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Los Angeles Progressive Voter Guide - November 2022 [1]
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Date: 2022-10-28
LA City Prop ULA – Homelessness Prevention - YES
LA Forward Action strongly supports Measure ULA, which also known as United to House LA. The proposition, brought forward by an array of grassroots housing organizations, tenant rights groups, social service providers and labor unions, aims to radically improve and expand the City of Los Angeles’ response to the housing and homelessness crisis by providing funding of about $875 million annually to proven affordable housing and homelessness-prevention programs. Moreover, the proposition is funded through a tax that only the wealthiest Angelenos and corporations, would pay.
The evidence of Los Angeles’ housing crisis is all around us: the 2022 Homeless Count revealed about 42,000 people experiencing homelessness in the City of Los Angeles, but this is only the tip of the iceberg: about half of renters in the City of Los Angeles are severely-rent burdened , meaning they pay over half of their income on their housing—those severely rent-burdened households with the lowest incomes are one emergency or disruption away from ending up on the street or in the City’s over-taxed shelter system.
Vulnerable tenants also suffer from a playing field that is far from level with their landlords. While pandemic-era eviction protections have been critical in slowing evictions in Los Angeles, in the decade prior to the pandemic, Los Angeles County was home to over half a million formal evictions , with evidence that an additional one million informal evictions took place in that period of time. With the City’s eviction protections set to rollback in early 2023, there’s every expectation that this wave of evictions will resume and even accelerate with thousands of LA households behind on their rent due to the economic devastation that COVID-19 wrought on the lowest-income communities.
ULA seeks to address this dynamic through two important types of investments. The measure would direct funding to the long-term investments in affordable housing creation and preservation that will stabilize Los Angeles’ housing market in the long-term, while also putting funding in critical tenant support programs that can keep people in their homes that are at risk of falling into homelessness today.
On the affordable housing side, ULA would allocate 70% of funding towards housing production and preservation. This would include approximately $180 million in annual funding for supportive and affordable housing, $180 million in annual funding for non-traditional models of affordable housing, and another $80 million annually for preservation of existing affordable housing. If passed, this would turbocharge Los Angeles’ production of housing for people with the lowest incomes. In the past, the City has approved one-off investments in affordable housing, which has led to new housing units only becoming available in fits and starts — ULA’s annual funding would get the City of LA’s housing machine humming.
The remaining 30% of funding would go towards tenant rights programs, which provide immediate resources to keep people in their homes. This includes scaling up Los Angeles’ eviction defense programs, issuing cash assistance to people behind on their rent, and providing other supportive services. There would be special assistance to seniors and people with disabilities who have difficulty keeping up with housing costs and who are becoming an increasingly large proportion of the newly homeless. Perhaps most critically, this would bring Los Angeles closer to having a true right to counsel, where any tenant facing eviction would have the right to an attorney. Just having an attorney levels the playing field for tenants: In locales where a right to counsel exists, approximately 86% of represented tenants stay housed .
ULA would raise money through a progressive tax on real estate transactions for properties valued at over $5 million: The proposed tax is progressive, starting at 4% for properties whose value ranges from $5 to $10 million and escalating to a 5.5% tax for properties valued above $10 million. These taxes are not likely to impact your typical Angeleno: the average home value in Los Angeles was just over $970,000 in August 2022, according to Zillow.
ULA is going to generate revenue from transfers of celebrity mansions, large corporate office buildings, and shopping malls, rather than from people feeling the ill effects of the region’s housing crisis. A recent report from some of Los Angeles’ most prominent housing academics found that ULA would have no negative impact on regular Angelenos, with over 75% of funding coming from sellers of properties over $10 million in value. Long story short, the people and corporations who’ve benefitted the most from the skyrocketing value of real estate will pay to address the problem.
In the past, LA’s elected officials have backed put forward initiatives to address homelessness, like Proposition H and HHH. These initiatives have been critical steps forward in advancing LA’s response to address homelessness, leading to a regional system where over 20,000 people are rehoused on an annual basis. Even the much-derided HHH is on a path to provide supportive housing for 13,000 people.
But officials overpromised on the impacts of these measures, which have not fundamentally addressed the issues driving people into homelessness. Measure ULA, drafted by the people and organizations closest to the problem, would bring fundamental change to LA’s housing landscape.
LA Forward Action urges a YES vote.
LA County Measure A – Sheriff Accountability - YES
Measure A would amend the L.A. County Charter to enable the County Board of Supervisors to remove a sheriff for severe offenses.
Offenses that would be grounds for removal include violations of law related to a sheriff’s duties, flagrant or repeated neglect of duties, misappropriation of funds, willful falsification of documents, or obstructing an investigation.
Sheriffs would be given an opportunity to be heard before a vote was taken and could be removed only with a 4/5 vote of the five County Supervisors who run LA County’s Government.
Measure A was placed on the 2022 ballot through a motion that passed by the Board of Supervisors on a 4-1 vote. Democrats Holly Mitchell, Hilda Solis, Sheila Kuehl, and Janice Hahn in supported it and Republican Kathryn Barger opposed it.
One major reason this initiative is on the ballot this year has to do with the current Sheriff, Alex Villanueva, who’s been mired in controversy since running as a reformer in 2018 and quickly revealing himself to be anything but. Shortly after being elected, Villanueva re-hired a deputy that was terminated over allegations of domestic violence and lying to investigators. Villanueva has also refused to cooperate with county oversight authorities — including defying lawful subpoenas to appear in front of the Civilian Oversight Commission — that are investigating the existence of “deputy gangs.” These gangs are accused of promoting harassment and violence.
Moreover, Villanueva has often attacked critics going so far as to launch a criminal investigation into a Board-appointed Inspector General. On September 14, he targeted the houses for two of his biggest critics — Supervisor Sheila Kuehl and Civilian Oversight Commission member Patti Giggans — for search and seizure. The conduct was so outrageous that the California Attorney General took the case away from the Sheriff’s Department entirely.
In response to Villanueva’s outrageous conduct and a long history of outrageous behavior by the Sheriff’s Department, the Check the Sheriff coalition, an alliance of community organizations and civil rights groups, submitted a letter to the Board of Supervisors with demands for increasing sheriff accountability including the Measure A Charter Amendment.
Opponents of the measure claim that it is an overreach in response to a single sheriff. In reality, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has had a long history of both scandal and daily violations of civil and human rights in both communities and the jail system, which stretches far beyond the current Sheriff. Former Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Bacca was convicted of felony obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI. As an institution, the Sheriff’s department is responsible for the highest litigation costs on settlements, judgments and associated fees for the last 10 fiscal years.
It's an understatement to say that current oversight system for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department has proven inadequate. Whether Villanueva wins or his challenger, Robert Luna, does, we need to make sure there is additional oversight and checks on the power of the Sheriff. Even if it’s never used, the possibility of removal should serve instill respect for civilian power into whoever is running the Department.
Measure A is an important step toward correcting the system’s profound problems. We strongly recommend a Yes vote!
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