Housing & Homelessness L.A.’s mayoral candidates agree homeless encampments need to go.
The revenue from the proposed tax would create more than 26,000 homes for homeless people over the next decade and help about 475,000 renters stay in their homes each year, according to coalition estimates. “Increasing more taxes on real estate transactions sends the wrong message as it further increases the already high cost of housing in the region without addressing the core issue - that we are still in a housing production and affordability crisis,” said Stan Smith, president of the Greater Los Angeles Realtors Assn., noting his organization’s support of Measure H. Some in the real estate industry were critical of the tax proposal.
“Our members are going to be relied upon to help deliver this housing, and we want to make sure that we’re delivering the housing with good local jobs and really local careers for the community,” he said. Some of the groups backing the new ballot initiative were key supporters of both earlier measures, and one of the major supporters of the earlier efforts, the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, is helping craft this measure.Ĭhris Hannan, executive secretary of the Los Angeles/Orange County Building and Construction Trades Council, said it’s essential that more affordable housing gets built in the city and that can’t happen without more government funding. The coalition backing the proposed ballot measure has some two dozen members, including IBEW Local 11, the Inner City Law Center, the Los Angeles Community Action Network and Venice Community Housing. More than 7,000 units have been funded but construction has been completed on about 1,000 as of last month.
Politicians and voters have been frustrated by the slow opening of housing projects funded by Proposition HHH. In 2017, county voters passed Measure H, a 10-year, quarter-cent sales tax increase to fund homeless services. Los Angeles city voters in 2016 approved Proposition HHH, a $1.2-billion bond measure to fund homeless housing. Those voters surveyed showed some willingness to be taxed again to help address the crisis.īy 51% to 41%, voters said they would support a tax increase to “create permanent initiatives to help homeless individuals and reduce the homeless population.” Support increased to 63% if a tax increase included a clear plan to ensure accountability and transparency.Ī recent report from the California Housing Partnership found that about 500,000 low-income renters don’t have access to affordable housing in Los Angeles County. Homelessness will be the dominant issue in Los Angeles elections next year as many candidates vie to replace Mayor Eric Garcetti and compete for a number of City Council seats.Ī recent countywide Los Angeles Times poll, conducted in cooperation with the Los Angeles Business Council Institute, found deep frustration over widespread, visible homelessness in Los Angeles. Berkeley, Oakland and Culver City also impose a documentary transfer tax to fund services. The city of Los Angeles already has a similar tax that sends revenue into the general fund, though at a lower rate than what is proposed for the ballot measure.
What’s being proposed is known as a documentary transfer tax. This ruling was reaffirmed last year and allowed San Francisco to begin spending nearly $300 million a year in business taxes to fight homelessness. The proposed ballot initiative, United to House L.A., could benefit from a recent California Supreme Court ruling affirming that tax increases proposed by citizen initiatives need only a simple majority vote to pass, rather than two-thirds.
0 kommentar(er)
