Long Beach Advocates Gather For More Services and Legal Aid

On Aug. 29, about 30 advocates gathered in Long Beach City Hall to make comments pushing for additional funding during the Budget Oversight Committee meeting. They supported increased funding for tenant legal aid, interpretation services, and legal funds to assist immigrants in avoiding deportation. 

At the beginning of the month, Long Beach announced its proposed 2024 budget of about $3.2 billion. 

Over the two-hour meeting, various members of the community from different organizations came up to comment, including Long Beach Forward, Long Beach Residents Empowered or LIBRE, Grey Panthers, a group of older advocates and Long Beach Tenants Union. 

They are pushing to add additional funding for the Long Beach Justice Fund at $1 million, translation and interpretation services at $3.5 million, and tenant legal aid at $1.9 million in funding. 

“Access is important because we have been fighting for this for over a decade. It’s important that there are resources available, but that is really hard to communicate that to people who don’t speak English, and having language and interpretation services helps close that gap,” Kimberley Lim, an organizer for Long Beach Forward, told Random Lengths News after the meeting was adjourned. Lim is from a Cambodian household. She moved in during the early 2000s with her family and all her family are renters. She worked as an advocate for about a decade.

Another key point during the comments was the need for legal aid for tenants facing evictions, which the advocates call illegal. 

“The ways they would evict tenants would be by offering them cash for keys … severely lowballing them,” and “2k to a family that is already struggling because they lost their jobs during the pandemic might sound good, but when push came to shove they didn’t have the money for a new apartment because the deposit was too big or everyone was putting up their prices,” Mayra Fernanda Garcia-Cortez told Random Lengths News when describing the advocacy work Long Beach Residents Empowered focuses on. 

Cash for key schemes are instances in which landlords can skirt the just cause eviction protection by offering money for a tenant to move out, usually offering low prices during times of economic hardships. 

Just Cause eviction protection stipulates that there needs to be just cause for a tenant to be evicted and if there is not a just reason, then the landlord must provide moving assistance in the form of cash equal to about two months rent. 

According to the National League of Cities, in court hearings on evictions, about 80% of landlords will come to court with legal representation while only 3% of tenants get legal representation which was brought up by the advocates during the commenting phase of the meeting. 

Long Beach is what the advocates call a “renter majority city” and data from the city states that renters make up about 60% of housing tenure. 

The last point the advocates brought up was the legal counsel for immigrant families facing deportation. Usually, in these cases, it would happen to the family member who was older and born outside of the country leaving their children or siblings behind. The Long Beach Justice Fund was primarily for people who might need help navigating the legal processes of deportation and maybe even avoid it if possible. 

The campaign for increasing the budgets began near the start of the summer; with members of the community and advocates from the various organizations appearing at council meetings to make comments and push for budget changes, with a primary focus on protections and services like legal aid and guidance for the tenants of Long Beach.