(The Center Square) – Los Angeles County adopted a $1 billion sales tax increase to use on homelessness spending just weeks after a court-ordered audit found the city of Los Angeles poorly tracked or did not properly track $2.3 billion in homeless program spending.
Prominent Democrats and Republicans have questioned Los Angeles’ homelessness programs, leading to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to consider terminating the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority that has a multibillion-dollar budget from the city and county of Los Angeles for providing homeless services.
The tax increase, which went into effect on April 1, was passed by voters in November and is expected to produce an extra $1 billion in revenue each year.
The tax revenue will be allocated based on point-in-time homelessness counts for cities within the county, with 60% going to homeless services, 35.75% for price-controlled affordable housing and homelessness prevention, which generally takes the form of rent vouchers. Three percent would go toward funding housing production, while 1.25% would go to the county for “Accountability, Data and Research.”
The funding is flexible, with the 60% toward homeless services that could be spent on anything from housing subsidies to price-controlled affordable housing projects, mental health and substance abuse programs, and subsidized employment.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing while expecting different results,” said Los Angeles Republican Party Chairwoman Roxanne Hoge to The Center Square. “We cannot keep electing people who view our pocketbooks as their own personal piggy bank for enriching NGOs and increasing criminal vagrancy in Los Angeles.”
LAHSA CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum earns $430,000 per year, or more than Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. She recently was found to have “inadvertently” signed millions of dollars of contracts to the nonprofit her husband works at, violating the organization’s conflict-of-interest policy and sparking outrage.
