Crews break ground on 163-unit affordable housing project dubbed ‘1400 Long Beach’

Construction crews formally began the process of building a new 163-unit affordable housing project dubbed 1400 Long Beach. Honoring the property’s intersection at 14th Street and Long Beach Boulevard, the project replace a series of automobile repair shops.

What to expect from 1400 Long Beach

Constructed for Meta Housing after scoring a subsidiary grant from the state last year, it has a design by The Architects Collective. It merged multiple lots—at 1400, 1410, 1420, and 1450 Long Beach Boulevard—back in April before breaking ground this week.

The 1400 Long Beach project will provide housing options for individuals and families near transit lines. The community will offer 163 units with garage parking and large gathering and courtyard spaces on the first and second floors.

1400 Long Beach is a very different project from what was proposed in 2019

The original proposal for the property included a much more scaled-back 65-unit development. It featured a four-story building with units above some 2,000-plus square feet of retail space. Plans called for a mix of one-, two-, and three-bedroom floor plans that ranged between 720 and 1,705 square feet each. 

Summa Architecture designed the low-rise development, and the property was eventually listed with its entitlement.

The affordability crises goes beyond those who qualify for Affordable-with-a-Capital-A housing

The more considerable discussion surrounding affordable housing and affordability within housing—two separate concepts—is coming to an apex not just in Long Beach but in California as it continues to see housing supply dwindle and costs skyrocket. On the one hand, you have what I call “Affordable Housing with a Capital A,” that is, housing directly connected to the federal definition of poverty, meaning a family has to make a certain percentage of the median income within an area to access it.

Within Long Beach, there have been delays and steps forward: Its inclusionary housing ordinance, which requires housing developers of market-rate complexes to either include affordable units or contribute to an affordable housing fund, was just recently passed. 

However, given the delay in its passing, the massive development boom across the city has waived the ordinance’s requirements since the projects were entitled before the City Council passed the ordinance. Had the ordinance been passed, say, five years beforehand, it is likely that either hundreds of affordable units would have been constructed in addition to the mass of market-rate units or millions of dollars would have been put into an affordable housing fund to build more affordable units.