As Los Angeles County voters head to the ballot box in the coming weeks, our elected officials are asking us to increase once again what we pay to fund homelessness services. In 2016, voters in the county approved a ¼ cent sales tax as a part of Measure H, which has supported homeless services and temporary housing since 2017 and will expire in 2027.
The LA County Board of Supervisors voted recently to place Measure A on the November ballot, which would renew and raise Measure H’s funding at a ½ cent rate. This is the latest in a series of funding measures to end homelessness through services and affordable housing. Previously, Los Angeles City funded homeless housing through 2016’s Proposition HHH, and in 2022, Measure ULA was passed, funding affordable housing and low-income tenant assistance programs.
We agree with policymakers who desire funds to combat homelessness and believe investments are needed. However, we are increasingly concerned that our local elected officials are blind to meaningful systemic problems in the housing market and how funds are spent.
Take the city of LA’s own housing department’s Housing Solutions Investment Strategy report, which estimates that if nothing changes in the approach, addressing the full scale of homelessness would cost nearly $22 billion over a decade. Thus, common sense dictates that addressing homelessness across the county would take far more than the $1.1 billion per year that this tax will raise,
Why is this sum so large? It’s simple: the flow of residents into homelessness and the cost of building new affordable housing are out of control.
Proposition HHH in Los Angeles City provided $1.2B towards low-income housing, but based on its own controller’s report, at an average cost of over $600,000 per unit, severely limiting the units the funding could build. Other reports have found even bigger price tags, with analysis showing costs of close to 850,000 per unit in Los Angeles and over $1M in Santa Monica. Without leaders addressing these root causes, the new funding will not make meaningful progress toward ending homelessness.
A real plan to address homelessness and the housing crisis must address multiple facets of the situation. First, we must reduce the flow of at-risk, low-income renters into homelessness. Secondly, we must quickly deliver services and shelter to residents who recently became homeless while connecting them to permanent housing. Third, we must provide subsidized rents to unhoused people who can live independently. Lastly, we should open supportive housing and inpatient treatment centers for those with acute mental health and addiction challenges.
While local governments have made progress on some of these fronts, elected officials continue to miss the critical element: making it easier to find a place to live. The city’s own housing department states that “the current homelessness crisis is rooted in decades of underbuilding.” Research across the political spectrum shows that the number one reason for rising homelessness in metros like Los Angeles is the extraordinary cost of housing. The American Enterprise Institute found that 79% of a metro’s homeless count is explained by one factor: the ratio of home prices to median incomes.
While many folks coming off the street need dedicated, supportive housing, housing of all kinds is necessary to stabilize home prices. A broadly more affordable housing market can both reduce the flow of vulnerable residents into homelessness and make it easier for those who recently lost housing without acute needs to get off the street.
What makes this even more frustrating is that we have seen the pathway to scale up the affordable housing Los Angeles needs in the last two years. In December 2022, Los Angeles Mayor Bass signed Executive Directive 1, which catalyzed a seismic shift in solving the city’s housing crisis. Nearly 18,000 units of 100% affordable housing were proposed between December 2022 and July 2024 under ED1, mainly by for-profit developers without a cent of city, county, or state money.
Developers were willing to do this because three things came together: first, they could build more units than zoning allowed through the state density bonus. Second, construction costs were reduced due to relief from arbitrary parking minimums and prevailing wage requirements. And lastly, they were promised streamlined and specific approval timelines, which were supposed to come within months of applying to build.
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The city’s actions in the wake of ED1 have shown a lack of seriousness in addressing the problem by running away from the best strategy they came up with. Rather than championing the law, Mayor Bass and Los Angeles’ City Council are layering on new restrictions. Since its implementation, the city has banned projects from single-family and historic preservation zones, limited projects that replace rent-stabilized units, imposed labor requirements, and reduced flexibility in projects’ design. ED1 is being systematically undermined, which may soon render the measure ineffective. Meanwhile, the city is backtracking on promises to use its citywide rezoning plan to allow housing in high-opportunity neighborhoods, betraying an utter lack of urgency to enable needed housing.
It’s impossible to predict whether Measure A will pass this November, but one thing is clear: if it fails, our local elected officials have no one to blame but themselves. The general public has repeatedly shown that they care about homelessness and are willing to spend their hard-earned money to help those living on our streets. But without leadership with an actual vision for ending homelessness, that generosity will run out sooner or later.
Sam Shapiro-Kline advocates for creating sustainable and equitable communities through housing reform and active transportation. He is a renter in Santa Monica, and works as a product marketer for a marketing technology company.
Thomas Irwin is a housing advocate who works in the faith-based economic development space. He lives on the Eastside of Los Angeles with his wife and two kids.