Los Angeles, California – On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed to propose a new sales tax aimed at tackling homelessness, ensuring its placement on the November 2024 ballot. This decision stems from the Affordable Housing, Homelessness Solutions & Prevention Now initiative by the Our Future Los Angeles Coalition. The planned tax hike intends to fund a robust program addressing homelessness, focus on cleaning up encampments, and facilitate the creation of affordable housing.
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This new proposal suggests replacing the current ¼ cent sales tax, which supports homelessness initiatives but is set to expire in 2027, with a ½ cent sales tax across the county. This change would effectively raise the sales tax by ¼ cent in all but five cities within the county—Compton, Lynwood, Pico Rivera, Santa Monica, and South Gate. These cities are currently not contributing to the Homeless and Housing Measure H Special Revenue Fund that was established in March 2017.
In support of this tax proposal, advocates who have gathered over 400,000 signatures last month, organized a rally in downtown Los Angeles on the same day as the vote.
“We can no longer turn a blind eye to what we see on the streets,” one demonstrator told KTLA 5’s Kimberly Cheng. “[The initiative] will…make housing more affordable and it will create a pathway out of poverty for those who are unhoused.”
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Officials presenting the plan highlighted the lack of sufficient housing production as a primary cause of the worsening homelessness crisis throughout the county. According to the strategy detailed by the Our Future L.A. County Coalition, addressing this issue is a central focus of the program.
“We do not have a dedicated countywide revenue stream for affordable housing production and preservation or technical assistance to small cities to update their land use and housing policies,” the coalition’s presentation stated. “Less housing is being built now than at any point in the last 80 years…and we are losing the affordable housing we have [as] between 2009 and 2019, Los Angeles lost nearly 200,000 units that rent for less than $1,000 a month in the L.A. metro area.”
Critics of the proposal argue that there is a lack of clear accountability and evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of spending billions on homeless prevention.
“Not only have we spent over 24 billion taxpayer dollars on this crisis and seen worse results, but we actually have no idea where any of this money has gone,” California Assemblyman Josh Hoover (R-Sacramento County) told KNX News 97.1., citing audits at the state level. “We should be wary of any more dollars that we’re spending on homelessness until we have metrics in place to actually track where the money is going.”
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L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger commented that the vote’s approval was largely procedural and emphasized that the board’s decision on Tuesday does not by itself enact or enforce the initiative.
“The power to enact this new tax rests in the hands of the voters in the coming general election,” Barger’s statement read in part.
