As election day nears, Streetsblog L.A. adds its voice to the chorus of housing, labor, health, and livability advocates urging you to support efforts to address L.A. County's homelessness crisis by voting yes on Measure A - the half-cent sales tax that will fund affordable housing, services for mental health, addiction and domestic violence, and homelessness prevention in perpetuity.
The county's current homeless services quarter-cent sales tax Measure H, passed in 2017, sunsets at the end of 2026. Measure A would repeal and replace H, doubling the earlier sales tax to a half cent and making it permanent.
The estimated $1.1 billion the tax would generate annually would continue to fund services for unhoused individuals and those at risk of falling into homelessness. But it would also build on the lessons learned from H by adding accountability and oversight infrastructure, increasing the amount dedicated to prevention services, and providing for the preservation, purchase, and construction of affordable housing - something H did not.
Specifically, over 35 percent of revenue would be directed toward the County's new Affordable Housing Solutions Agency (created with the passage of Senate Bill 679), for the purposes of funding efforts to build and preserve affordable housing and keeping existing renters housed via emergency assistance and legal counsel. Sixty percent of the revenue would go to homelessness services, with the distribution of 15 percent of that amount being dependent upon cities' annual point-in-time counts. The remaining three percent would be directed to the L.A. County Development Authority (for local housing production) and another 1.25 percent would be set aside for accountability, data, and research. And as noted by the L.A. Times, two new bodies created by the Board of Supervisors would oversee and guide the spending.
The approach acknowledges the complexity of the housing crisis, the need to better track successes and challenges and adapt in real time, and - via the permanence of the tax - the fact the crisis is unlikely to be solved in the near future. It also speaks to the importance of keeping the thousands currently benefiting from Measure H funds from losing their footing, as County Supervisor Holly Mitchell notes below.
The list of those endorsing Measure A has grown to encompass more than groups from across the housing, health, labor, and justice spectrum. It's also endorsed by numerous elected officials.
Please be sure to vote yes on Measure A. To get involved, visit the Yes on A campaign website. Read the full ballot measure text. For more coverage of the ballot measure, Chris Greenspon interviewed Shawn Morrissey of Union Station Housing for the SGV Connect podcast who goes into more details about how the measure will help combat homelessness and why he supports it.
