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For years, Los Angeles voters have been speaking out biggest concerns including housing and homelessness. These elections gave them the opportunity to speak out on these issues.
While Angelenos voted in favor of increasing local spending on homelessness, they did not support statewide measures aimed at expanding rent control and making it easier to pass affordable housing bonds.
LA policy experts say the results show that local voters still care about reducing housing costs and tackling homelessness, but they won’t support everything that comes up for a vote – especially if the measures are confusing.
Measure A slides to victory
A clear majority of LA County voters decided to pass a measure that would increase sales taxes to fund homeless services and the development of new affordable housing.
Measure A proponents claimed victory On Wednesday, when votes were tallied, support was at about 56%. The measure doubles LA County’s existing quarter-cent sales tax to a half-cent tax, raising about $1.1 billion a year for efforts to combat homelessness.
Some polls in the run-up to the election suggested voters may reject the idea of spending more on everyday purchases after a period of high inflation. Many voters were frustrated to see LA County’s unhoused population increase by 37% since the existing quarter-cent tax first went into effect with the passage of Measure H in 2017.
But Measure A supporters pointed out that the number of homeless people in L.A. has stabilized this year, with the number of people living unprotected on the streets actually increasing. go down. Alan Greenlee, executive director of the Southern California Nonprofit Housing Associationsaid many people saw that progress and voted to boost this funding.
“I’m not sure there is a compelling alternative at this point,” Greenlee said. “People understand that interventions need to happen. And if we choose to stop what we are doing now and replace it with no other alternative, the average person can realize that this does not seem like a path to success.”
If Measure A had failed, the current sales tax would have expired in 2027. The new half-cent tax will last forever until voters decide to eliminate it.
Despite Measure A winning handily, voters still showed some fatigue in funding homelessness efforts through the ballot box. The measure received far less support than the initiative that first instituted the tax years ago.
“Voters are certainly not where they were in 2017, when Measure H received 69% support,” said Shane Phillips, a researcher with the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
Proposition 5 fails statewide and leaves a small divide among LA voters
Unlike LA County Measure A, Proposition 5 could be voted on statewide. About 56% of voters across California rejected the proposal this proposal to make affordable housing bonds easier to pass by lowering the voter approval threshold from two-thirds to 55%.
In LA County, where a majority of renters pay excessive portions of income for housing, Prop. 5 also struggle to get support. According to Thursday’s count, about 50.3% of Angelenos voted “no.”
So why did voters support higher sales taxes for the homeless and housing funds, but reject making it easier to approve affordable housing bonds? Michael Lensa professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA, said Prop. 5 might just have been more confusing.
“There is a lot of information overload when you participate in a vote in California,” Lens said. “I think the default is often ‘no,’ because you’re suspicious if you don’t fully understand something.”
By comparison, Lens said Measure A was fairly simple. A yes vote raised sales taxes, generating money that would immediately flow to affordable housing and homelessness programs. Proposition 5’s value proposition was more opaque. Instead of quick results, the measure would have merely eased the process of approving new funds in subsequent votes.
Another likely factor: Prop. 5 explicitly told voters that enacting further bonds would result in higher property taxes, something many voters were likely unhappy to hear.
The third time wasn’t the charm for Prop. 33
Proposition 33, another statewide measure, was intended to overturn a California law that bars cities across the state from implementing stronger forms of rent control. It was defeated – in both California and LA County.
About 61% of Californians voted no on Prop. 33, including 57% of LA County voters, according to the latest numbers. LA residents are more likely to be renters and tend to be more progressive than the state’s population as a whole, but that hurts Prop’s chances. 33 not enlarged.
Housing policy experts were not surprised by the outcome. This The proposal has already been put to the vote twice in 2018 and 2020. Both previous measures failed by large margins.
Landlord interest groups have also spent money again millions of dollars on ads to promote Prop. 33 to beat. The opposition campaign raised $125 million, the largest raise for any statewide measure.