Homeless shelters possible in Lakewood, report
Regional gov't agency says city considering shelters.
October 23, 2023
By Brian Maquena
LAKEWOOD, CALIF. — City officials are possibly considering buying multiple motels along Carson Boulevard in a bid to fulfill state housing quotas, per a January 2023 report that lead to the creation of a new regional housing bureaucracy.
“The top priority in Lakewood is transitional housing. The purchase of motels near the 605 freeway is being considered,” said a report by the Gateway Cities Council of Governments, a joint-powers authority of which Lakewood is a member.
“As for the Lakewood Inn, the conversion of low-rent, extended-stay hotels to homeless housing is a strategy that some communities have used to deal with nuisance issues,” wrote Councilwoman Cassandra Chase, whose district encompasses much of east Lakewood where the proposed shelters would be placed.
The Lakewood Inn, which sits on the east side of the intersection of the 605 Freeway and Carson Boulevard, may be one of the motels the City is possibly considering purchasing for a homeless shelter. There are other nearby motels west of the freeway.
Chase said she was not aware of any proposals to convert the Lakewood Inn to a homeless shelter, saying it was privately owned and that she was not even aware if such a conversion had been studied.
The area near the 605 Freeway and Carson Boulevard intersection at times has some of the Gateway region’s worst homeless encampments. The Lakewood Populist reported how a shanty town formed alongside the Lakewood Inn and how a woman reported her daughter being chased by a homeless man underneath the freeway. The girl reportedly hid in the nearby El Pollo Loco for safety.
Recently, a tree or large bush was uprooted on the west side of the 605 Freeway at the Carson Boulevard’s southbound onramp. Formerly, transients’ always camped their tents underneath the tree or bush, causing outcry from residents. Piles of trash form on both Lakewood’s and Long Beach’s side of Carson Boulevard near the freeway.
Transients formerly took over parts of nearby sidewalk, and vehicles with trash bins behind them formerly were parked in the area. The Lakewood Populist created a video showcasing the area’s homeless crisis when then-Speaker Anthony Rendon, who represents Lakewood, bragged about all the funding he was bringing to his district.
Interestingly, whenever President Joe Biden visits nearby Long Beach Community College, the encampments get cleaned up for a few weeks or so.
The January 2023 report was part of a packet supporting the creation of a new joint-powers authority in Los Angeles County’s Gateway region, the area east of Los Angeles but south of the 60 Freeway. This new entity, the Gateway Cities Affordable Housing Trust, would be allow multiple cities to bind together to help private enterprises build homeless shelters by giving them money and asking the state for more money.
The report was based off interviews done with Gateway cities. It also mentioned how 1,000 apartments, including 200 affordable units, were possibly coming to the Lakewood Mall, which is set to be redeveloped.
Mercy Housing, which was also interviewed as part of the Gateway Cities Council of Governments’ study, may be an economic beneficiary of the creation of new homeless shelters.
“Mercy Housing is very interested in developing all types of affordable housing in the Gateway Cities,” said the report. “They are currently looking for potential projects in Lakewood, Artesia, and Cerritos.”
Lakewood City Council in a 4-1 vote approved Feb. 4 the city’s membership into the affordable housing trust. Councilman Todd Rogers was the lone dissenting vote, questioning the need to create a new bureaucracy on top of the already existing joint powers authority. During the vote, no mention of possible homeless shelters was made despite the report being published the previous month.
Due to strangely drawn election maps, citizens in the area for the proposed shelters do not have a Council Member directly representing them.
City Council District 4 was left without such representation when Council Members Steve Croft, Ariel Pe and Vickie Stuckey decided to pick the one map that ensured District 4 would not have direct Council representation. (This was because it was decided that District 5—the City’s poorest District and which had never had a resident sit on the Council before—be given the vote in 2022.)
At the time, Marisa Perez, an elected trustee for Cerritos College, opined that a deal was made to protect longtime Council Members Rogers and Croft and provide a pathway for Stuckey to run for an open seat in 2024.
“They will run a traditional campaign slate of Stuckey and Pe in 2024, lots of photo opps of Rogers and Croft with Pe and Stuckey in their campaign literature — ‘The Lakewood Way,’” wrote Perez, opining why Pe voted to put himself in a 2024 race against longtime Councilman Jeff Wood in District 3.
Rogers abstained November 2021 from voting on the election map.
The deadline for filing to run for either District 3—which will likely feature a race between Wood and Pe—or District 4’s open seat will be discussed at Tuesday’s Council meeting. The proposed deadline is November 13th through December 8th.