Homelessness in Los Angeles County is tragic and sophisticated, and fixing it’s a daunting activity.
The one approach to cut 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 help. In 2016, the town of Los Angeles handed Proposition HHH, a $1.2-billion bond measure, which is constructing slightly over 8,600 units 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 remedy homelessness? No. How may they presumably? L.A. County’s homelessness disaster was many years within the making, a results of the failure to construct and protect inexpensive 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’ll take sustained effort and funding over time to reverse course.
However HHH is getting 1000’s of individuals off the streets within the metropolis of L.A. and into housing whereas tens of 1000’s throughout the county have gotten companies or rental subsidies via Measure H. There are 75,000 unhoused people in Los Angeles County, in keeping with the final depend — 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 could substitute 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 help 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 road. Resolving homelessness takes a long-term funding.
Measure A would offer that funding. H at the moment generates about half a billion {dollars} a 12 months, which makes up many of the cash the county spends on homelessness, and it sunsets on the finish of 2026. Measure A would repeal H early and substitute it with a half-cent gross sales tax enhance. (For many residents within the county, it will be as if one-quarter cent had been added. For five cities that had already been on the most degree for gross sales tax, a current state invoice permits their gross sales taxes to be raised above that cap for homelessness companies.) Measure A can be a everlasting tax until it’s repealed solely by one other poll measure. It could generate about $1 billion a 12 months.
Measure H did its job — and continues to do it. On any given day, H {dollars} can help 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 support, eviction protection and utility and rental help, to assist individuals keep away from dropping their houses. It additionally offers companies for all of the motels and lodges utilized in L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Secure program.
If A isn’t 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’ll enhance the sum of money spent on prevention companies to maintain individuals from turning into homeless.
Measure A can even pay to construct, purchase and protect inexpensive housing, which H didn’t. About 35% of funds will go to the lately created Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency, which we strongly supported in 2022 as a more practical approach to get inexpensive housing constructed throughout the whole county. On the time, we famous that the company would search voter help for a tax hike to fund housing improvement.
The measure is designed to enhance upon H by setting measurable objectives and including two oversight our bodies that information spending. Amongst their duties shall be to maneuver funds from low-performing packages to high-performing packages.
The truth that Measure A gained’t have an expiration date will enable service suppliers to master-lease buildings for many years and permit for longer-term financing of inexpensive housing, which the county might want to maintain constructing for many years to meet up with the housing scarcity.
No person likes paying greater taxes, and positively the gross sales tax is essentially the most regressive of taxes. Measure A advocates estimate that the common family would pay a further $5 a month.
Whereas there are quite a lot of elements 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’ve to spend money on proposals like Measure A that stand an opportunity of resolving this horrible drawback.
