Heritage Gardens<\/a>, an apartment community for low-income veterans and older adults who have been homeless, which opened in 2024.<\/p>\n\u201cLong Beach is a very diverse community with a lot of rich history, and particularly in this area, Central Long Beach,\u201d Richardson said during the meeting. \u201cBut communities like ours have lacked investment for a long time, and we\u2019re starting to see a renaissance driven by housing. What\u2019s happening with housing is the more housing you build, the more stable your community becomes, more opportunities are created.\u201d<\/p>\n
Four residents who live at Heritage Gardens met with the mayor and Buttigieg to share their stories about how they secured housing through the city\u2019s resources and have made their apartment complex along Pacific Coast Highway a home.<\/p>\n
One of the residents was Cheryl Neal, who has been living at Heritage Gardens for two years. She has lived in Long Beach since childhood. But, Neal said, she became homeless and had to rely on friends and family for a place to stay. Then she visited Long Beach\u2019s Multi-Service Center, Neal said, and was placed into housing.<\/p>\n
Another resident who received help from the Multi-Service Center to get housing was Laurence Owens. He is a veteran, but was faced with challenges that led him to become homeless on the streets of Long Beach for more than a year, he said. Staff at the Multi-Service Center provided him with help that led him to fill out paperwork with Veterans Affairs and look for housing.<\/p>\n
Owens cried when he received the keys to his apartment, the veteran said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why I\u2019m here and this is my family now,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is my home.\u201d<\/p>\n
The four residents expressed their gratitude for the staff and resources that they receive from the team at Heritage Gardens. They also shared the different community events that have brought many residents together.<\/p>\n
Some of those resources are provided by the Do Good Daniels Family Foundation, a local nonprofit that helps local families and youth. Co-founders Christi and Robert Daniels told Buttigieg and Richardson about the work they do to also create intergenerational support for youth and older adults at the apartments.<\/p>\n
Mercy Housing, which helped build and run the apartment complex, also had representatives on hand \u2014 including President and CEO Ismael Guerrero and Vice President of real estate Ed Holder \u2014 who shared how important it was to work with the city to make the project possible, and also how staff are dedicated to residents to create a sense of community and belonging.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing here to talk to people who have had a positive experience because of the work that\u2019s happened here is really inspiring for me,\u201d Buttigieg said in an interview. \u201cThese things don\u2019t just happen on their own; they happen when a community, through leadership like the mayor\u2019s leadership, is ready to tear down those barriers that stand between people and a life of their choosing. That stands between housing that is needed and what is actually there, and also providing those services.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important not only to create pathways to home ownership, Buttigieg said, but also to have a housing strategy that keeps rent affordable for tenants \u2014 making it both more accessible and affordable for people to live their lives.<\/p>\n
Hearing the positive stories of residents like Owens and Neal, Richardson said, is why the city works on addressing affordable housing in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo hear these stories, of these individuals from our community who were living on our streets and now living in housing with dignity and pride,\u201d he said, \u201cis why we do what we do \u2014 and we\u2019re not going to give up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson and former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg discussed the importance of affordable housing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7,1011,23,131,133,132,137,77],"class_list":{"0":"post-175963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-housing","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-long-beach","12":"tag-long-beach-headlines","13":"tag-long-beach-news","14":"tag-los-angeles-county","15":"tag-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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