Homelessness in Los Angeles County is tragic and complicated, and fixing it’s a daunting job.
The one method to scale back homelessness is to offer housing and providers that assist individuals stabilize their lives. For almost a decade, metropolis and county leaders have been attempting to do precisely that, because of voter help. In 2016, the town of Los Angeles handed Proposition HHH, a $1.2-billion bond measure, which is constructing somewhat 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 providers and rental help.
Did these measures clear up homelessness? No. How may they probably? 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 tired of serving to individuals popping out of foster care, jails and prisons with no lifeline and no housing. It would 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 providers or rental subsidies by means of Measure H. There are 75,000 unhoused people in Los Angeles County, based on 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 might substitute H and lift the gross sales tax by a half-cent to pay for the housing and providers 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 downside that may be swept away — clear a sidewalk of encampments or RVs and the individuals vanish. They don’t. They only transfer to a different avenue. 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 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 substitute it with a half-cent gross sales tax improve. (For many residents within the county, it could be as if one-quarter cent had been added. For five 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 providers.) Measure A could be a everlasting tax until it’s repealed solely by one other poll measure. It might 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 providers, resembling psychological well being remedy, drug remedy 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, resembling authorized help, eviction protection and utility and rental help, to assist individuals keep away from dropping their properties. It additionally offers providers for all of the motels and lodges utilized in L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Secure program.
If A shouldn’t be handed and H goes away on the finish of 2026, so do all these providers. Meaning individuals lose short-term beds and rental subsidies. Homelessness would worsen.
So why not simply lengthen H? As a result of Measure A will fund all of the issues H is funding, plus extra. It would improve the sum of money spent on prevention providers to maintain individuals from changing into homeless.
Measure A may also pay to construct, purchase and protect inexpensive housing, which H didn’t. About 35% of funds will go to the just lately created Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency, which we strongly supported in 2022 as a simpler method to get inexpensive housing constructed throughout all the county. On the time, we famous that the company would search voter help for a tax hike to fund housing growth.
The measure is designed to enhance upon H by setting measurable targets 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 received’t have an expiration date will permit service suppliers to master-lease buildings for many years and permit for longer-term financing of inexpensive housing, which the county might want to hold constructing for many years to meet up with the housing scarcity.
No one likes paying larger taxes, and definitely 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 number of elements that go into an individual changing 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 put money into proposals like Measure A that stand an opportunity of resolving this horrible downside.
