Why Measure A (might) be an Icarus Moment
Elected officials need earn back voter trust that they take housing seriously
I have a couple more pieces coming later this week, but in the meantime, I wanted to share something I published today in the LA Daily News. I co-wrote the piece with Sam Shapiro-Kline, a fellow housing advocate because we both felt passionate about our frustration over the current trajectory of housing and homelessness:
For context, LA County has put a measure on next week’s ballot to extend and increase the sales tax beginning in 2017 as measure H. Neither of us believes funding homelessness is a mistake; if anything, we are frustrated that the region is not doing more! As we write in the article, the city’s research clearly shows that the current trajectory is flawed:
Take the city of LA’s own housing department’s Housing Solutions Investment Strategy report, which estimates that if nothing changes in the approach, addressing the full scale of homelessness would cost nearly $22 billion over a decade. Thus, common sense dictates that addressing homelessness across the county would take far more than the $1.1 billion per year that this tax will raise.
Below is a slide from that LAHD report, showing the increased level of various resources it estimates are needed from that 22 billion investment to address the issue:
The report also estimated what will happen if we do or do not act with that level of urgency:
As I have written before, addressing housing affordability primarily through public financing requires taking on a level of spending that most elected officials will find politically unpalatable:
Suppose policymakers want to address the issue without devoting their whole municipal budget to building housing. In that case, they should be doing everything they can to build housing at all income levels and doing so by unleashing private development:
Research across the political spectrum shows that the number one reason for rising homelessness in metros like Los Angeles is the extraordinary cost of housing. The American Enterprise Institute found that 79% of a metro’s homeless count is explained by one factor: the ratio of home prices to median incomes.
While many folks coming off the street need dedicated, supportive housing, housing of all kinds is necessary to stabilize home prices. A broadly more affordable housing market can both reduce the flow of vulnerable residents into homelessness and make it easier for those who recently lost housing without acute needs to get off the street.
That’s, unfortunately, not what the city and county are doing. Consider ED1, where the city of LA managed to unleash almost 18,000 units of proposed affordable housing, mostly from for-profit developers:
As we write in the piece, since the Spring, the city has backtracked on that program in horribly disappointing ways:
The city’s actions in the wake of ED1 have shown a lack of seriousness in addressing the problem by running away from the best strategy they came up with. Rather than championing the law, Mayor Bass and Los Angeles’ City Council are layering on new restrictions. Since its implementation, the city has banned projects from single-family and historic preservation zones, limited projects that replace rent-stabilized units, imposed labor requirements, and reduced flexibility in projects’ design. ED1 is being systematically undermined, which may soon render the measure ineffective.
Or consider the city’s efforts to reform the way it zones for housing across the city, where the city of LA has not proved it sees the issue with urgency:
Meanwhile, the city is backtracking on promises to use its citywide rezoning plan to allow housing in high-opportunity neighborhoods, betraying an utter lack of urgency to enable needed housing.
The goal of the piece is not to endorse OR reject measure A. Instead, we closed with a short warning about the sustainability of the current trajectory, given that voters are getting increasingly frustrated with the current status quo. Lawmakers are flying close to the sun when they ask to keep spending money while not seeing any improvements on the streets:
It's impossible to predict whether Measure A will pass this November, but one thing is clear: if it fails, our local elected officials have no one to blame but themselves. The general public has repeatedly shown that they care about homelessness and are willing to spend their hard-earned money to help those living on our streets. But without leadership with an actual vision for ending homelessness, that generosity will run out sooner or later.