Los Angeles County got a gift from voters: They passed Measure A, a half-cent-on-the-dollar sales tax that would provide billions of dollars a year for services and housing for the homeless.
Providing the homeless with the help they need is a difficult, long and expensive task, and residents clearly still believe in the mission. But they will probably expect measurable progress in the near future, especially if this is the second tax measure county voters have passed for that purpose. The first is 2017’s Measure H, a quarterly sales tax that is now being repealed and replaced by Measure A, which will double the funding.
It is critical that city and county officials and civic leaders use that money efficiently and transparently to get the help and housing they need. Voters tend to measure the results of homeless programs by what they see on the sidewalk.
The latest homeless count shows some long-awaited progress: The number of homeless people who are homeless — those living outside rather than in shelters or other temporary housing — is down 5% in the county and 10% in the city. But there are still 75,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County, about 45,000 of them in the city of LA.
Now the district has the best chance to accommodate in significant numbers and reduce the prevalence of encampment.
One of the goals of Measure A is to prevent homelessness, and it provides more funding for that goal than Measure H. It is critical that the flow of homeless people is stopped. Otherwise, the county’s efforts to get people off the streets will not make a real difference to the public or come closer to solving the problem.
The county is making 27,000 permanent housing placements by 2023 (figures reflect multiple placements for some people), but the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority estimated that 50,000 people were homeless in each of the last two fiscal years. The county’s total homeless population in January, including both sheltered and homeless people, was essentially unchanged from the year before, at about 75,000.
Part of the challenge in preventing homelessness is simply finding people who are at risk of becoming homeless. They don’t all show up at social service agencies asking for help. Janey Rountree, executive director of UCLA’s California Policy Lab and an adviser on the measure, has tried to address the problem by developing data-driven strategies to identify people at risk of becoming homeless.
Measure A also funds eviction defenses, which could help more people win or settle their cases and stay. It could also help more people avoid eviction, which can make it difficult to secure new housing.
Another goal of Measure A is to reduce the number of people on the streets with severe mental illness, which according to the latest census accounts for more than 15,000 homeless people in the county. These people need immediate help in the well-known county at all levels of psychiatric care, from short-term to long-term. Even a home with support services won’t be enough for him until he gets treatment.
Providing this kind of treatment is complicated by the shortage of behavioral treatment professionals. On top of that, the county and state are fighting to pay.
Measure A won’t solve all of these problems, but it’s expected to raise $1 billion a year, for goodness sake. Some should be used to provide the much-needed beds.
Of course, supportive housing – and more housing writ large – is the ultimate solution to homelessness. The issue is always building quickly and on the scale it needs.
Officials can do more about the score with the money Measure A. They should look for more long-term master leasing of apartment buildings and hotels for housing. And they have to finance more than 30% to 50% typical of projects affordable and supportive, which tends to leave developers spending years cobbling together more financing from other sources.
All this work is definitely challenging. But Los Angeles now has a substantial infusion of ongoing funding, dedicated to ending homelessness. Doing so is pragmatic as well as a moral imperative, so that the patience and generosity of the voters is exhausted.
