LOS ANGELES—A new tax proposal will be on the Nov. 8 ballot for Angelenos to vote on, which if passed, would create additional homeless housing from a new tax. According to early polls, homelessness is the top issue of concern for Angelenos heading into the election.
Initiative Ordinance “ULA” proposed enacting a 4 percent property sales tax on all properties that are sold for over $5 million. The tax increases up to 5.5 percent on properties over $10 million and all funds will go toward affordable housing for the homeless.
A 2021 poll of 906 eligible voters living in LA estimated that 51 percent of voters said they would support a tax increase to support the development of more permanent supportive housing. The poll was conducted by the Los Angeles Business Council and Hart Research in cooperation with the Los Angeles Times.
“Rising rents, widespread tenant evictions, and a lack of affordable housing have made Los Angeles the city with the worst housing and homelessness crisis in the country,” the measure reads.
The committee behind the ordinance, United to House L.A., says that the measure will authorize and create new “programs to increase affordable housing and provide resources to tenants at risk of homelessness,” according to the policy text.
According to the official voter pamphlet, the measure would raise between $600 million and $1.1 billion annually.
The measure would excuse “qualified affordable-housing organizations from the new tax,” which includes nonprofits and government buildings.
“Program funds would be allocated primarily for supportive and affordable housing programs, including development, construction, acquisition, rehabilitation, and operation of housing,” the measure reads.
ACT-LA—a progressive coalition promoting housing and environmental justice—placed itself as an early sponsor of the measure at the start of the year.
“This housing and homelessness crisis is the number one issue to voters, and in response, not-for-profit neighborhood organizations, labor unions, and community members who live in Los Angeles have come together, with the assistance of local policy experts—not politicians—to support a ballot initiative that will ask millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share to address this crisis,” Laura Raymond, director of ACT-LA, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement in January.
According to the 2022 Los Angeles County Homeless Count, there are more than 69,000 homeless people in the county. This is a 4.1 percent increase from when the count was last conducted in 2020.
Advocates of the proposal say more supportive and affordable housing units will help get people off the streets and give them more opportunities to be rehabilitated. But those who oppose the proposal say this will only place more burdens on L.A’s economy.
“It would drive investment out of the city of Los Angeles,” Susan Shelly of Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a nonprofit lobbying and policy organization advocating for taxpayers, told The Epoch Times. “[I]f you were looking to buy an apartment building because you were in that business, why would you buy it within the city limits in Los Angeles? Why would you invest in new construction of rental properties if you knew that when you sold it, it was going to be less competitive than right across the border to Calabasas or Burbank or Orange County or Long Beach?”
The measure is another attempt to streamline the construction of affordable housing in Los Angeles—a repeated effort through various city and county policies, such as Proposition HHH—a $1.2 billion bond passed by voters in 2016 that promised to build 10,000 affordable housing units for the homeless in 10 years.
According to Los Angeles auditor Ron Galperin, the plan largely failed six years later due to major issues, including expensive building costs as only 1,142 units have been completed as of February 2022. In one instance, over $800,000 was spent on a single unit.
Despite these efforts, the sprawling homeless crisis continues to grow.
Measure “ULA” would appoint a 15-person council that would make recommendations to the City Council on housing and other administrative matters. The council would be appointed by the mayor and approved by the council.
“It’s a real abuse in my opinion of the initiative process to raise taxes with these wonderful sounding solutions, which are not solutions,” Shelley said. “But you sell it as if it’s a solution and you put it on the ballot, and then you reap the money forever—that to me that is just an abuse of the initiative process.”
