The Long Beach encampment operation addressed an encampment located on state property alongside freeways at the State Route 91 and I-710 Interchange, which endangered not only the people in the encampment, but also motorists and the public. To facilitate clean up, the task force worked with local service providers for weeks to provide outreach to inhabitants of the encampment, offering shelter and supportive services including health care.<\/p>\n
After moving people into shelter and off the encampment site, Caltrans teams picked up debris and hazardous materials, clearing approximately\u00a0150 tons of debris over three days.<\/p>\n
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This adds to work that has been underway since 2021, with Caltrans having removed more than 19,000 encampments on state right-of-way and collected approximately 354,000 cubic yards of litter and debris.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Providing shelter in Long Beach\u00a0<\/p>\n
Twenty-five people in the encampment were connected with shelter through the operation, being moved from the hazardous outdoor location to a state-funded Homekey site nearby. The Homekey site, which opened on October 29, is an interim housing location that is already paving the way toward stability and permanent housing. The Homekey program is an effort launched in 2019 to rapidly house individuals experiencing homelessness. Through the program, the state provided local communities with funding to transform existing buildings \u2014 such as commercial spaces, hotels, motels, adult residential facilities, and manufactured housing \u2014 to permanent or interim housing for the target population. Across three rounds of the original Homekey program, HCD awarded more than $3.6 billion to fund 261 projects with 15,962 homes expected to house more than 175,000 Californians over the projects\u2019 lifetimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This includes Steve, who was\u00a0connected with shelter after living in the encampment for a number of years<\/a>\u00a0and who expressed that this shelter \u201csaved my life.\u201d<\/p>\n Strategies that work<\/p>\n Governor Newsom is the first Governor to make addressing homelessness \u2013 a decades-in-the-making issue \u2013 a top priority. Since taking office in 2019, Governor Newsom has created unprecedented policy and structural changes<\/a>\u00a0in state government to help California better address its housing and homelessness crises, including additional and unprecedented\u00a0support for local governments<\/a>,\u00a0stronger accountability<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0enforcement<\/a>, transformational\u00a0changes to mental health services<\/a>\u00a0and state government, and\u00a0groundbreaking reforms<\/a> to create more housing, faster than ever before<\/p>\n Turning around a nationwide crisis<\/p>\n The Newsom administration is making significant progress in reversing decades of inaction on homelessness.<\/p>\n Last year, the state held the growth of unsheltered homelessness to just 0.45%, compared to a national increase of nearly 7%. States like Florida, Texas, New York, and Illinois saw larger increases both in percentage and absolute numbers. In 2024, while homelessness increased nationally by over 18%, California limited its overall increase to just 3% \u2014 a lower rate than in 40 other states. California also achieved the nation\u2019s largest reduction in veteran homelessness and made meaningful progress in reducing youth homelessness.<\/p>\n And this year, many of California\u2019s communities are reporting reductions in homelessness \u2013 with a particularly notable reduction in unsheltered homelessness.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cEvery person in Long Beach deserves safety, stability, and a real path forward. For too long, our neighbors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-86534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86534","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=86534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/CAL-OES-12.7.25-Video-Thumbnail-1-1897x1080.jpg\")
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