First, a little bit about Long Beach. It is the seventh largest city in California. It's home to the nation's second largest port, and a growing aerospace and space industry hub that people are calling Space Beach. It's also gearing up to host more events for the 2028 Olympics than any other city besides Los Angeles itself. Eleven events. This isn't some small suburb next door to LA. It is a major city with its own economy and its own regional weight. Richardson is the 29th mayor of Long Beach, and he's also the city's first black mayor. He was elected to the council in 2014 and then to the mayor's office in 2022. He was re-elected this past June with 57% of the vote. Politically, he's a Democrat who came up through labor organizing with SEIU. As mayor, he's focused on affordable housing, economic development, and infrastructure. He backed Measure RW, which raised wages and protections for hotel and hospitality workers. Richardson has also begun to build a reputation that goes beyond Long Beach. He served on the South Coast Air Quality Management District Board. For two years, he chaired the county's affordable housing agency, La Casa, and he just joined the LA Metro Board this summer. Recently, he's been mentioned by some as a potential candidate for LA County's first elected CEO position in 2028. I spoke with him recently at his office in Long Beach City Hall. We talked about a lot of issues, including where he sees Long Beach and his own future headed. Here's my conversation with Mayor Rex Richardson. Mayor Richardson, thanks for joining me on What's Next, Los Angeles. Thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me. Good to have you here. Great to be in Long Beach, an amazing city. A lot of folks who have listened to this program for a long time have not been to Long Beach, aren't familiar with you. So for those who aren't familiar with you, who are you and how did you become the mayor of the second or the second largest city in LA County?

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Thanks, Mike. Well, Long Beach is what I've what I've done since I was a young guy, you know, 25 years old, right out of Cal State, Dominguez Hills, you know, had an apartment here and was able to buy a home. You know, the bubble had burst and all of our communities had foreclosures and it looked up and it was cheaper to buy a home than it was to rent. And, you know, I took advantage of that opportunity. You know, I had I used President Obama's first-time home buyer tax credit and the FHA loan. You know, my roots uh are originally from the Midwest and the South. I was born Scott Air Force Base in Belleville, Illinois. Father was in the Air Force. Mom was a welder for General Motors. Her roots were in the South. When they divorced, I moved around a whole lot. Uh, so my I have a little bit of an accent that can't be picked up because I've lived everywhere from St. Louis to Detroit to Alabama. But I grew up really here in Southern California from 12 on. Moved to California on a Greyhound bus, uh, single mom and three kids, and put down roots, two-bedroom apartment. Sister had a bedroom, sister and brother had a bedroom, mom had a bedroom, and I slept on the couch, and we made it work because our apartment was $800 a month. And that's how we got the stability we needed to plan out college and all of that. I went to college at Cal State Dominguez Hills, right next door to Long Beach. It serves the North and West Long Beach community. I was student body president. I was a first-generation student. Uh, I was really engaged in civics and um volunteering on campaigns and learning about our region and, you know, people like Congresswoman McDonald and all of those folks. And out of college, I continued that sort of commitment to civics and grassroots and went into the labor movement. I was initially an organizer for California Faculty Association since I understood the CSU system, and then landed my first full-time job out of college with SEIU 721, um, helping uh to serve county workers in South LA County. Um, you know, these were maintenance workers and parks and recreation workers, probation workers. When I was 25, I bought my first house uh in North Long Beach, not far from where my first apartment was. Um and I married my wife. Um we met in undergrad. She was we were both in student government. We met at we married at the Long Beach Museum of Art. I had two daughters at Long Beach Memorial Hospital. And I started working for the city of Long Beach when I was 26 as chief of staff for a newly elected council member. In the community we represented, in North Long Beach, we focused on bringing neighborhood serving amenities. It was only a district without a library, a bank, uh, you know, a Starbucks. And you can say what you want about corporate coffee, but when you have to leave your neighborhood to take a meeting, you're saying, what's wrong with my neighborhood when there's a Starbucks on every corner? You know, we so we we focused on that basic work. Our our philosophy was community empowerment. Let's, you know, the the solution is organizing. The solution is uh build uh an electorate, a citizenry of of you know, communities of residents who could demand a higher standard from their city. And that's what we did. We built the largest, most modern neighborhood branch in the city, the Michelle Obama neighborhood library. Mike, I encourage you to come check it out. Um we, you know, built, brought our banks and our libraries and called and we restored our paramedic services. And so after four years as you know, chief of staff, I ran for city council in that district. I was 29. I became the youngest council member in the city's history.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

2014, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:16

This was 2014. Um and my priorities were really economic inclusion, advancing equity, building housing. And um, and I think my commitment to those things, my fidelity to those things has continued. Two years in, I was elected vice mayor. It's like the quarterback of the council. Council picks one every every two years, and I serve two terms, so four years as our city's vice mayor. It's uncommon. Back then you only got eight years on council, so half of my time I was sort of the quarterback. We don't have a council president, so it's the closest thing to being elected council president. 2020 COVID-19 hit. I was president of our regional government, SCAG at the time, and we needed to Thankless Task. Oh, yeah. I mean, great agency, terrible name. Yeah. Uh 191 cities, a board of like 80 to 90 people across six counties, um, 19 million people. And we had to figure out how to get the region, a very economically and uh politically diverse region, to agree on institutional racism as a public health crisis, and to figure out an inclusion, inclusion, uh inclusive recovery strategy for the region, while also going through a regional housing needs assessment process of assigning 1.3 million units of housing across six counties who some say we want all that housing and some say we need no housing. I remember it well. You remember that? So I I facilitated that process. We landed, you know, both the RENA process, um, our Connect SoCal plant. We got it done during COVID. And at the same time, we were our city was recovering. As a public health city, we're, you know, one of only three cities in California's only owned public health department. Long Beach was leading its own recovery from COVID. And so we had our own reckoning. I led an effort called the Framework for Reconciliation to deal with the both the economic disparities, the health disparities in our communities so we can build stronger and more equitable as we recovered. And, you know, after that, you know, we um, you know, the mayor's seat opened up and I was terming out on city council. Actually, we changed the term, I could have done one more term. Now I think of it. And I looked at the work that we had done in North Long Beach, bringing libraries and banks, neighborhood serving amenities, and through a community empowerment model, and said there are a whole lot more communities like North Long Beach that need that kind of leadership. And so we we ran for mayor of Long Beach. It was, you know, I was an unlikely candidate. We, you know, didn't have the institutional support initially. Um, there never been a mayor that didn't come from the more affluent areas of town. That never happened before um citywide. We had never had a mayor with small children. I'm still, you know, the only mayor raising young children. My daughters are nine and eleven. Um, you know, they were you know five and seven when we started. And we never had a black mayor in the city of Long Beach. And so there were a lot of reasons why folks thought this was a fairy tale, but we tried to bring a campaign that really reflected the entire community, be a community candidate, and we won. And um, once we won, we have been committed to really um maintaining our commitment and our fidelity to that vision where no matter what part of city you live in, what zip code, you have the opportunity to thrive. Whether you're in the West Long Beach, North Long Beach, Central Long Beach, where Snoop Dogg grew up, or or or over in the east side, um, you should have access to world-class opportunities for your family, your small businesses, and and for uh our youth.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

And you just got re-elected? Uh, and your re-election was a little bit different than most mayors.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

This cycle, yeah. So we were re-elected outright in the primary. It was a very difficult cycle this time around, nationally, for incumbents. You know, there, you know, Ballotpedia um showed a study. We're in the top 100 cities by population, and Long Beach is number 41. So we're a large city. Um, there wasn't a single mayor who went unchallenged this cycle, which is uncommon. The average number of challengers is 5.4. I had five challengers, but the only city that closed out its elections in the primary, only mayor's race was Long Beach, the only one nationally of the top 100 cities. And to take it a step further, all of our council members also closed out their races. We don't have an election in Long Beach this November. I think that speaks to our spirit of collaboration in the city. And we're so independent, despite, you know, economic headwinds, uh shifting legislative environment in the federal government, we're mission focused in Long Beach on what we need to do over the next next few years. And and we also, you know, we're controlling our fate in many ways. We're, you know, we're we've gone from a city that was largely known as a naval town and an oil town to where when the naval shipyard pulled out, we focused on the port. It became the fastest growing port in America. Now we're the greenest port in the first five months of this year, the largest port in America. Our airport was largely where the C-17 DC9 was built. When those programs ended, we had questions. Are we going to build again? We would be a manufacturing town. Today, we're home to Space Beach, the fastest growing space and aerospace cluster in America, where we're building spaceships, I mean sp space stations with vast space, world's first commercial space station, rockets at Rocket Lab and relativity space, satellites, and literally thousands of jobs. We're on track to generate 10,000 jobs that we need to fill by 2030. It's a good problem to have. And so that momentum, I think, is something that our residents recognize. And we also have a great opportunity in 2028, as Long Beach serves as the largest venue city for the 2028 Games. 18 sports, 161 events on Olympic side, 75 events on Paralympic side, about 2 million tickets. That's an opportunity for us to come out of the shadow a bit as a top, you know, top 40, top 50 city in America, and show our beautiful waterfront, our history, our sports legacy with more people that have gone to the NFL from Polly High, any high school in America, our Olympians, you know, from Misty May to Tony Acevedo, our Hall of Famers that have come out of Long Beach, Billie Gene King. We have an incredible sports legacy out of Long Beach, and the story has never really been told. This is an opportunity for us to really um show our quality and um and our and tell our story about the legacy that exists here in Long Beach.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

I I was gonna ask you to describe Long Beach to somebody who hasn't been here before, but I think you just did a pretty good job doing that. Um of the things that people tend to say about Long Beach when they've been here, if they're from Los Angeles, is it compares favorably to Los Angeles. People say it's cleaner, seems to be doing a better job uh managing homelessness, uh uh economic development. What's the secret sauce here?

SPEAKER_01 13:13

I think our governance model a lot forces collaboration. So you don't have all the power that rests with the mayor or the city council or the city manager. The way our charter is established, we have all three. You have a mayor who's elected citywide, who chairs the council, who has line out and veto authority, who facilitates the process of hiring the city manager. But the mayor does not fire the city manager without the city council. The mayor introduces his recommendations on the budget, but the city council adopts the budget. It forces collaboration, and we're also a very independent city. We have our own police, fire, port, airport, utilities, refuse, and uniquely one of only three cities in California with its own health department. So we contract nothing from the county, but we collaborate very well with the county. So if there were any city in Los Angeles that runs like a county, it's really the city of Long Beach. City of LA doesn't have a health department, for example. And and the, you know, the drama that you see between the city and the county are a result of that. And so um we're a very independent city that allows us to set goals and achieve those goals. We're also a big city. When we we're we're the right size, when we get it right, folks pay attention. When we, during COVID, we, you know, passed a policy that expanded sick days. That policy became state law. We were a city that offered first right of refusal, um, excuse me, uh right to return policies for hotels that it closed down. We were the one of the first cities to do to do so. And, you know, we we offered hero pay to our grocery workers. We were sued for that. Um, you know, I helped lead that effort, uh, but we we won in court, and now hundreds of thousands of grocery workers across the country have those benefits. So we're the right size to where when we get it right, it scales. It scales across our country, our county and across our state. So we're a model city in that way. That has really allowed us to, like, you know, as it relates to climate, we can show that we're a city that's leading, you know, uh the development of the world's first zero emission, automated, human-operated terminal.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Uh we're the you know, city that um is, you know, showing how you can transition from a city whose economy is largely based on oil to clean tech and advanced manufacturing. We're a city that's home to Cal State Long Beach, the flagship of the CSU, big public education town with Long Beach City College and Long Beach State. Well, we have the Long Beach College Promise, where if you attend Long Beach Unified Schools, you graduate with minimum standards for CSU, you automatically get into Long Beach State. That's a big deal. I didn't get into Long Beach State when I was a freshman because it was impacted that year, right? So it's so you automatically get in. But if you want to go to community college, you get two years free. That's called the Long Beach College Promise. And we placed it in our charter, our city's constitution, the Long Beach Jobs Promise. So my first ballot initiative I ran as mayor that guarantees a preference on city hiring. If you live in the city, if you graduated from Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Dominguez Hills, Lombee City College, or Compton College, you're guaranteed a preference. If the position doesn't require a degree, but you did a local certified apprenticeship training program, you also can get a preference. Or if you're a part-time, non-career, temporary worker, and that full-time opportunity opens up, you can get a preference. Now you can't get all four, you can get two. You can stack them. But that's called the Lombys Jobs Promise because the premise is as long as we're graduating thousands of students every single year, there should never be an entry-level vacancy in our city. And that has allowed us to accelerate hiring post-COVID, cut our vacancy rates in half. Uh, we've shown over the past five years consistent reductions in violent crime, shootings, and homicides every single year since COVID. And we're achieving our goals on housing. We we entitle more than 5,000 units of housing in the last three and a half years as a part of our larger plan to build 26,000 units. All of this works because we're a city that whose governance forces collaboration. When everybody has a seat at the table, um, you when everyone has a seat at the table, um, there's a larger opportunity for us to work together and for our community to thrive.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

But it's not all rosy. I mean, you got you got some budget issues. You're proposing some layoffs, some service cuts.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Yep, absolutely. So, and that's what government does. So in Long Beach, our we have a general fund. That's where 80% of our workers are from, right? Folks say, Oh, you got oil. Oil's a different fund. That's Thailand. Oh, but you got a big port. That's a special enterprise. You cannot use that on services in the airport. The general fund is where the police officers, the firefighters, and if ever your expenses exceed your revenue, that forces a deficit. And you and within our charter, you have a requirement. You need to balance that budget every single year. You cannot perpetually pass it on. And that is a good thing about our government. And so um, it's a cycle. When Mayor O'Neill was mayor, she had to cut $100 million over three years out of a $400 million general fund. So she had to cut 25% of her budget. Mayor Foster followed that legacy. He came in, he had to deal with the Great Recession. And he had to do, he did consecutive years of cuts every single year. And then we under Mayor Garcia, we had COVID. Those were cuts, consecutive years of cuts. And then we had, when we came in 2014, we had some years where we didn't have to make cuts. The economy was beginning to come back. But now under an uncertain federal landscape, right now, about $300 million in uh dollars we can no longer count on from the federal government, public health programs being attacked. A lot of that uh is driving um uncertain uh budget landscape, not only in Long Beach, but in eight of the top 10 cities, large cities in California, are dealing with the very same thing. So these larger economic factors. So we so I'd rather than pass it on to the future, we're addressing it in this budget. So of our 6,000 employees, we're gonna lose probably 180 uh filled positions. Um, and we have civil service rights, so they'll go through that process. But what it gives us is a projection of a surplus next year, we will be balanced, and then every year after that, a surplus for the next four years through our projections. So by making these adjustments this year, you you give that financial stability, that fiscal stability that our 6,000 residents deserve, that our that our six our 6,000 employees deserve, and our half a million residents deserve. So by making those adjustments today, we have a more stable um uh fiscal landscape in the future.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

We got the uh Olympic Games coming and the Paralympic Games. Uh outside of the city of LA, you're the the the biggest game in town. That's right. I think you have the second largest number of events here, uh, a lot of big ones. Uh I'll ask you the same question I ask people in Los Angeles is what are you doing to make this not just a you know a month-long party for people from around the world, but something where 20 years from now, people in Long Beach can say, we got that because of the Olympics?

SPEAKER_01 20:02

I think you're absolutely right to ask about legacy. That's what it's about. And I think the legacy is is again more than just creating memories, and those memories will be special. It's how can we use this moment to create an Olympic moment for mobility? How can we address, you know, we have this car culture in Los Angeles, but we have tremendous opportunities to imagine multimodality in a different way. And that's why you hear you hear conversations about peer-to-peer, you know, using the blue, the blue highway to take a ferry from Long Beach and end up in Santa Monica in about as the same amount of time it would take you to take Sepulvit or the 405 and peak traffic.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

You know, the water taxis uh between Long Beach and San Pedro, uh, even air taxis, finally a deadline to get air taxis delivered. Uh, what does it look like if we were to uh make transit like improve the A-line? Our first light rail in the region connects Long Beach to LA and now all the way up to San Gabriel Valley. But it stops at it stops at signals. You know, back when it was opened up in early 1990s, they built it at grade and it stops at signals. Light rail shouldn't stop at signals. So it's now the final signal priority. Right. Signal preemption, actually. Yep. If we do signal preemption, how can we shut shorten the time it takes to go from Long Beach to Union Station so that more people use it? Better ridership increases, enhances safety, profit, you know, it helps the system work, but we have to make the ride make sense to people. So those are the opportunities that we have in the next few years. There's also an opportunity to really think about you know, how can we leverage this moment to create better systems, um, better systems and better legacy and better investment, not just for the millions of visitors who are coming, but for the residents who will continue to live here. And I think some of that uh comes down to what how we invest our own public dollars. So Long Beach has an investment plan called Elevate Twenty Eight. It's a one point two billion dollar investment plan over five years. 2023, when we came in, carries us through 2028. And we're in the fourth of five years of implementing. That's not investing in any temporary Olympic infrastructure. It's all investing in our streets, our public facilities, our parks, when our cultural landmarks were home to Cambodia Town, for example. There's no, there's no big iconic gateway sign that says welcome to Cambodia Town, like there is in you know in Chinatown, right? We're building those things. We're gonna grab, you know, finally the historic VIP records sign. VIP records where Warren G and Snoop Dogg and all of them, you know, were discovered. You know, we have we the city holds the sign. We're restoring it, we're putting it back on display because it is a cultural landmark. The areas where Sublime cut their first album or Skunk Records or no doubt performed their first uh live performance was here in Long Beach at Fender's Ballroom. All this culture happened here. This is an opportunity for us to highlight the culture, invest our public dollars, really enriching our city. Tell the story of all the Olympians and the athletes who came out of Long Beach, from Tony Gwynn to Billie Gene King. Um, you know, now's the opportunity for us to really do that and leverage it and create um what hopefully will be a lasting tourism legacy as well. Barcelona had about a million, shy of two million visitors a year prior to when they hosted the Olympics, and they jumped to 10 million every year after that. Well, a lot this is gonna happen in Los Angeles as well. People are gonna get lost in Los Angeles in a good way. They're gonna find the things that they love, they're gonna go to the different hubs. Yeah. And our job isn't to say we're we're not Los Angeles. We are very much so a part of Los Angeles. In many ways, we're the place you need to see when you come to Los Angeles. So in the future, when people visit Los Angeles and they get to the Getty and they get to you know the Griffith Observatory, we want them to come down and visit the Aquarium of the Pacific and the Queen Mary, our new waterfront and fatigue.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

It's a great aquarium.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

It's a great aquarium. We want to do more, but we want folks to factor that into the experience. Long Beach is situated 20 minutes from Disneyland. Yep. If there's no traffic, 25 minutes from Hollywood, right? So we we want to play a larger role in the regional tourism economy.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Speaking of regional, uh, you just finished up two one-year terms as the chair of La Casa, the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency. Uh, one of the more annoying new acronyms uh that that we have. It's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

La Casa and it's a housing agency.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Yeah, I know, but it takes a while to sort of sound too much like Lhasa, which is its own can of worms. Um I don't like that part. Um you you were really there standing up this agency. You should you're still there, but you were the chair as you were standing it up. That's right. How would you define the the critical mission of La Casa right now?

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Sure. La Casa was created out of necessity. When I was chair of SCAG, facilitating the arena process, assigning housing goals for each jurisdiction in each county. A part of that process, you have to make recommendations on how to actually implement those goals. If you establish a goal with no plan, then it's a wish. And so uh one of the recommendations was to establish a regional innovative housing finance agency in Los Angeles as a model for the other six other five counties within the region. So we worked together with United Way. This is way back in 2021, worked together with United Way to uh stand up the legislation that created La Casa. We worked with Sydney, Kam Lager Dove. Yep. Long Beach was the only city in the county to support this legislation initially. Oh that's right. There was opposition from the county and the city of LA initially, and it didn't pass the legislature. Second time around, we went back. We passed the legislation, we passed the legislation, we got support from the city of LA, County of LA, and we and the legislation passed. And that established an agency with a mission to find solutions to boost housing production in our in our county, and also to fund those elements of how of homeless prevention that are not a part of our continuums of care. Right. Rental assistance and legal, um just cause excuse me, legal um right to counsel. Yeah. And so we had a mandate now with no funding. So the next step is to fund this agency. And so LA County Measure A was the first citizen-driven measure adopted in LA County history, and uh about 40% of that funding goes to fund this agency to do proactive housing production and a comprehensive plan for homelessness prevention um through uh what we've developed called Renter Aid, which is um uh a comprehensive sort of network that brings together rental assistance and legal support, eviction protection support. And so it's been since that moment, um, our initial chair was supervisor Holly Mitchell, and that's when we were we had no money. That was like the pre-Masure A days. And then once Measure A had been adopted, and you know, we all worked on our political side to make it happen as well, right? Forcing collaboration, bringing people together. Once that was there, then it was a matter of um establishing guidelines for how the funding can be used, MOUs with jurisdictions, accountability, making sure that the plans work, the guidelines work, plan the work, work the plan. Here we are two years in, and we've uh already adopted our first social bond and deployed $250 million. We've established our um our uh renter aid program. Long Beach is one of the funded agencies, and we're able to deploy senior shallow subsidies. The data shows us that seniors, young people are two of the populations most susceptible to homelessness. Yep. We're able to target those populations with new resources we didn't have before. It also steps up in a critical moment where the federal government is unclear on funding for COCs and funding for uh vouchers. We have unique dollars now to step in these vulnerable populations and keep keep them from becoming homeless in this moment. The other population that you know is very vulnerable are people who were stable, but an emergency happened. I lost my job. Doge, I can't go to work because, you know, or my household doesn't get receive income because someone's undocumented and can't go to work anymore. All of those challenges we can now address in um in a very targeted way uh through some of the work at La Casa. And so that's the goal. I would say the the biggest innovation of call of La Casa is its governance. Yep. The governance.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

As someone who dealt with homelessness a lot, representing Venice and the west side of LA, I I think La Casa is really focused on the two things I always thought were missing: prevention. And there's been a lot of work, city, county on prevention resources, and then housing. And then the housing. Uh we're still there on the housing. Uh, and it's been one of the big struggles in LA, right? Inside safe gets people off the street, but then there's a road to nowhere, right? Given the pace we're on, when do you think we get to a place where we actually have a complete pipeline?

SPEAKER_01 29:30

There is a pipeline, it just doesn't have the capacity, right? You need ideas like how can we rapidly a pipeline with sufficient capacity, yeah. Right, with sufficient capacity. And so that means we have to build housing. We have to build housing of every type, of every size, and we have to speed up the pace in which we build that housing. One of the largest, biggest problems is really the capital stack. You're waiting cycle after cycle for low-income tax credits, and time kills all deals, and it makes it more and more expensive. So, one of the innovations at La Casa is how do we do single source financing? How do you take the mortgage and the subsidy and put it together to where you don't have to go cycle after cycle to the market and to the tax credit and fund a project? Those are the types of things that you can do now with La Casa. That's fewer projects, they move faster. That's a game changer. It's a game changer, right? Those are the types of things that we have to look at. How do you leverage La Casa's bonds and our direct revenue and create impact funds through philanthropy or banking and others to really scale and accelerate, uh, accelerate housing production? How do you go to cities who've already done all the zoning? They sped up their processes. Long Beach is doing 100% affordable housing approvals in 60 to 90 days now. Well, if there are projects that are ready to go and need a little funding, fund them now. Get the project going. If there are cities who, you know, of the 88 cities, some may not have their housing elements where they need to be. We need technical dollars to help get them there. Or maybe there, you know, there's a small city that may need to partner with a different city to figure out how to fund it. That's where La Casa can come in and say, look, we're gonna work through your COG and fund this project that serves both of your communities because you may not have the planning capacity. You may not have a community investment corporation innovating with things like community land trusts. We have one in Long Beach, there are a number of them across the region. San Gabriel Valley has a community land trust. Those may be the vehicle that La Casa partners with to get housing built in some of these communities who believe they don't have the technical capacity to get it done. So part of it is like this is our mission. Collaboration is key. Again, the governance structure where you have representation, five seats from the Board of Supervisors, five seats from Los Angeles, one seat for Long Beach, and each of the small city, the small, the COGs also have representation. So everyone has a seat at the table. No one jurisdiction can come in and say, Well, we dominate because we're the biggest. The county can't say we dominate because we're the county. It forces all of us to the table to to work where our interests uh intersect online, and we all believe in housing.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

So just as you finish up uh your two terms on that, you get uh selected by the Gateway Cities as the newest member, one of the one of the newest members of the board of directors of LA County Metro. That's right. Um uh two-part question. How often do you use transit and what's your agenda as a as a board member?

SPEAKER_01 32:25

Sure. Well, coming off as chair of La Casa freed up freed up some time. Yep. Housing was an incredible priority, but we've got some momentum now in Long Beach, and now I need to pivot to prepare for 2028, um, given our role that we're playing in 2028. And, you know, I've I've sort of, you know, I've been president of SCAG, I've served on AQMD, I've done housing, we built, and like few people can say they built a countywide agency that's successful and working. We've done those things, but one area where Long Beach really hasn't had the representation, and frankly, this region hasn't received the investment that it needs in the Southeast Cities region, is on Metro. And there's a little bit of history here. The precursor to you know, the the agency prior to um Metro was the LA County, was the LA County Transportation Commission. That commission had um, you know, Mayor Tom Bradley on it, it had Kenneth Han on it, it also had the Mayor of Long Beach on that commission. And they did some incredible things. They built the A-line. Yep. And then Metro is created. And not a not another investment in this region has taken place since then in 30 years, in more than 30 years. And it shows when people do have a seat at the table, big things can happen. But when you change your governance and you don't have a seat at the table, you know, resources really follows representation. And when you look at the numbers, people who live in the Southeast Gateway region, the small cities and Long Beach and up in the San Gabriel Valley region, um, they have less representation when it comes to metro. So if you live in Los Angeles or other areas, it's about one million residents per one vote on Metro. But here in Long Beach, it's 1.7 million residents per one seat on Metro, 1.5 in San Gabriel Valley. No matter where you live in the county, you ought to have the same amount of representation.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

And so we've gone through this, and what does this, why does this matter? That that matters to me because when Long Beach joins the board, it means one of those small cities in the Southeast area gets kicked off the board. Right. That's not fair. Yeah. There are a number of cities, there are a number of regions that solve this problem very, very elegantly. Dallas, Fort Worth, two big cities, one metro. St. Paul, Minneapolis, two big cities, one metro. Phoenix and Mesa, two big cities, one metro. They don't say, hey, the big city gets all the seats, the other city has a fight with the other 80 some odd small cities. When everyone has a seat at the table, everyone wins. When everyone's in, everyone wins. And so one big priority for me is addressing the makeup of the board to make sure there's a more equitable balance. And I think there's an elegant way to address that. Both large cities should have, like, like La Casa, Long Beach should have a dedicated seat and not have to fight against small, smaller cities. We're a city with, you know, the largest port in America, Alameda Corridor, an airport, our own transit agency. We should not have to, for us to have a seat at the table, we shouldn't have to force Bell and the Southeast cities away from the table. So that's one key priority for me. The second, I would say, uh, would be the readiness for 2028. Some of the things we mentioned. Improve the A-line. Make sure all the sort of projects that are important are accelerated and the planning on how we move people in our cities is accelerated. So there's there's an accelerate by 28 uh uh effort. Um, that is my priority for the next couple years. What do you think of fairless transit? We don't have fairless transit in Long Beach. I think um I'm open, I'm open to it. I recognize the concerns about if it's fairless transit, how do you, how do you administer any level of like safety or enforcement, which has to be a part of any public, um, public thing that we do. Uh, but if there's a way to balance those quality of life concerns, I would be okay with going moving, moving. If it's funded, like there's no such thing as free lunch, like a run of city. Yep, and sometimes you have to make cuts and it's time for growth, and sometimes it's time for pruning. So as long as it's fiscally like sustainable, I will be open to it. I would certainly be open to it. You know, we're in an environment where people like to make um promises and commitments that are not funded. Um, I'm certainly not that kind of leader, but if there's a real sustainable way to do it, I'm hey, I'm open to it. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

I'm a big fan, so I'll I'll keep pushing you on that one. Yeah. It's definitely doable. Last question. Sure. Um you've uh had a leadership role at Skag. You've been on AQMD, leadership role at La Casa. Now you're on the Metro board. Uh there's a new job opening up, countywide, LA County CEO. You sound like you've got a hell of a resume for it. I appreciate that. Something you're thinking about?

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Well, I just got re-elected as mayor. Uh there's work that I need to get done here in the city of Long Beach. That's my number one priority. Um, I think if the county continues to do right by the city of Long Beach, there's no reason for me to look toward the county. I have a great city. I believe we have the best run city in LA County, and I love being the executive of this city. So it's not something that's that's something I'm deeply considering. Um, however, if if we continue to see like funding attacks on local cities like Long Beach, continue to care, receiving less funding, we're not able to deliver our services, we got to make sure somebody's in that seat who understands collaboration and who's man actually managed the city, managed a large agency before, and understands the importance of having people at the table. So um I love being the mayor of Long Beach. It's a great city, and it and and I still have a lot more work to do here.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Well, uh your name has been mentioned, and I think it's gonna get continued to be mentioned, so you'll be getting this question again. It's never a bad thing.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

Never a bad time to be in the conversation. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

Mayor Richardson, thanks so much for joining me. Thank you. You bet. And that's it for this episode of What's Next Los Angeles. My thanks to my team at the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State, LA, to LA Forward, and to our producer Tanya Wissias. And thanks, of course, to you for joining. Until next time, take good care and peace.