Homelessness in Los Angeles County is tragic and sophisticated, and fixing it’s a daunting activity.
The one strategy to scale back homelessness is to supply housing and companies that assist individuals stabilize their lives. For practically a decade, metropolis and county leaders have been attempting to do precisely that, due to voter assist. In 2016, town of Los Angeles handed Proposition HHH, a $1.2-billion bond measure, which is constructing a bit over 8,600 models of homeless housing. And in 2017, county voters overwhelmingly handed Measure H, which added one-quarter of a cent to the gross sales tax to fund homeless companies and rental help.
Did these measures resolve homelessness? No. How may they presumably? L.A. County’s homelessness disaster was a long time within the making, a results of the failure to construct and protect reasonably priced housing, the decimation of the psychological well being care system, and a authorities unprepared and bored with serving to individuals popping out of foster care, jails and prisons with no lifeline and no housing. It’s going to take sustained effort and funding over time to reverse course.
However HHH is getting hundreds of individuals off the streets within the metropolis of L.A. and into housing whereas tens of hundreds throughout the county have gotten companies or rental subsidies by Measure H. There are 75,000 unhoused individuals in Los Angeles County, in line with the final rely — though for the primary time since 2018, that quantity did not go up.
Measure A on the Nov. 5 poll is the subsequent step. It will exchange H and lift the gross sales tax by a half-cent to pay for the housing and companies that homeless individuals desperately want.
We strongly urge voters to assist it.
Homelessness isn’t just like the Northridge earthquake — a freeway breaks in half, you repair it and that’s it. Neither is homelessness only a drawback that may be swept away — clear a sidewalk of encampments or RVs and the individuals vanish. They don’t. They simply transfer to a different avenue. Resolving homelessness takes a long-term funding.
Measure A would offer that funding. H at present generates about half a billion {dollars} a yr, which makes up a lot of the cash the county spends on homelessness, and it sunsets on the finish of 2026. Measure A would repeal H early and exchange it with a half-cent gross sales tax improve. (For many residents within the county, it will be as if one-quarter cent have been added. For 5 cities that had already been on the most stage for gross sales tax, a latest state invoice permits their gross sales taxes to be raised above that cap for homelessness companies.) Measure A could be a everlasting tax until it’s repealed solely by one other poll measure. It will generate about $1 billion a yr.
Measure H did its job — and continues to do it. On any given day, H {dollars} can assist greater than 31,000 people and households getting companies, akin to psychological well being therapy, drug therapy and job counseling, whereas they’re in interim and everlasting housing, or getting rental subsidies. It additionally funds housing navigators who assist individuals discover everlasting housing and packages, akin to authorized help, eviction protection and utility and rental help, to assist individuals keep away from shedding their properties. It additionally offers companies for all of the motels and motels utilized in L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Protected program.
If A shouldn’t be handed and H goes away on the finish of 2026, so do all these companies. Meaning individuals lose non permanent beds and rental subsidies. Homelessness would worsen.
So why not simply prolong H? As a result of Measure A will fund all of the issues H is funding, plus extra. It’s going to improve the amount of cash spent on prevention companies to maintain individuals from turning into homeless.
Measure A may also pay to construct, purchase and protect reasonably priced housing, which H didn’t. About 35% of funds will go to the just lately created Los Angeles County Reasonably priced Housing Options Company, which we strongly supported in 2022 as a more practical strategy to get reasonably priced housing constructed throughout all the county. On the time, we famous that the company would search voter assist for a tax hike to fund housing growth.
The measure is designed to enhance upon H by setting measurable objectives and including two oversight our bodies that information spending. Amongst their duties might be to maneuver funds from low-performing packages to high-performing packages.
The truth that Measure A received’t have an expiration date will enable service suppliers to master-lease buildings for many years and permit for longer-term financing of reasonably priced housing, which the county might want to preserve constructing for many years to meet up with the housing scarcity.
No one likes paying larger taxes, and positively the gross sales tax is probably the most regressive of taxes. Measure A advocates estimate that the common family would pay a further $5 a month.
Whereas there are a whole lot of components that go into an individual turning into homeless, most are caught in a crippling vortex of poverty and unaffordable housing. If we don’t need extra homeless individuals on sidewalks, we have now to spend money on proposals like Measure A that stand an opportunity of resolving this horrible drawback.
