L.A. voters have already raised taxes TWICE for homeless housing and services. The $1.2 billion in borrowed money for Measure HHH was supposed to build 10,000 units of housing, but so far it has failed. Our tax dollars have been wasted on bloated projects that cost roughly $600,000 per unit. Measure H raised the sales tax in L.A. County for services that would help to end homelessness. In the last five years since both measures have been in effect has homelessness in the City gotten better or worse?

Initiative Ordinance ULA is a huge tax increase on real estate sales. It doesn’t just affect the owners of mansions. A 4% tax on the sale of properties valued above $5 million will hit housing providers, making the purchase of apartment buildings more expensive. Who pays for that? Tenants, through higher rents. It’s also a tax on the sale of supermarkets, movie theaters, shopping centers, self-storage facilities, and restaurants. Who pays for that? Consumers, through higher prices.

Accord

Los Angeles taxpayers already pay the salaries for a huge bureaucracy that’s supposed to be solving homelessness, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Many LAHSA employees collect six-figure salaries. Why should we pay for a new bureaucracy full of high-salaried paper pushers figuring out how to spend tax dollars on new contracts? No wonder some Angelenos call the current system the “Homeless Industrial Complex.”

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It creates a 13-member committee plus a tenant council. These board members will be unelected and unaccountable to anyone. They will also be able to hire costly outside consultants, and no members of the committee will be drawn from groups representing taxpayers’ interests.

It’s also estimated that about a quarter of the measure’s funding would go toward income assistance and subsidies. Another big chunk – $640 million over ten years – would go toward “administrative costs.”

A real solution to homelessness must address all the causes and crises that lead to the unacceptable tragedy of people living and dying on the sidewalks. A real solution requires a comprehensive policy that includes adequate facilities and services for mental health care and treatment for substance use disorder, as well as services for victims of domestic violence. Housing is only one part of a comprehensive solution. ULA continues the failed status quo that can’t even keep up with increases in the homeless population.

Initiative Ordinance ULA would raise taxes by roughly $8 billion over 10 years but not one dime may be spent on building temporary housing or emergency shelters to get people safely off the streets to find the care they need. This exclusion tells the story, doesn’t it? This tax is all about helping a select few developers, not the homeless.